A reliable close, and nobody senior to interpret it
A close that slips, and numbers nobody fully trusts
Growth that has outrun the finance team you can hire
One thing happening that nobody in the business has done before
Most forecasts are the budget with actuals pasted over the top. That tells you what already happened and calls it a forecast. The revenue line is a single number nobody can decompose, so when it misses, no one can say whether it was volume, price, mix or timing — and the argument at the board meeting is about whose fault it is rather than what to do.
We rebuild the forecast from its drivers, not from last year plus a percentage. Revenue comes apart into volume, price, mix and timing; cost comes apart into what is fixed, what steps, and what genuinely varies. Every re-cut names which driver moved and by how much. The model is one integrated three-statement build — P&L, balance sheet and cash tied together — so a change in payment terms shows up in the cash line automatically instead of being remembered.
Then we stress it. Not a “conservative case”, which is just the plan with a haircut, but the specific question: what has to be true for this to break, and how far away is that? Runway, covenant headroom and the first month you go negative all fall out of the same model.
Answer a board question in the meeting instead of taking it away. Tell your lender what happens under their downside case before they ask. Know which two assumptions carry most of the risk in your plan, and watch those rather than all forty.
Modeling specialists for the three-statement build and the scenario work
The pack is thirty pages, arrives three weeks late, and nobody reads past page four. It reports what happened without saying what it means, so the meeting is spent re-deriving the story out loud. Meanwhile half the measures in it have drifted: “gross margin” means something different in the sales deck than in the accounts, and nobody has noticed because nobody wrote the definition down.
The pack answers four questions and stops: what happened, why it happened, what it means for the next ninety days, and what needs deciding. It is issued with a written interpretation — not a commentary tab, an actual written view — so the meeting starts at the decision instead of the arithmetic.
Every measure gets a one-page definition: the numerator, the denominator, the source, and who owns it. That sounds bureaucratic until the first time two people stop arguing about whose number is right.
Board reporting is prepared and presented. The person who built the pack sits in the meeting and answers for it.
Hold a board meeting that spends its time on the two real decisions. Give a lender the same pack you use internally, without a special version. Onboard a new director in one sitting.
Reporting and data engineers where the pack needs to be automated
Cash is checked by looking at the bank balance. That is a rear-view mirror. The business is profitable, so nobody looks harder — until a supplier payment run, a payroll and a tax instalment land in the same week and the facility gets drawn for the first time. Almost always the cash is sitting somewhere specific and measurable: in stock that has stopped moving, in receivables nobody chases because the customer is important, or in a payment term that was set in 2019.
A rolling twelve-week direct cash forecast, built from actual receipts and payments rather than derived from the P&L, and re-cut weekly when it is tight. Alongside it, the cash conversion cycle decomposed into its three parts — days in inventory, days receivable, days payable — because the total tells you nothing about which one to attack.
Then the specific work: aging that is actually chased, credit terms that reflect the customer’s behavior rather than their size, reorder points recalculated against real turns, supplier terms renegotiated where the leverage exists. Every action is quantified — this releases this much cash, in this many weeks.
Covenant headroom is calculated before the quarter closes, not after, so a breach is a conversation you initiate rather than one you receive.
Know your cash position eight weeks out with confidence. Say which specific action releases the most cash fastest. Call your lender before they call you.
Treasury specialists for facility structure and daily liquidity
The close takes three weeks because it has no timetable, only a sequence of people waiting on each other. Accruals are estimated in the same spreadsheet every month by one person who understands it. The year-end audit is treated as an event that happens to the company rather than the natural consequence of twelve closes. And the controls that exist protect against the fraud somebody read about, not the one this business is actually exposed to — which is almost always in payments, payroll or inventory.
The close becomes a dated timetable with named owners: what happens on day one, who does it, and what unblocks day two. Recurring accruals get standing calculations rather than monthly judgement. The reconciliations that matter are done first, not last.
Controls are designed around where the money actually moves in your business. Segregation of duties, approval limits set at amounts that mean something, and a control matrix with the gaps named and ranked — so you are choosing which risks to accept rather than discovering them.
Most finance functions do not need a new system. They need the one they have configured properly, and two integrations that stop the re-keying — and we tell you when that is the answer. Most finance functions do not need a new ERP; they need the one they have configured properly and two integrations that stop the re-keying. We say when a replacement is genuinely warranted, and what it will cost you in disruption when it is not.
Plan around a close date that does not move. Hand the auditor a file that was ready before they asked. Know which control gap you are living with, on purpose.
