Finance
The dollars! It’s what gets things done, but can also be what gets you in trouble. And no one likes to lose sleep over dollars.
There are many bookkeepers, tax accountants and financial advisors who can guide and assist you to make decisions based often purely on the numbers. We differ to these advisors – our financial and management accounting experience ‘in’ business means we understand that sometimes it isn’t just about the numbers alone.
What sets us apart is our drive to develop your business in how it manages and views its financial resources:
- the importance of robust financial management frameworks and systems to protect your business as best any system can from unethical conduct;
- ensures the business’ money is spent as it is intended;
- systems provide decision makers with adequate information upon which to base decisions and promote probity, transparency and accountability; and
- an appropriate level of oversight is maintained
Financial Management Frameworks
Financial management internal controls are an integral process in providing a reasonable level of assurance of an organisation’s ability to achieve their objectives in:
- ensuring a culture of ethical use of monetary resources;
- operational effectiveness and efficiency;
- reliable financial information;
- compliance with laws and regulations; and
- mitigating the risk exposure of a business, particularly from loss, theft or fraud.
Internal control frameworks provide a point of reference or set of parameters against which to measure business decisions. This minimises the risk of ‘personalities’ by providing for consistency in decision making, clearly outlines responsibilities and accountabilities, demonstrates fairness and transparency and provides for the protection of the business’ most vital resource – money.
We can assist you to strengthen your financial management framework to ensure best practice governance and compliance by:
- Undertaking a full control environment assessment and gap analysis, including separation of duties, access controls, documentation, financial reconciliation and subsequent review and authorization processes and reporting mechanisms;
- Make recommendations for improvements to the current financial management framework;
- Review or develop, implement and monitor, best practice financial (and any corresponding general business management/administration) policies and procedures;
- Develop templates, forms and guidance documents and deliver training to staff; and
- Respond to areas of non-compliance or recommendations for improvement as identified by internal or external auditors or reviews.
Accounting & Costing Systems
Underpinning effective monitoring of your business’ financial performance and the decision-making process is the provision of quality information – financial and non-financial.
The most important financial information needed in the process of a business decision comes from the business’ accounting and costing systems.
It is therefore important that these systems are tailored to your business and its operations to give you reliable, relevant and accurate information upon which to base your decisions and maintain appropriate oversight of the business’ performance.
We can assist you with this process through:
- Selection and implementation, or conversion of, your accounting software package and chart of accounts;
- Development and implementation or revisions to your cost coding methodologies;
- Review of current financial and cost coding practices and recommendations for improvements;
- Reviewing or developing and implementing asset management protocols and registers;
- Working with your staff or service providers to ensure any changes to your accounting and costing systems are understood and implemented.
Financial Management Support
At times, your business may need the assistance of an experienced financial manager without the expense of a full time or even part time chief financial officer or financial controller.
Outsourcing this function to us means we can provide you with the necessary expertise and experience to a level of participation that suits your needs – ad hoc, periodically or for a specific purpose project.
We can assist you by:
- Assisting with financial transaction processing, general ledger reconciliations and reporting and managing the business’ accounts, including statutory lodgments;
- Independent oversight function of current staff or external service providers financial transaction processing and reconciliations;
- Review of current reporting to decision maker mechanisms and recommendations for improvements;
- Development of standardized processing, reconciliation and reporting frameworks and timeframes;
- Preparation of files for external accountants/auditors;
- Review of staff capabilities, delivering training in best practice financial administration, reconciliation and reporting mechanisms, setting key performance indicators for staff and working with them to understand their role in the business cycle;
- Independent directorships.
We love, and are very good, at fixing things and are highly skilled at diagnostic and corrective general ledger reviews and reconciliations. So, if your business has fallen a bit behind in keeping your accounts up to date and you don’t have an accurate picture of the current performance and position of your business and you just need to get it fixed, we are the people for you. Let us at it!
Funding
The ever-present concern, particularly in the not-for-profit space – do we have enough money to do what we want to do?
Planning and careful consideration is necessary to ongoing survival.
We can assist you to:
- Identify funding opportunities, prepare budgets and applications, and if successful report and acquit any funding;
- Review current expenses and recommend cost minimization strategies;
- Assist in the negotiation of service contracts;
- Procurement and assistance with leasing and finance arrangements;
- Ensuring debt reporting obligations are met;
- Prepare budgets and forecasts that support delivery of your strategic and operational plans within the confines of your financial position.