Figures that survive a tender, a project crossing a year end, an accreditation bill nobody costed. Monthly numbers for Huntingdon's defence, public-sector and engineering suppliers, by a Chartered Management Accountant. Four fixed tiers, from £95 + VAT.
Arrange a half-hour review, no charge →RAF Wyton, two miles out of town, no longer flies anything. It houses the National Centre for Geospatial Intelligence, Defence Intelligence functions, the MOD Police headquarters and 42 Engineer Regiment (Geographic). With Alconbury and Molesworth, that is three defence sites inside ten miles.
That is now explicit policy. The district council and the Ministry of Defence signed a Statement of Intent in December 2024, and by June 2026 the partnership behind the Huntingdonshire Defence Cluster and Project FAIRFAX had widened to include the Combined Authority and Urban&Civic.
The client base sits well beneath that: a forty-person engineering business on Stukeley Meadows, a fabricator off Ermine Street, an IT firm with clearances and eleven staff. Huntingdonshire has over seven thousand businesses, the average employing fewer than ten people, and only twenty-four large employers district-wide.
A selection questionnaire wants two filed years, turnover against the contract value, a liquidity ratio, insurance limits and a declaration that nothing has changed. With records eight months stale you cannot answer honestly, so the bid goes in soft.
A twenty-month project, milestone billing unrelated to delivery, retention held back, a variation agreed in February and papered in July. Recognise it when the invoice goes out and profit is wrong in both years, with the Corporation Tax behind it. Accrued income where delivery leads billing, deferred where it lags: monthly it is housekeeping, annually a restatement.
Cyber Essentials Plus, ISO 9001, 14001 and 27001, laboratory accreditation, JOSCAR registration, clearances, annual surveillance audits. In most small ledgers these scatter across sundries and subscriptions. Gathered up they are often the third largest cost in the business, and the entry fee for the only customers worth having.
Thirty days from a valid invoice becomes ninety from the work when the portal rejects the submission twice or the approving officer moves post. Payroll goes out regardless. A thirteen-week cash view built on how a customer really pays separates a funded order book from a dangerous one. See credit control.
The Alconbury Enterprise Campus has run as a government-backed Enterprise Zone with a full business rates discount, alongside Urban&Civic's Mid-Tech cluster. Rates relief, innovation grants and contributions in kind are not trading income and must not flatter a bid ratio. Recorded apart, the trading figure is the one a buyer sees.
This is a manufacturing district first: the council's growth plan puts manufacturing above 12,300 jobs, more than a fifth of the workforce. Encocam Ltd, a Huntingdon engineer making crash test barriers and aluminium honeycomb, bought the former iMET building at Alconbury Weald in 2022 as its head office.
Beneath them sit the machine shops and instrument builders, whose difficulty is work in progress: a job quoted on estimated hours, material bought against it, labour booked loosely, one invoice at the end. The owner knows the year made money, not which jobs did. Job costing fixes that, and is a rare case for keeping Sage 200 over Xero.
Out past Hartford and Brampton the land takes over, and agri-food is serious here: seven of the district's top twenty-five employers, on the council's reckoning. The issue is tempo. A defence contract pays late but predictably. A harvest pays once, in a lump, against inputs bought nine months earlier, and a grain store of unsold wheat is stock at the year end whether anyone values it. One business holding both runs two cash cycles that never align.
The £1.5bn Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement added a 12-mile bypass south of the town and finished in May 2020, eight months early; the 45-year-old viaduct came down and the old trunk route reverted to local road. Hauliers gained reliable run times to Felixstowe. Everyone else gained something subtler: the town stopped being a place freight sat still in, which is why the land north of it is being developed now and not a decade ago.
Four tiers, fixed, by Direct Debit, agreed in writing. Essentials, £95 + VAT monthly: bookkeeping and VAT. Essentials + Books, £195 + VAT monthly, adds statutory accounts and the CT600. Managed, £395 + VAT monthly, adds management accounts. Finance Director, £1,250 + VAT monthly. Overdue years, £450 + VAT each.
Two exclusions, stated plainly: statutory and external audit, and specialist tax advice. An award demanding audited accounts needs an audit firm alongside this practice, and you will hear that early rather than at the deadline. Full pricing online.
There is no office in the town and no local client list is implied here. This is a Northamptonshire practice working inside your existing Xero or Sage, which is why no town-centre lease reaches your fee. Huntingdon is a short run along the rebuilt A14 when meeting matters.
Peter Edwards ACMA CGMA — Chartered Management Accountant, CIMA Member in Practice, twenty-five years in finance. Finance lead at a pharmaceutical wholesaler through growth from £3m to £10m, then a £13m publishing and media group, then a £15m software business. Before that, Responsible Financial Officer and Deputy Town Clerk at a town council, where the public-sector half of this comes from. No juniors, nothing offshored.
Also Godmanchester, St Ives, Alconbury and Ramsey. Nearby: St Neots, Peterborough, Cambridge, Ely, March. See everywhere we work.
Seven questions, answerable off the top of your head. Nothing to log into, and a straight assessment of whether your figures would survive being asked for.
Run the free Quick Books Check → Or arrange half an hour