Management accounts
Profit and loss against budget and last year, a balance sheet, your cash position and the handful of measures that matter for your trade – with a written note in plain English on what moved. Not thirty pages nobody reads.
Advisory
The part that is not filing
Compliance keeps you legal. Advisory is what makes an accountant worth having.
Most small businesses get a set of accounts once a year, nine months after the year they describe has finished. By then the information is history. Advisory work exists to close that gap – and to have someone who knows the business well enough to tell you what the numbers mean.
What's included
Numbers while they are still worth acting on
Six pieces of work that turn bookkeeping into decisions.
Cash flow forecasting
A rolling thirteen-week forecast built on how customers actually pay rather than their terms, with VAT quarters, payroll, corporation tax and loan repayments layered in so pinch points appear early.
Pricing and margin analysis
Almost every business has a customer or a product line that costs more to deliver than it brings in, and usually nobody has isolated it. We model what a price change really does to profit.
Budgets and scenarios
An annual budget you helped build and can be measured against, plus modelling for the decisions that carry real risk – a hire, a lease, equipment, a second site.
Profit extraction planning
Salary, dividends, pension contributions and benefits reviewed annually across company and personal tax together, rather than left on last year’s autopilot.
Someone to call first
Hires, price rises, big purchases, taking on a partner. There is no hourly clock on the phone, because a five-minute conversation before a decision is worth more than a correction after it.
How it works
A working rhythm, not a report
Four stages, then repeated for as long as decisions keep coming up.
1
Learn the business
What you sell, to whom, at what margin, and what you are actually trying to build over the next few years.
2
Build the reporting
The measures that matter for your trade, drawn from bookkeeping that is already current rather than assembled specially.
3
Meet and review
Monthly or quarterly: what changed, what it means, and the two or three things worth doing next – owned and dated.
4
Plan the year
Budget, scenarios, profit extraction and tax planning reviewed annually rather than assumed to still be right.
Why it matters
Profitable businesses fail because they run out of cash
Usually in a growth month, and usually because nobody was looking far enough ahead. Advisory only works on top of current, accurate bookkeeping – forecasting from stale figures is guesswork with a spreadsheet attached. Where the books are live, the forecast is worth trusting and the decisions get better.
- Figures current enough to act on
- Cash pinch points seen early
- Margin isolated by line
- Questions never billed by the hour
What you get each month
What lands each month or quarter
- Management accounts pack
- Profit and loss, balance sheet, cash position and your key measures, against budget and last year.
- Rolling cash forecast
- Thirteen weeks ahead, updated with actual payment behaviour rather than invoice terms.
- A written commentary
- What moved, why, and what it means – in plain English, before you have to ask.
- An action list
- Two or three decisions worth making next, each with an owner and a date. Not observations.
Pricing
One fixed monthly fee. No surprises.
Quoted after a free 20-minute call and billed monthly for as long as you need us – no hourly billing, and no charge for asking a question.
- Fixed monthly fee
- No hourly billing
- Questions always included
Questions about
our advisory service
Can’t see yours? Call us or drop a message – a person answers.
Ask us something elseIt depends less on size than on whether decisions are being made. A one-person consultancy with stable income may need very little. A business hiring, pricing work and buying equipment is making decisions worth far more than the fee every month.
Monthly or quarterly, agreed at the start. Quarterly suits most businesses under a certain size; monthly earns its keep once payroll and stock are significant or growth is fast.
Advisory only works on top of current, accurate bookkeeping – forecasting from stale figures is guesswork. Most clients take both, and the advisory is the part they would miss.
Yes. Lenders and investors want management accounts, forecasts and an explanation that holds together. We prepare the pack and, where it helps, join the conversation.
That is completely fine and it is what many clients take. Advisory is never bundled in by default – if it would not earn its fee for your business, we will say so.
Next step
Let’s get your advisory in order
Twenty minutes on the phone and you will know exactly what you are paying, what we will handle, and what changes.
- No tie-in contract
- Switching handled for you
- Fixed monthly fee