A monthly read on how the business is actually performing — profit and loss, balance sheet, cash forecast, the numbers that matter to you, and a written explanation of what changed and why. By the 15th, every month.
Book a 30-minute review →Most owner-managed businesses see their numbers once, ten months after the year has ended, in a format designed for Companies House. By then the decisions that mattered — the hire, the price increase, the machine — have already been made on instinct.
Management accounts close that gap. But only if two things are true: they arrive quickly, and they can be relied on.
Plenty of businesses already receive something called management accounts and still don't use them. Almost always for the same handful of reasons.
The quarterly electricity bill lands entirely in one month. That month looks terrible; the two before it looked better than they were. Nothing is comparable to anything.
Annual insurance charged to January, so eleven months understate costs and January is a false picture.
A deposit for work not yet done counted as income. Profit overstated now, understated later, and potentially tax paid on money not yet earned.
Purchases straight to cost of sales whether or not anything was used. Each month's profit then measures what you bought rather than what you sold — which is why margin appears to swing wildly for no reason.
A spreadsheet of figures with no explanation. Read once, never again.
| Component | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Profit & loss | The month, against last month, the same month last year, and budget where one exists. The trend matters more than the number |
| Balance sheet | Debtors, creditors, stock and cash. Where problems appear months before they reach the P&L |
| Cash position & forecast | Where cash is now and a 13-week rolling forward view. Profit is not cash |
| KPI dashboard | The three to six numbers that actually drive your business — not a generic template |
| Written commentary | What moved, why, and what to do about it. In plain English |
| Variance analysis | Actual against budget, with the reasons — where a budget exists |
Where a business reports to a board, investors, a bank or a funder, the same monthly work can be formatted for that reader instead — headline commentary, performance against plan, cash and forecast, and the specific covenants or metrics they care about.
It's the same underlying preparation presented differently, which means it costs far less than commissioning a separate exercise, and it means the board sees the same numbers you do.
By the 15th of the following month. Speed beats precision here, which surprises people — figures that are broadly right on the tenth are worth more than perfect figures on the twenty-eighth, because by then you're reading about a month that ended seven weeks ago.
Peter Edwards ACMA CGMA — a Chartered Management Accountant and CIMA Member in Practice, personally. Not a junior, not offshore, not a template.
That matters because the judgement calls in management accounting aren't mechanical. Deciding what to accrue, how to value work in progress, whether revenue belongs in this month or next — these are the things that determine whether the numbers mean anything, and they need someone who has produced board packs and defended the figures in front of a board.
Quoted as a fixed monthly fee after a free initial review — not before. What drives it is transaction volume, the number of accounts and entities, how much analysis you want, and above all whether the underlying bookkeeping is already right. Management accounts built on records that need fixing first are a different job from ones built on clean records, and quoting without seeing which you have produces a number that changes later.
Where we also do the bookkeeping, the incremental cost is much lower, because the monthly adjustments are being made anyway.
The practical test: could you state last month's gross margin to within ten percent? If not, you're flying without instruments.
More on the subject in the guide: what are management accounts.
Delivered on your existing Xero, or on Sage 50 or Sage 200. Based in Northamptonshire, working across the surrounding counties in person, and remotely nationwide.
Management accounts are only as good as the bookkeeping underneath them. Seven questions you can answer from memory — no logins, no exports — and an honest verdict on whether your figures can be relied on.
Run the free Books Check → Or book a 30-minute review