Systems engineers for the platform, integrations and the control matrix
The credit package is assembled the week it is due, out of whatever exists, and it reads defensively. Covenants are agreed because they were in the term sheet, without anyone modeling them against the actual forecast — so the business signs up to a fixed charge ratio it will breach in month seven under its own plan. And the relationship is transactional: the lender hears from the company at renewal and when something is wrong.
We prepare the credit package the way a credit committee reads it: the business case first, the risks named by us before they are found, and the numbers reconciled to the statutory accounts so nothing has to be explained away.
Every covenant is modeled against the forecast before it is agreed, including the downside. If a proposed covenant breaks under your own base case, that is the negotiation, and it happens before signature rather than after.
Then the relationship is run rather than endured: reporting on time every period, compliance certificates filed early, and a call before bad news rather than after. Lenders price uncertainty. Removing it is worth basis points.
Walk into a lender meeting knowing what they will ask. Understand what the term sheet in front of you actually costs across its life, not just its headline rate. Renew without drama.
Debt specialists who have sat on the lender side of the table
The raise starts before the business is ready, and diligence finds what the company should have found itself. Revenue recognition that will not survive scrutiny, a cap table with undocumented promises in it, a data room assembled in two weeks while the founders are also trying to run the business. The round closes slower, at a worse price, or not at all — and the reason is almost never the business itself.
Before anything: are you raising for the right reason, at the right time, and are you actually ready? We will tell you when the answer is no, which is not a popular service but it is the valuable one.
Then the work. Revenue policy fixed and documented before it is tested. Cap table rebuilt with every instrument, option and side letter in it, and dilution modeled across the scenarios so you understand what you are agreeing to. The model built to be interrogated, not admired. The data room assembled before the request list arrives — every diligence question we have seen before, already answered.
After the round, reporting on a fixed cadence, because the next raise is priced partly on how you behaved during this one.
Enter diligence knowing what they will find, because you found it. Model your own dilution before you negotiate. Answer an investor question the same day.
Capital markets specialists for the raise, the model and the data room
On the buy side, the model is built on the seller’s numbers and the adjustments are taken at face value. Earnings quality is assumed rather than tested, and the working capital target — which is where a meaningful part of the price actually moves — is negotiated by people who have not modeled it. On the sell side, the business goes to market with problems the owner has known about for years and hoped nobody would look for.
Buy side: a quality of earnings review that tests the adjustments rather than accepting them, working capital normalised over a proper cycle so the target is defensible, and the deal model built around what actually drives the return rather than the headline multiple. Then the hundred days after close, planned before signing.
Sell side: the diligence a buyer will run, run first, by us, against you. Whatever it finds gets fixed while there is time and no counterparty watching. Then the data room, the responses, and management prepared for the questions that will actually be asked.
Know what you are buying, including the parts the seller did not volunteer. Or go to market with nothing left to discover.
Transaction specialists for quality of earnings and diligence management
Owners find out what drives value eighteen months too late, in diligence. The business is profitable but structurally unsellable: the customer concentration is too high, the margins depend on relationships that leave with the founder, the numbers have never been audited, and every significant decision runs through one person. None of that is fixable in the six months before a sale. All of it is fixable in three years.
We assess the business the way an acquirer will, and quantify the gap: what it is worth now, what it would be worth with these specific things fixed, and how long each takes. Customer concentration, recurring versus repeat revenue, margin durability, key-person dependency, quality of the financial record.
Then we work the list in order of value per month of effort. And we address the dependency problem directly, including the finance function itself — a business where the CFO is irreplaceable has a discount attached to it, which is exactly why our own handover is documented from day one.
Know what your business is worth to a buyer rather than to you. Decide whether to sell now or in three years with an actual number attached to the difference.
Valuation and exit specialists for the buyer's view of your business
There is one blended gross margin and it is treated as a fact about the business. Underneath it, a third of the customers are subsidising the rest, and nobody knows which third, because overhead is allocated on revenue — which guarantees that the largest customer looks the most profitable regardless of what it costs to serve. Discount authority sits with sales, price increases have not been tested in years, and the answer to “should we take this deal” is decided on gut feel.
Margin is rebuilt bottom-up by product, customer, channel, site and job, with cost-to-serve allocated on what actually drives the cost — orders, deliveries, support hours, returns — rather than on revenue. This routinely reverses the ranking of the top ten customers, and that reversal is the single most useful piece of analysis we do.
