Hawkins Insolvency - Leigh Lawry Accountancy

The Challenge

To provide financial information to help the company directors make informed decisions on a timely basis.

Background

The company had been operating without any real time financial systems in place. The directors run the company based on their knowledge and experience rather than detailed budgets and actual cash flows. As the company was growing, there was a need to implement robust accounting systems which would record sales and expenditure, while also creating detailed budgets for use in a Profit and Loss account. This information had to be available as soon as possible after month end, using their existing software capabilities (i.e. Microsoft Excel)

Approach

Understand current systems and resource used to capture and process financial transactions
Understand the different types of income and expenditure
Understand their Excel skill levels
Explore the required report format and timelines
Analyse previous records
Develop standard templates, ledgers and P&L account
Create a budget (utilising month and year to date functionality)
Automate functionality as far as possible

Outcome

Up to date financial information available to the directors
P&L with month and year to date performance against budget used routinely
Analysis of debtors, outstanding balances and due dates of payment available
Creditor balances, and spend by supplier available
Bank reconciliation included to verify accuracy of records

Benefit

Financial performance available on 1st working day of the month
Improved performance through routine monitoring of actual v budget
Customer spend analysis enhances profitable work to be sought
Expenditure analysis enables future business improvement opportunities to be identified
Enhanced product costing information available
Improved budgeting process