Finance Director level work for research-led and venture-backed companies around Cambridge: runway, burn, grant and licence revenue, covenant reporting. By a Chartered Management Accountant who has run cash and treasury through a restructuring.
Book a 30-minute initial review →The Cambridge cluster raised roughly $2.09bn of venture capital in 2025 on Business Weekly's count, about $1.19bn into technology and $897m into life sciences. Cambridge Ahead puts over 4,000 companies across the science and innovation parks.
Those numbers are not the client. The client is one company inside them: twelve to forty people, a lease on a park unit, a priced round behind it or a grant programme running, and a founder for whom finance has become a second job. The bookkeeping is usually fine; the layer above it is missing.
Cash divided by last month's outflow is not runway. Runway is built from committed spend, the hiring plan actually signed off, grant receipts on their real claim dates, VAT and PAYE as they fall due, and equipment already ordered. Built that way it moves when a decision is made, which is the point.
Grant funding does not behave like a sales invoice. Under FRS 102 a government grant is recognised either as performance conditions are met or across the periods the related costs are incurred, depending on the model adopted. Draw a tranche in March for work running to September, recognise it on receipt, and the quarter looks profitable for reasons unconnected to trading.
For periods beginning on or after 1 January 2026, revised Section 23 of FRS 102 brings in a five-step model: identify the contract and the performance obligations, set the transaction price, allocate it, recognise revenue as each obligation is satisfied. For a company selling twelve-month licences, support alongside a licence, or development billed against milestones, that changes where revenue lands. Better worked through before the first affected year end.
The same FRS 102 review puts most lessee leases on the balance sheet as a right-of-use asset and a lease liability, the cost appearing as depreciation and interest rather than rent. Leases of twelve months or less and genuinely low-value assets stay off; property is not low value. For a company holding lab or office space on a park lease that changes EBITDA and net debt, and so can change a covenant written when the lease was rent.
Priced rounds carry reporting schedules: monthly accounts within a set number of working days, a board pack before each meeting, budget approval, consent thresholds above which spend needs sign-off, sometimes covenants on venture debt. Contractual, read once at completion, and usually where an investor relations problem started. A dated calendar prevents that.
For financial years beginning on or after 6 April 2025 the small company thresholds rose to turnover of £15m and a balance sheet total of £7.5m, the fifty-employee test unchanged, two of three to be met. Exemption also falls away for reasons unrelated to size, including where shareholders holding 10% or more require an audit, and for certain group companies. So a funded company can need an audit while still looking small — better seen a year out than in month ten.
No audit. None done here, and no auditable company taken on as an audit client. Many investor-backed companies do need an auditor — through the thresholds, a group relationship, or an investor demanding one. Where that is so, the job here is making the audit quick and cheap: reconciled balances, a documented revenue policy, support for grant income, a fixed asset register that ties.
No R&D tax credit claims. For a research-led company the claim is material and belongs with a specialist. The job here is records that can support one: project cost capture, staff time allocation, subcontract and consumable spend identified in the ledger rather than reconstructed afterwards.
No specialist tax advice. Option schemes, EIS and SEIS compliance, group reorganisations and the structuring around a round are referred out.
The tiers below are published and cost far less: Essentials at £95 + VAT a month for bookkeeping and VAT, Essentials + Books at £195 + VAT adding the year end and CT600, Managed at £395 + VAT adding monthly management accounts, and overdue years cleared at £450 + VAT each through catch-up bookkeeping. A pre-revenue company burning grant money usually belongs there. See prices and the Virtual FD service.
Peter Edwards ACMA CGMA, personally: a Chartered Management Accountant and CIMA Member in Practice, 25 years in finance. The credential that matters here is Head of Finance at a £15m software company, running cash and treasury through a restructuring — forecasting weekly against a cash position that had to be right, for stakeholders who checked. Also Head of Finance at a pharmaceutical wholesaler growing from £3m to £10m, and at a £13m publishing group with an ecommerce arm, and earlier a town council's Responsible Financial Officer. No junior, no offshore team.
The practice is in Northamptonshire, not Cambridge, and there is no local office. For monthly work on your existing Xero or Sage that costs nothing and keeps a Cambridge lease out of the fee. Board meetings are attended in person where the role requires it. Bookkeeping-tier work locally: Cambridge, Ely, Royston, Huntingdon.
Seven questions, answered from memory. No logins, no exports, and a straight verdict on whether the figures underneath the board pack can be relied on.
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