Then pricing structure, discount discipline with authority set at amounts that reflect the margin at stake, and price testing where the elasticity is genuinely unknown. Unit economics tied back to the ledger so the model and the accounts agree.
Name the customers and lines that cost you money to keep. Decide a deal against a number. Take a price increase where the market will bear it and know where it will not.
Costing and pricing analysts for the bottom-up margin rebuild
Tax is something that happens after the year ends, which means every planning opportunity has already expired by the time anyone looks. The accountant is handed a trial balance in month four and asked to do their best. Incentives that the business qualified for — R&D credits, SR&ED, grants — are missed because nobody was tracking the qualifying activity while it was happening, and reconstructing it afterwards is expensive and unconvincing.
Tax moves to the front of the year rather than the end of it. Position understood quarterly, provision modeled with the assumptions written down, and the effective rate explained before it appears in the accounts.
On incentives, the qualifying work is captured as it happens — project records, time, technical narrative — so the claim file is built through the year and hands to your preparer complete. That is the difference between a claim that is filed and one that is defended.
Structure is reviewed whenever entities, states or provinces change, because the cost of getting that wrong compounds quietly.
Know your tax position before the year ends, while something can still be done about it. Claim what you are entitled to, with the evidence already assembled.
Tax specialists working alongside your own preparer
The group grew one entity at a time and the finance function never caught up. Two sets of books, two advisers, two charts of accounts, and a consolidation assembled by hand in a spreadsheet that one person understands. Intercompany balances have not agreed in four periods and the difference gets plugged. Currency translation is done at whatever rate was handy. The lender stops believing the consolidated numbers, which is the moment this becomes urgent.
One chart of accounts and one reporting currency, with every entity mapping into it consistently. Eliminations automated and traceable to source, so a consolidated number can be walked back to the transaction that created it.
Intercompany priced on purpose and documented — not because the auditor asks, but because an undocumented intercompany policy is a transfer pricing exposure sitting on the balance sheet. Currency exposure identified and, where it warrants it, hedged deliberately rather than by accident.
Local advisers in each jurisdiction stay. We coordinate across them and own the boundary in writing, so nobody is doing the same work twice and nothing falls between them.
Hand a consolidation to a lender without a covering explanation. Close the group in the same time as a single entity. Know where the currency exposure actually sits.
Cross-border specialists in each jurisdiction the group operates in
The finance team was hired reactively — a bookkeeper, then someone to help the bookkeeper — and its shape reflects the company from four years ago. Nobody is being developed, because nobody senior enough is there to develop them. Incentives are tied to measures the individual cannot move, which teaches people that the bonus is weather rather than consequence. And the whole function usually rests on one person who has never taken two consecutive weeks off.
The structure gets designed against the business you are becoming: which roles you need now, which you need at the next stage, and the order to hire in. The structure is built to stand on its own, and we say plainly which roles get you there.
Incentives are tied to measures the person actually controls, with the definitions written down in advance. Process gets documented as a condition of the work rather than a project that never happens — which is what makes a new hire productive in weeks instead of quarters.
Hire in the right order rather than the urgent one. Lose a key person without losing the function. Pay for outcomes people can genuinely move.
Compensation and finance recruitment specialists
Fraud risk is assessed by asking whether anyone seems dishonest. The real exposure is structural: one person who raises the supplier, approves the invoice and releases the payment; payroll that nobody independent reviews; inventory nobody counts. Insurance is renewed on last year’s schedule with an inflation uplift while the business has doubled and changed shape. And there is no plan for the week when cash genuinely runs short, so the decisions get made in a panic, in the wrong order.
We assess fraud risk where the money actually moves — payments, payroll, inventory, expenses, credit notes — and rank the gaps by exposure rather than by how easy they are to close.
Insurance is tested against real exposure: what the business would actually lose, not what the schedule says. Under-insurance and pointless cover are equally common and both cost money.
And we write the crisis plan before it is needed. If liquidity comes under real pressure: what gets paid, in what order, who is called, what is said to the bank, and at what trigger point. Agreed while everyone is calm, so nobody is inventing it at 6am.
Know your three largest fraud exposures and whether you are accepting them deliberately. Know your business is neither under- nor over-insured. Have a plan for the worst week, written before it arrives.
Risk, insurance and forensic specialists where an investigation is needed
Capital gets allocated to whoever argues best. Business cases are built to get approved rather than to be true — the revenue assumption is generous, the ramp is optimistic, and the ongoing cost is quietly left out. Nothing is ring-fenced, so an approved project competes for cash with payroll every month. And almost nobody goes back eighteen months later to ask what the last one actually returned, which means the same optimistic assumptions get used again.
