Statutory accounts exist to satisfy Companies House and HMRC. They are prepared in a prescribed format, months after the year has ended, for readers who are not you. They are necessary. They are also close to useless as a management tool.
Management accounts are the opposite: prepared for you, in whatever format is most useful, close enough to real time that the information can still change a decision.
What is in the pack
- Profit and loss for the period, compared against the previous period and against budget
- Balance sheet with working capital and debtor and creditor days
- Gross margin by product, service line or client where the data supports it
- Cash-flow statement, and a rolling twelve-month forecast
- An estimate of the tax accruing so far this year, so the eventual bill is never a surprise
- A short written commentary — what moved, why, and what we would look at next
That last item is the point. A spreadsheet of figures with no interpretation is a report you will not read twice.
Quarterly suits most owner-managed businesses. Monthly earns its cost when you have staff, stock, or a cash-flow cycle tight enough that a bad month needs catching within weeks rather than months.
Cash-flow forecasting
Profit and cash are not the same thing, and the difference is what closes otherwise healthy businesses. You can be profitable on paper and unable to make payroll, because your customers pay in 60 days and your suppliers expect 30.
We build a rolling twelve-month forecast from your actual patterns — when invoices really get paid, not when the terms say they should — and model the things that would hurt: losing your largest client, a VAT quarter landing alongside corporation tax, or funding stock ahead of a seasonal peak.
The questions we help with
- Are we actually making money on this client, or just busy with them?
- Can we afford to hire, and what does the true cost look like including employer NI and pension?
- Should we raise prices, and by how much before demand suffers?
- Is it better to buy the equipment, lease it, or finance it?
- How much can I safely take out of the business this year?
- What would this business be worth if I sold it, and what would raise that figure?
None of these have textbook answers. They need your numbers, your context, and someone willing to give a straight opinion rather than a list of considerations.
The review call
Every pack comes with a scheduled call. Not an invitation to get in touch if you have questions — a date in the diary. Reports that arrive by email and are never discussed have a way of going unread, and the value was always in the conversation rather than the document.
For businesses that need more than quarterly reporting but cannot justify a full-time finance hire, we act in a virtual FD capacity — board attendance, budgeting cycles, funding applications and lender reporting. From £600 a month plus VAT, scoped per engagement. See what is included →