Stage one · Foundation
Get the numbers working properly.
Before you can understand the business or plan its future, the finance system itself has to be trustworthy — the right chart of accounts, the right structure, the right process. Automation is part of that. It is not the point of it.
Hours returned to the finance function.
Four manual handoffs replaced by one connected flow. The month-end task list shrinks, and reporting stops depending on one person and one spreadsheet.
Exhibit 01
Illustrative exampleManual handoffs, removed
How much of month-end is moving numbers rather than understanding them?
Why are we still doing this by hand?
Illustrative example| Each month | Now | After |
|---|---|---|
| Collecting and re-keying data | 9 hrs | 0 hrs |
| Building the management pack | 11 hrs | 1 hr |
| Chasing approvals | 4 hrs | 1 hr |
| Reconciling versions | 6 hrs | 0 hrs |
Around 28 hours a month goes back to the finance team — and reporting stops depending on one person.
Roughly 28 hours a month returned — and the close no longer sits with one person.
The system, before the reporting.
We start with the system you already own. A chart of accounts and tracking structure that matches how the business is run, data quality that can be relied on, and integrations that remove re-keying — then automation wherever it earns its place.
Common signs
- A chart of accounts nobody quite trusts
- No tracking categories, so reporting by department or job is guesswork
- Month-end that depends on one person being available
- The same numbers re-keyed into two or three places
- 01
System review
Xero, QuickBooks or Sage assessed against what the business actually needs to know.
- 02
Chart of accounts
Rebuilt around how the business is managed, not how it happened to grow.
- 03
Tracking & dimensions
Departments, jobs, locations or products set up so they can be reported on.
- 04
Month-end process
A documented close, with automation applied wherever it removes manual steps.
A finance system built to be reported on.
Delivered
- A chart of accounts and tracking structure fit for management reporting
- Connected data flows between existing systems
- Automated reconciliation and validation checks
- A documented month-end process, owned by the team
What changes
- Reporting arrives in days, not weeks
- Numbers are trusted, not double-checked
- Finance time moves from collection to analysis
- Key-person risk materially reduced
Next
Once the foundation is trustworthy, the next question is what the numbers actually tell you about the business.