07801199671

Tag: Clients

Case Study: AMZCO Construction

Posted on by Susie Kevern

AMZCO Construction specialises in building and maintaining anaerobic digestion plants. They work on a small number of complex, multi million pound projects meaning that it is vital that they have timely, reliable information to help keep control of the finances.

On these projects it is easy for costs to spiral out of control so accurate comparison of spend vs budget is essential. The directors couldn’t see how profitable different activities had been or compare actual performance to the detailed budgets drawn up prior to the build.

The accounting software they were using was complex difficult to maintain but it was not possible to change software immediately so some other solution had to be found. I worked with the admin team to make sure that the accounts were accurate and reliable. With good data we could then extract the detailed information required to show actual spend vs budget and explain the overall business performance.

Once pre-existing errors were corrected we were then able to migrate the accounting to QuickBooks at the start of the next financial year, making the bookkeeping much more efficient and the reporting easier and more accurate.

With clear and comprehensive reporting the directors could manage the business effectively. More importantly, information showing spend versus the original budget was vital information to improving pricing on future jobs.

Now we are continuing to work together so that they have access to the support they need as and when they need it.

Business manager Rachel said: “Susie created the reports we needed to keep track of the business and have control over our finances. She has been supportive and friendly, delivering QuickBooks training and designing new systems to suit our business. Knowing that she’s keeping an eye on the finances means we can get on with running the business.”

You can read more and download the case study here: Case Study: AMZCO Construction

Case Study: Ecocleen South West

Posted on by Susie Kevern

I was introduced to Ecocleen South West and the owner Jim Humphrey by his accountant in 2018. The business was growing exponentially but there was not enough information available to track profitability and manage cashflow.

Initially quarterly bookkeeping (in Xero) had been sufficient, but the business had grown to a point where more frequent and detailed monitoring was required. In addition to this Jim needed to be able to compare the profitability of different activities to his initial estimates. Most importantly, although the accounts tracked the expenses incurred there was no forecast of the effects of future sales growth on cashflow.

My first priority was to understand what was happening to the profit and cash generated by the business. An initial review revealed that the business was generating healthy levels of profit and was growing on sound footings.

While sales and profit were growing the timing of payments was putting a strain on cashflow. Improving credit control efforts was a quick and easy way to improve this. A 3 year forecast showed the impact of further growth on cashflow and indicated the level of finance required to give the business the life blood required to take advantage of new opportunities.

Armed with this cashflow forecast Jim secured the funding he required to smooth the challenges during 2019 and the business continues to grow. Now that he has good information he can compare actual performance to forecast and be aware of his future liabilities. In addition to this we identified key actions to reduce the financial impact of this growth, for example how best to sequence new projects to spread the cashflow change.

You can read and download the case study here: Case Study: Managing Cashflow

Case Study: Cooper Golding Ltd

Posted on by Susie Kevern

I have been working with Cooper Golding since 2018, supporting owner Paula Golby manage her growing business as she moved form strength to strength as a result of her focus on high quality, tailored recruitment services.

With multiple customers and revenue streams business management was proving a challenge and reliable information was hard to find. With sales were set to treble Paula contacted me looking for better information to show how her rapidly growing business was performing and better systems to manage operations.

They use Xero as their accounting system, which allows them easy access and maintenance of their accounts information. However, like many businesses enjoying high sales growth they were constantly investing in additional personnel, marketing and equipment.

Paula needed clear and detailed analysis to ensure that the decisions she was taking delivered the cashflow and profitability she expected.

It was crucial that the solution should be easy to use and scale up. The most appropriate solution was to improve the information that Xero reported and to create a simple structure of spreadsheets to allow the in-depth analysis required by the team.

With reports that allowed Paula and her team to see how they were driving growth they grew the business beyond expectation for 2018 while maintaining their high levels of customer service. As we continue to work together we now have the information we need to be able to assess proposed changes to the business and make better, faster decisions for the future.

You can download the case study here: Case Study: Supporting Business Growth

Make a Plan

Posted on by Susie Kevern

How do you make a plan for the rest of this year? If the last six months have taught us anything it’s that we can’t predict the next twist in the story. So is planning a pointless waste of time?

This is the (polite) argument that I’ve been engaged in this week while I was supposed to be working hard on other things. Granted, it’s difficult to see what the future will look like, but is planning still worthwhile?

My point is that actually we have never known what the future holds – the unknown is nothing new. What is hitting harder at the moment is the uncertainty; the range of potential outcomes that are theoretically possible and those that haven’t seemed possible up to this point. There’s also a big chunk of consequence; in many businesses there’s less margin for error now.

So in the current scenario I’m pushing to follow General Eisenhower’s dictum: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Without having devoted some quiet time to assess what we’d like the plan to be and, more importantly, what we’d like it to deliver we won’t have the right perspective to spot potential opportunities as they arise.

While it may take time, focus and some out of the box thinking, having a plan which you can adapt later remains the best way to order your thinking and prioritise action. And who knows, that preparation may put you in the position where you can see new opportunities arise out of the uncertainty!

Does my Business Plan need a Mission Statement?

Posted on by Susie Kevern

Mission statements are just corporate waffle, about “empowering”, “finding new paradigms” and “evangelising findings”. Right?

Recently I have been working in developing Business Plans with two (very different) clients. As part of my preparation for this I started working on my own Business Plan.

It has been about two years since I wrote my original plan. At that point I was just beginning – exploring what I wanted to do and trying to work out what my clients valued about the work I was doing for them.

So it was very vague in some ways, but it was specific in others. For example I knew, and wrote down that I wanted to limit my working hours to school hours, and then only during term time.

This has proved really valuable – when things were going badly I could remind myself what my original idea was and see that if I could pull it off it would be worth it.

Once or twice people suggested full time roles to me which would have been financially lucrative, but demand much more time. My written down business plan enabled me to compare those opportunities to my expectations and see if a job was something that was worth sacrificing my flexibility for. Clearly it wasn’t, or I wouldn’t be writing this now!

Over the course of the last year things have gradually fallen into place and so it seemed like a good time to refresh my business plan to fill in the gaps in the previous one, and set new targets for the next few years.

I have developed my own template for my clients’ Business Plans; a bit more personal and detailed than some of the generic internet ones but basically covering the same material. So, I worked through it and finally came to the mission statement (I think you should leave the Mission Statement to last, because sometimes it’s difficult to understand what’s important until you have focused deeply on what you want to achieve and how you’re going to do that.

Initially I thought that I might just write a sentence, but I have recently read “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” which extols the benefits of having a Mission Statement that means something to use as a guide to what really matters. So I really thought about it and lo and behold I settled on:

“I will help small businesses control their outcomes by taking the time to understand their practices and problems and by respecting their hard work and their trust in me. ”

This reflects my clients’ feedback on how they feel about the way I work, but most importantly I feel that if I can stay true to this I will be really proud of and fulfilled by what I do.

With a Business Plan that’s written down I have the ability to look back in one, two or even five years and see how the actual progress compared to my plan.

So, to answer my original question, I think my Business Plan is better for having a statement at the beginning that sums up, in one sentence, what it is that’s important to me and what I’m aiming for.