Every request goes through the same appraisal, whatever its size: the cash it consumes, when it turns, what it returns against a hurdle that reflects your actual cost of capital, and what happens if the ramp takes twice as long. Lease against buy, build against acquire, and the option of doing nothing costed properly — because doing nothing is always available and rarely priced.
Approved projects are ring-fenced in the cash forecast so they stop competing with operations for the same money each month.
And every material investment gets a post-investment review at a fixed point after completion: what it cost, what it returned, and where the original case was wrong. Not to allocate blame, but because a business that reviews its last five decisions makes better sixth ones.
Rank competing projects against each other on the same basis. Say no to a proposal for a reason you can articulate. Know what your last three capital decisions actually returned.
Capital appraisal specialists for the hurdle rates and the post-investment review
Earnings have drifted down over several years and no single decision explains it. The cost base grew by accretion and nobody owns it — contracts auto-renew at an uplift because no one watches the renewal calendar, spend is scattered across suppliers doing overlapping things, and software seats are still being paid for people who left. When it gets tight, cost comes out in a hurry and in the wrong places, and the business is weaker afterwards in ways nobody intended.
First, stability. A crisis-protocol cash forecast rebuilt from receipts and payments, a payment prioritization framework, and a liquidity runway you can actually see. Where a facility needs amending or waiving, we model the amended terms before the conversation and bring your lender a plan rather than a problem — lenders refer work to us for exactly this reason.
Then earnings. A quantified profit improvement program: every initiative with a number, an owner and a date, ranked by value per month of effort. Overhead and supplier spend reviewed against benchmarks, a renewal calendar so every contract is negotiated on your timetable rather than the supplier’s, and underperforming lines, locations or accounts examined on their own numbers rather than by reputation.
Then the rebuild plan, with performance monitored against it. Where a situation needs insolvency counsel or a licensed trustee, we bring the right one in and work alongside them.
Know your runway to the week. Take cost out deliberately, in the right places, with a number against each move. Walk into a lender conversation with an amended-facility model already built.
Turnaround specialists, plus procurement for the supplier and contract work
Revenue is booked the way it has always been booked, on a basis that made sense internally and has never been written down. Leases sit in a spreadsheet. Options and SAFEs have never been tied back to the cap table. Then an auditor, a lender or a buyer applies the actual framework, and a policy question becomes a restatement, a price adjustment or a delayed close — usually at the worst possible moment.
We apply the correct framework to the transactions that carry judgement: revenue recognition under ASC 606 or IFRS 15 — performance obligations, standalone selling price, variable consideration, principal against agent — leases under ASC 842 or IFRS 16, stock compensation under ASC 718, and purchase price allocation on anything acquired.
Each position is written up as a memo an auditor can read and accept, before the audit rather than during it. Cash-to-accrual conversions, US GAAP against ASPE against IFRS, carve-out and standalone statements, consolidation and non-controlling interests, and the reserves that get challenged — bad debt, warranty, inventory, impairment.
We prepare the position and the evidence for it. Your auditor audits it, which is the correct order and the one that holds up.
Hand your auditor a written position instead of a conversation. Enter diligence with revenue booked on a basis that survives a policy review. Close an acquisition with an opening balance sheet that is already right.
Technical accounting specialists who write the memo your auditor will read
The board is a meeting rather than a governing body: no calendar, no standing papers, decisions taken verbally and remembered differently by different people. Shareholders outside the business hear nothing between accounts. Related-party arrangements exist on trust. And the delegated authorities — who can commit the company to what — have never been written down, which nobody notices until somebody commits it to something.
A governance calendar with standing papers, so every meeting has the same spine and decisions are recorded where they can be found. A written schedule of delegated authority: who approves what, to what limit, and who deputizes.
Related-party arrangements documented and priced on an arm’s-length basis before anyone external asks. Shareholder and family reporting on a fixed cadence for the people who own the business but do not run it, in a form they can read.
And the compliance calendar — filings, renewals, registrations, insurance and statutory obligations across every entity and jurisdiction — owned by one person with dates, instead of remembered by whoever remembered last year.
Run a board meeting that produces recorded decisions. Tell a shareholder what happened this quarter without assembling it from scratch. Know who can commit the company, to what, before it matters.
Governance specialists, and company secretarial support across every entity