To help you get to grips with your business’ finances, we’ve broken down the differences between annual accounts and advisory services. We also explain why our advisory services can make your life easier through straight-forward advice that will better your business.
Annual accounts are required to be produced by Companies House, the UK government’s registrar. As such, they are produced to a certain specification that is prescribed by law, which means they have limited usefulness in relation to analysing data. They lack detail, are only produced annually, and they provide no explanation on the finances.
What, when and why?
The less detail we have, the fewer questions we can answer. Annual accounts may visualise that sales were up by £10,000, but when? What sales category? What specific items were sold? And did these additional sales actually generate increased profit?
Advisory services answer the “why” behind the figures – from here, we can create a strategy. If we see that sales have grown but profits have reduced, we ask why? By finding the values that have increased, we can implement a strategy to focus on other sales lines or find a new supplier with lower costs.
Less isn’t always more
The problem with annual accounts is we’re reviewing historic data – a year is a long time, when you think about it. For example, there could have been issues in month one that have accumulated and reduced profit for the year or caused cash flow issues. Our advisory services can identify this potential problem, enabling us to work with you to solve it.
Reviewing once at the end of the year or up to nine months the following year doesn’t give any time to react to a situation. Instead, analysing your finances on a frequent basis allows us to take advantage of any opportunities and mitigate any risks, leading to more sales, greater profits and improved cash flow.
Summarising the important information
Annual accounts aren’t typically analysed by your accountant, so there is no commentary to explain the figures. This poses a problem – finding the time to understand them yourself as well as comprehending the numbers is a minefield!
Our advisory packages provide commentary to every client. We take the time to learn your business, and when combined with our extensive management account experience and reporting software, we can consolidate your finances and report this information back to you.
We identify risks and opportunities, hold you accountable and work with you to move forward, leaving you to focus on what you do best – running the business, focusing on strategy and making more sales.
Effective information made clear
Annual accounts are of little use to create a strategy or analyse your business performance. With consultive assistance, we provide profit and loss analysis, cash flow, breakeven and balance sheet analysis, eliminating the stress of dealing with the finances and communicating this information back to you.
Get a free consultation
We’re offering a free one-hour consultation where we can discuss your business concerns and provide vital insight. These meetings can include, but are not limited to:
- Strategic advice
- Budgets and forecasting
- Data analysis
- Financial modelling
- Cash flow queries
- Further details on how we can help you grow
To find out more and arrange an appointment, contact our team by calling 01242 260590.