As your business grows, it becomes a juggling act. Often the financial administration can have a ripple effect – gaining traction and becoming increasingly more difficult to control over time.
In the early stages, business owners often handle financial tasks themselves which we understand – every penny counts, after all.
Tasks like bank reconciliations, chasing debtors, paying bills and preparing VAT returns are crucial to maintaining your cashflow and might seem manageable initially. However, as your company grows, these tasks can quickly become overwhelming and can divert your attention from strategy, business development and, ultimately, future growth.
Here’s how Harold Sharp can help you navigate this journey.
Scaling up: The need for enhanced financial management
Without appropriate management, the ripple effect can lead to inefficiencies, errors and missed opportunities as your business grows. This is where enlisting a proactive, tech-savvy accountant like Harold Sharp can start to make a significant difference to your business’ life.
We work with our clients to make small changes that can make a big difference – driving efficiencies that make financial management more manageable:
- Cloud Accounting Software: By utilising the full scope of your accounting software like Xero, you can automate many routine tasks – from bank reconciliations to generating batch payments.
- Automated Debtor Tracking: Take advantage of all of the debtor features out there with automated reminders of various tasks and give your business the best chance of ensuring timely payments for your cashflow.
- Expense Management: Without tech, your expenses soon stack up and can become unmanageable. Take advantage of intuitive tools like Dext to minimise the manual data entry.
- VAT compliance: It’s a necessity, so your accounting software needs to be agile enough to calculate liabilities in real-time, complete your compliance essentials, and help you reduce your risk of errors.
The role of an Outsourced Finance Department
If you decide to outsource your finance, it’s important to note that the scope can be just as varied as it would be with an internal department – whether that be assisting with your bookkeeping and bank reconciliations, through to high-level advisory on topics like budgeting and cashflow.
A tech-minded Outsourcing function can help by:
- ensuring that you keep up to date with tech efficiencies (e.g. those mentioned above).
- helping you take care of the input side of the business.
- enabling you to focus on the output – using the financial insights to guide more informed decisions.
Some of the benefits of Outsourcing will include:
- Up-to-date records: It sounds like a given, but for an owner-managed business, it’s easy for the bookkeeping to fall down the to-do list. By Outsourcing, you’re ensuring that your data and insights are current.
- Quasi-Finance Department: An Outsourced Finance team can act as an extension of your business, allowing you to focus on strategic growth.
- Expert Guidance: Benefit from a holistic approach to your statutory accounts, with financial planning, tax optimisation and advice on driving tech-led efficiencies.
Gaining strategic insights
One of the significant advantages of outsourcing your financial admin to a tech-savvy accountant is the access you get to strategic insights in return. With accurate, up-to-date financial data, you can better understand your company’s performance and identify specific areas to target improvement.
What kind of strategic insights can you expect to benefit from?
- Cash flow management: Cash is king, so giving yourself the optimum foresight for potential stress-points and opportunities is paramount.
- Profitability analysis: The ability to assess the granular data of your company, with things like analysing your most profitable SKU codes.
- Cost control: Identifying and managing your costs effectively is the key to ensuring sustainable growth.
- Benchmarking: Many practice softwares allow the comparison of your current results against industry norms, giving you that insight as to the goal or expectation.
How can we help?
As your business grows, managing financial admin becomes increasingly complex. By partnering with us, you can turn this potential challenge into an opportunity. Outsourcing isn’t about treading water to fulfil your statutory requirements, it’s about maximising the readiness of information, to grant you the ability to make informed strategic decisions.
For more information, contact our digital advisory team by emailing fintech@haroldsharp.co.uk or call 0161 905 1616.