Business Growth

From filing the past to deciding the future.

Accounting is a record of what has already happened. Growth decisions are made about what has not. The distance between those two is where most owner-managed businesses lose money they never see leave.

The pattern

A business reaches a size where instinct stops being enough. Revenue is up, the bank balance is not. The owner knows the total, and no longer knows the shape of it, which customer, which product, which month actually made money.

Nothing is broken. The information simply is not being produced in a form anyone can act on. Statutory accounts arrive months after the period they describe, formatted for a regulator rather than for a decision.

The work

Build the reporting that answers the questions the owner actually asks. Establish a monthly rhythm. Separate the profitable from the merely busy. Then plan (tax, capital, structure, hiring) against numbers that are current.

It is unglamorous and it compounds. A business that can see itself clearly makes better decisions for years afterwards.

Where the cash sits, in days
Operating cycle Inventory days: 73 Receivable days: 73 Stock 73 Owed to you 73 Less: supplier credit Payable days: 55 You owe 55 You fund 91 days

Schematic. Receivable days plus inventory days, less payable days, is the stretch of the cycle you finance yourself.

Areas of advisory work

  • Business and financial strategy
  • Management reporting (MIS) design
  • Profitability and margin analysis
  • Cash-flow planning and forecasting
  • Working-capital advisory
  • Budgeting and variance review
  • Financial modelling
  • Business performance review
  • Growth and expansion planning
  • Business restructuring
  • Fundraising readiness
  • Due-diligence readiness
  • Finance leadership support
  • Decision support for management
On the term “Virtual CFO”. The work described above is often marketed under that label. We describe it as finance leadership support, because professional guidelines restrict a Chartered Accountant from adopting designations other than Chartered Accountant. The service is the same; the description is accurate.