Sound familiar

I've outgrown my bookkeeper

It worked when there were fewer transactions and simpler questions. Now the VAT returns are late, nobody is chasing debtors, and you are the backstop for anything that goes wrong.

The diagnosis

What this usually means.

This is a growth problem wearing a staffing costume, and it usually shows up in the same order. First the bookkeeping falls behind at month end. Then the VAT return goes in on the last possible day. Then credit control quietly stops happening, because it is the task with no deadline attached. Then you start answering questions you should not be answering.

Very often the person is perfectly good and the role has changed underneath them. A business doing £300,000 needs transactions recorded accurately. A business doing £1.5m needs someone who can produce a management pack, manage a cash position, handle a payroll of twenty, and tell you when something looks wrong. Those are different jobs, and the second one is expensive to hire and hard to keep.

The answer

What we would actually do.

The instinct is to recruit upwards — replace the bookkeeper with a management accountant, or add a financial controller. Sometimes that is right. Often it is expensive, slow, and leaves you exposed to a single person's holiday, illness and eventual resignation.

The alternative is to take the whole function outside. Bookkeeping, payroll, management accounts and finance direction as a service rather than as four employment contracts, with no recruitment, no cover problem and no single point of failure. That is what the Finance Partner service is, and there is a calculator on that page comparing it honestly against what the salaries would actually cost once National Insurance and pension are added.

It is not always the cheaper answer, and where it is not we will tell you.

Half an hour, no charge, no obligation.

Tell us what is going on and we will tell you what we would do about it. If the answer is that you should stay where you are, we will say that too.