Monthly finance for Cambridge limited companies below the audit threshold. Income recognised in the right period, a runway figure a board can rely on, and a straight answer on the two things this practice does not do.
Book a 30-minute initial review →Research published for Cambridge Ahead in October 2025 counted more than 150 clusters within twenty miles of the city, holding over 100,000 employees across more than 4,000 companies. Those clusters now account for 77% of knowledge-intensive employment locally, up from 67% a decade earlier, and nine large life-science campuses, mostly south of the city, host over 230 companies between them.
That is the Cambridge Science Park off Milton Road, founded by Trinity College in 1970 beside junction 33 of the A14; St John's Innovation Park on Cowley Road; Granta Park at Great Abington; the Babraham Research Campus; and the Cambridge Biomedical Campus at Addenbrooke's. The realistic client base for a practice this size sits around them: instrumentation and electronics firms, contract research and lab-services businesses, software companies selling annual licences, and the consultancies and trading businesses that sell into all of them.
What they share is that the profit line is a poor summary of their position. Money arrives before it is earned; cost is incurred years before anything is sold. A company here can show a loss and be solvent, or a profit and nine months of cash.
These get posted wrongly, then sit in the accounts until someone looks. Every treatment is tied to FRS 102, FRS 105 or an HMRC rule.
An award banked in March is not March income. The conditions decide whether it is matched to the expenditure it funds or held in deferred income until met.
Contract research paid on milestones needs accrued and deferred income moving monthly. Posted on invoice date instead, margin swings for reasons nobody can explain.
A twelve-month licence invoiced up front is one month of revenue and eleven of deferred income. Across a growing subscription base, that gap is the most misread figure in the business.
Internally generated development costs qualify only where the FRS 102 criteria are genuinely met. We take a position, document it, apply it consistently.
No advice on scheme design or valuation. Handled: the share-based payment charge, PAYE and NIC on exercise, and the annual ERS return filed rather than missed.
Cash burn net of grant receipts, runway in months on the current cost base, and the point at which the next round or claim has to land.
An investor-backed company reports to people who were not there when the invoices were raised, which changes what the monthly pack must contain: cash reconciled to the bank, deferred and accrued income movements explained, headcount cost against plan, and runway with its assumptions beside it. Where there is a funding model, the accounts compare against that plan rather than last year. Variance against a plan nobody can tie back to the ledger is why board packs get quietly ignored.
No statutory or external audit. For periods beginning on or after 6 April 2025 a company is small where it meets two of three tests: turnover not above £15m, balance sheet total not above £7.5m, no more than 50 employees. But an audit can also be required by an investment agreement, a shareholder holding 10% or more, or group membership, whatever the size. If your articles require one, you need an audit firm. Where a company is already audited, this practice can still run the monthly numbers and prepare the file the auditor works from.
No R&D tax credit claims. Given where Cambridge companies spend their money this comes up constantly, and the answer is always the same: claims go to a specialist. What helps is upstream — project-coded time and cost, subcontractor and EPW spend kept separate, grant-funded expenditure identified so the subsidised-cost treatment is not guessed at.
Also out of scope: specialist tax advice, groups, capital gains, share valuations, personal tax beyond a basic Self Assessment. In scope: bookkeeping, VAT and MTD filing, management accounts, year-end accounts and the CT600 for small and micro-entity companies, and a virtual finance director arrangement where the need is judgement rather than processing.
I am Peter Edwards, a Chartered Management Accountant (ACMA CGMA) and CIMA Member in Practice, with twenty-five years in finance.
Head of Finance at a software company of around £15m turnover, where deferred revenue on annual contracts was the central reporting problem. Head of Finance at a pharmaceutical wholesaler taken from £3m to £10m, where regulated-sector margin discipline and stock-heavy working capital get learned. Head of Finance at a £13m publishing and media group with an ecommerce arm. Before that, Responsible Financial Officer at a town council: ring-fenced funds and conditions attached to public money, the same instinct a grant condition demands.
The trade-off is the honest one. A large Cambridge firm gives you departments, audit capability and specialist tax. This gives you one qualified person who knows your ledger.
Seven questions answered from memory. No logins, no exports. A verdict on whether the figures you report now can be relied on.
Free. Whether you are audited or heading there, what the funding conditions say, and whether the work is bookkeeping, reporting or a finance director role. If you need an audit firm, you hear it on that call.
Fixed fee, Direct Debit, and the grant and deferred income schedules built at the start rather than reconstructed at year end.
There is no office in Cambridge and none is claimed. The work runs on your existing Xero or Sage, and a monthly reporting relationship needs almost nothing that cannot be done that way. Where meeting properly matters — a first conversation, a board that wants a face, a difficult year end — the journey from Northamptonshire is straightforward, and the A14 and Cambridge North make the northern parks easier to reach than the city centre.
Also working with companies in Cambourne, Royston, St Ives and Ely. Nearby: St Neots, Huntingdon, Ely, Royston. See everywhere we work.
Seven questions you can answer from memory — no logins, no exports. An honest verdict on whether your figures can be relied on, before we ask you for anything.
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