Bookkeeping and Management Accounts

Good decisions start with good records. If your bookkeeping is up to date and accurate, everything else gets easier: your year-end accounts, your tax, your conversations with the bank, and above all your own sense of how the business is doing. If it is not, you end up running the business on the bank balance and a gut feeling.

We look after both halves. We keep your books accurate and up to date, and we turn them into management accounts you will actually read.

What is included

• Bookkeeping in Xero, Sage and QuickBooks
• Monthly or quarterly management accounts
• Board reporting
• KPI tracking across financial and non-financial measures

Bookkeeping in Xero, Sage and QuickBooks

We work in the software you already use, or help you choose one if you are still on spreadsheets. Sales and purchase invoices, bank reconciliations, supplier bills, expenses and the rest are recorded properly and kept current, not left to pile up until the end of the year.

Keeping the records in cloud accounting software means you can see the same numbers we can, at any time, and it takes a great deal of paper and chasing out of your week. Where it helps, we set up bank feeds, receipt capture and simple rules so that routine transactions take care of themselves and the time goes on the things that need a person.

Management accounts you will actually read

Management accounts are a regular, short report on how the business is really performing. Ours are built around the questions an owner actually asks:

• Are we making money, and is it more or less than last month?
• Where is the cash going, and what is coming up?
• Which parts of the business are doing well, and which are not?
• Are we on track against the budget?

Each pack includes the profit and loss, the balance sheet and a cashflow view, with a plain-English commentary on what has changed and why. We walk you through it rather than emailing it over and hoping for the best.

Monthly suits most growing businesses, because problems show up while there is still time to do something about them. Quarterly can be enough for a smaller or steadier business.

Board reporting

If you have a board, shareholders or investors, they will want to see the same core numbers in a consistent form each time. We prepare board reporting that brings the numbers, the commentary and the decisions that need making together in one place. When a business needs more than reporting, such as forecasting, funding support or a finance lead in the room, our fractional and part-time finance director service builds on these accounts and board packs.

KPI tracking across financial and non-financial measures

Most businesses earn money in more than one way: products and services, several locations, retainers and one-off projects. When the figures are lumped together, they can hide a stream that is quietly losing money. Financial results also only tell you what has already happened. The early warnings usually show up first in the non-financial measures: customer retention, staff utilisation, delivery times, pipeline.

We split your results so you can see the true margin on each revenue stream, location or service line. We then agree a focused set of financial and operational KPIs with you, and track them every month so you know whether the business is on course and where to act.

• Profitability: gross and net margin by product, service, location or client
• Cash and working capital: cash conversion, debtor and creditor days, stock turn
• Growth and revenue quality: recurring vs one-off income, revenue per client, pipeline value
• Operational performance: staff utilisation, productivity, capacity, delivery against target
• Customer measures: retention, churn, acquisition cost and customer lifetime value
• Reporting: a concise monthly KPI dashboard with targets, trends and early-warning flags, built to sit alongside your management accounts and Board packs

For a professional practice in the USA, Omar ran a margin analysis across the different revenue streams the practice generates and built a management reporting pack that tracks its KPIs, so the owner could see clearly how the practice was performing against them. You can read the client's own words on our reviews page.

Who does the work

Your management accounts are prepared under Omar's supervision and thoroughly reviewed by him. Omar Ahmed Khan ACA is an ICAEW Chartered Accountant who spent years preparing and reviewing board-level reporting for large organisations, including at Deloitte, one of the Big 4. The point of CrestWell is to give smaller businesses that same quality of reporting. You deal with Omar directly, and he explains the numbers in plain, simple English.

Who this is for

This service suits owner-managed businesses that have outgrown doing the books themselves, businesses whose records are behind or unreliable, and businesses that have a bookkeeper but no one turning the records into useful information. It is especially valuable where there is more than one revenue stream to keep track of.

Getting started

1. A free consultation, to understand your business and how your records are kept today.
2. A review of where things stand. If the books are behind, we tell you honestly how much catching up is needed.
3. An agreed routine. What we do, how often, and when you will receive your management accounts, agreed in writing before we start.
4. Regular reporting, with a conversation about what the numbers mean.

We are based in Crawley and work with businesses across Crawley, East Grinstead, Horsham, Haywards Heath and Horley, and with clients across the UK and abroad, travelling for the meetings that matter.