Do You Want The
Proven Financial Skills and Advice
Available To Big Businesses
At A Fraction Of The Cost?

Are you unhappy with the way your relationship is working with your current accountants in the Yorkshire?

Do you feel that you need a more proactive or better service than your accountants seem to be able to provide?

If you have a business based in the Yorkshire:

• but you are not yet able to justify the cost of recruiting your own internal qualified accountant or Finance Director
• but you need more financial support and advice than you are getting from your firm of traditional accountants,
• we have just the solution for you.

There are a growing number of qualified accountants with years of senior management experience in big companies who now work on a self employed basis, each helping a small number of small businesses control and improve their business finances.

To help distinguish this special service, these accountants are often called Part Time Finance Directors or Virtual Finance Directors but that doesn't really explain what they are or what they do.

Each will bring many years of experience of working in companies and a focused attention on profit and cash that you probably haven't experienced before.

And the best bit?

Pareto's 80/20 rule says that invariably 20% of someone's efforts produces 80% of their results.

So you may only need somebody for a few days a month to get most of the benefits of having your own full time Finance Director, and because it's on an "as and when needed" basis the costs are lower and you can afford to use a very high calibre person who traditionally has not been available to the smaller businesses.

Our service also works well if you are finding trading tough and you are having to reduce your headcount. In these turnaround situations, the need for strong and effective financial control is essential but again, you may not need a full time FD so why carry the extra cost?

It's also very suitable for businesses that are particularly complicated, have large contracts that create feast or famine or a business that is seasonal.

Particularly for the complicated business, it is very easy for a small number of key drivers to change by small proportions without being noticed. But those small changes could have a devastating effect on a company's profits.

On our monthly financial review page I show the incredible effect that a 1% improvement in selling prices, sales volumes and costs can have on a company's profit but also make the point that it works the other way around as well.

That's because profit is the difference between two much bigger numbers - your revenue and costs but your virtual or part time FD will put in systems to make sure that these changes are highlighted.

Other businesses are unpredictable. Last month is not a good guide to this month or next month and again this increases the need for effective financial planning and control.

The assumption is that you make your profits during the busy times, but what if you don't? What if you are busy because you've been forced to cut your prices to the bone?

That's why this virtual, flexible FD role can be so important to a growing business and why many business owners believe that the service often provided by traditional accountancy firms, based on late information with little proactive advice is needs to be supplemented.

That's not intended to be a criticism of the accountancy firms. Most do an excellent job of preparing annual accounts, completing tax returns and providing tax advice. But they are not designed for providing this type of advice. They may try but from what I've seen often it's an attempt using young inexperienced accountants who can't give you the all round business finance advice that you are likely to need.

To help you find these special people we have created a register of Finance Directors and this includes highly experienced qualified accountants in the Yorkshire area.

Yorkshire & Teeside - David Bradley BSc FCA. Chartered Accountant who qualified with PWC in 1980. Experienced and skilled all-round financial manager. Not a bean-counter. Focused on profit and cash. Experienced in information technology. More details.

Contact David by emailing him at david.bradley@plancs.co.uk

Are you making these finance mistakes that could be costing you a fortune?

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Major cities and towns in Yorkshire include Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, York, Rotherham, Doncaster, Barnsley, Wakefield

Last updated 2007-07-06