Getting started
Getting Started - what we do and how we do it
Typically you will have accounts staff who take care of the day to day transactions. (Don't worry if you don't we can take care of this for you if you wanted)
Our first job would be to review the accuracy of the book keeping - we do this by looking at how well the ledgers and bank accounts are maintained, and the accuracy of the postings. We then look at how the more complicated monthly transactions are dealt with - e.g. fixed assets, depreciation, loans and interest calculations, directors and capital transactions, accruals, prepayments, wages and tax.
Depending on what we find will determine how much there is to do to bring your data to a point where we can prepare accurate accounts you can rely on to run your business.
At this point we can provide you with a fixed fee quote for the monthly management report, as we then know the volume of transactions and complexity of your balance sheet.
We can then also let you know what project work is needed to bring your accounts data up to date and write your bespoke management report - this will include setting up your budgets for the year
Common issues we come across when taking on a new client are:
- Ledgers and bank accounts need tidying up, sometimes bad debts need writing off
- Loan accounts are not being correct treated and often monthly loan interest is not being entered.
- Fixed asset register not set up or not maintained, depreciation not being entered monthly.
- Payroll journals not posted accurately
- Corrections needed to nominal postings to make sure costs are allocated correctly.
- Accruals and prepayments usually need setting up
- The balance sheet on your accounting system has not been brought in line with your statutory accounts
- Balance sheet accounts have not been balanced, meaning your profit and loss account could be misleading and be hiding a black hole
We can then set up your individual management report, written around your business, designed to highlight and pull out the key issues in your company, always with the focus of increasing your profitability and improving your cashflow. Included in the process of the monthly management accounts is a full reconciliation of every balance sheet code, which means you never get a shock at year end, or find there is black hole on the balance sheet that wipes your profit out.
This report includes a commercial commentary with lots of graphs and trends to make the information easy to understand and digest - we want you to be able to see instantly how the business is performing and where the issues are, without having to wade through pages of numbers.
Depending on the amount of work needed to bring your accounts up to date, you can usually have your first management report within a couple of weeks of starting working with you.
Typically it will take a couple of months to get the timing and the information flow working well, finding out what suits you best in terms of timing and whether we work at your premises or at our office.
Using your accounts to drive impressive changes
Once you have the monthly reporting in place and you can now clearly see exactly how your business is performing and what profit you are forecasting to make this year you can choose to access a higher level of support from us, to help you take the financial performance up and make some impressive changes to your business. This can include the profit maximisers, and financial training and coaching.
