Sell into the Cambridge life-science and clean-tech cluster, or trade on the estates north of the bypass, and your books take a particular shape: long payment terms, jobs straddling month ends, stock quoted at one price and delivered at another. I keep them monthly on a fixed fee and write the accounts that say what the work earned.
Book a 30-minute initial review →Royston is an unusual place to run a company. Administratively it is North Hertfordshire; economically it looks north. North Herts Council's own evidence base ties the town functionally to Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire, with limited supply-chain links to the rest of the district. The large employers north of the town reflect that: Johnson Matthey, headquartered on Orchard Road since the 1950s, recycling precious metal and developing Clean Air catalysts, with a hydrogen gigafactory announced there in 2022; and Sartorius, which builds cell culture and fermentation systems.
Around them sits the real client base: roughly 7,800 employee jobs in a town of about 17,700 people, in a district where just under 90% of enterprises employ fewer than ten. Precision engineers, calibration firms, instrument assemblers, contract packers, hauliers, validation consultancies — most selling into organisations hundreds of times their size.
That is the bargain Royston offers. Rent on the A505 estates is a fraction of Cambridge Science Park and the station puts Cambridge and King's Cross within direct reach. What you do not get is pricing power: your customer sets the terms, the purchase order wording, the quality-hold process and the rebate, and your accounts follow from that.
These turn a profitable second-tier supplier into one that cannot pay its own suppliers, and none of them are visible in accounts filed nine months late.
Sell to a large corporate and you are lending it money: invoiced on despatch, approved weeks later, paid the next month-end run, long after you paid materials and wages. The profit is real; the cash is not.
Larger buyers often self-bill, or hold your stock and pay on consumption. Both break a normal sales ledger: revenue on the wrong date, VAT in the wrong quarter, stock still yours but unrecorded.
A four-week build started on the 20th leaves labour, parts and subcontract in one month and the invoice in the next. With no WIP figure, month one shows a loss and month two a windfall.
If inputs move with a commodity index or a dollar rate, margin is set between quote and purchase. Realised margin per job against quoted margin shows within a month whether your quoting rules still work.
A rebate earned across twelve months but settled in one is a provision, not a surprise. Accrued monthly it is a small deduction; ignored, it lands as one credit note that wipes out a quarter.
Units on the Royston Gateway and the older estates carry service charges, rent reviews and a repairing obligation. Dilapidations belong in the accounts as the liability builds, not as a final-year shock.
Royston has two economies and they barely touch. North Herts Council's assessment is blunt: the industrial area is thriving and business-to-business, while the town centre is under pressure, with little relationship between the two. The town's Business Improvement District, renewed for a further five years, exists partly to close that gap.
A large share of Royston's working residents leave town to earn. For a High Street business that produces a week most accounting packages will happily hide: thin weekday daytimes, a concentrated evening and weekend peak, and a cost base of rent, rates, BID levy and rotas that does not flex to match. Accounts that lump it together say the month was down; accounts split by day pattern and covers say which shifts lose money. Rates and the levy come from North Hertfordshire while much of the trade comes from Cambridgeshire, so reliefs and levy periods want posting to the right period, not whenever the demand lands.
I am Peter Edwards, a CIMA-qualified Chartered Management Accountant (ACMA CGMA), twenty-five years in finance. Head of Finance at a pharmaceutical wholesaler through growth from £3m to £10m, at a £13m publishing group with an ecommerce arm, and at a £15m software company. Earlier, Responsible Financial Officer and Deputy Town Clerk at a town council.
The relevance is specific: pharmaceutical wholesaling is a long-term, rebate-heavy supply chain, the publishing group ran stock alongside a website, the software business ran on deferred income. Most Royston companies sit between those patterns.
I keep the client list small and do the work myself. No statutory audit, no personal tax beyond basic Self Assessment, no specialist tax advice — I say so when something needs a specialist.
The Quick Books Check asks seven things you already know. No logins, no exports. It ends in a verdict on whether your figures can carry a decision.
If the verdict is uncomfortable, we talk. Bring your biggest customer's payment terms and your longest open job.
Fee confirmed against the published tiers, catch-up quoted separately, Direct Debit set up, first clean month delivered. Issues raised in the month they happen.
Plainly: this is a remote monthly relationship. The practice is based in Northamptonshire with no office in Royston, so the work happens in your Xero or Sage and over a call, with a visit only when there is a reason for one.
Also working with businesses in Melbourn, Bassingbourn, Barley and Baldock. Related: manufacturing and engineering, management accounts, catch-up bookkeeping, Cambridge, Letchworth. See everywhere we work.
Seven questions, answered from memory. No logins, no exports. An honest verdict on your figures before we ask you for anything.
Run the free Quick Books Check → Or book a 30-minute initial review — currently accepting enquiries