Margin by contract, not one blended gross margin. A cash forecast built on when customers actually pay. The buy-or-lease arithmetic on plant. The Finance Director tier is £1,250 + VAT a month, from a practice whose own county this is.
Book a 30-minute initial review →This is the county the practice is actually run from, which has two mundane consequences worth more than the claim. A site visit to Corby, Northampton, Kettering or Towcester costs an hour rather than a day, so the first conversation and the awkward year end happen in person without being built into a fee. And the administrative map is already understood: the county council was replaced by two unitary authorities, North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire, on 1 April 2021 under the Northamptonshire (Structural Changes) Order 2020. Rates, planning and public-sector tendering run through whichever covers your unit. No street address is published here, because nothing useful happens at one, and the work runs on your existing Xero or Sage.
The ledger usually balances. What is missing is anyone whose job is turning it into a decision.
Work at 4% and work at 22% average out to something comfortable, and that average is why the 4% contract gets renewed. It takes tracking categories set up properly, overhead allocated defensibly, and revenue landed in the month it was earned. Then walking away from work is arithmetic rather than nerve.
Quotes get matched to whatever the last customer paid and nobody recalculates the cost base. Knowing the floor price on each line of work, what a 5% rise does to volume and profit, and which customers sit below the cost of serving them is the fastest profit available at this size.
Sit between large retailers and small suppliers and you fund the gap personally. Stated terms are irrelevant; behaviour is measurable. A rolling 13-week forecast built debtor by debtor on payment history shows which week is tight, early enough to chase, stage a payment or draw a facility deliberately. Where the ageing is the real problem, credit control is separate work.
The answer moves with the capital allowance position, the cash forecast and how long the asset really lasts. Hire purchase puts the asset and a matching liability on the balance sheet with only interest hitting profit; contract hire is an operating cost. On the bank statement they look identical. Across a replacement programme it shifts taxable profit, net assets and covenant headroom.
Funding stalls on the same things: no current management accounts, a forecast that does not reconcile to the balance sheet, no commentary on variances, assumptions nobody can source. Profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow that tie together, and a sensitivity on the variables that matter.
A buyer or an incoming family director pays for predictable, evidenced profit: three years of consistent policies, add-backs documented rather than asserted, stock and work in progress counted on a basis that survives scrutiny, the owner's costs separated out. That gap shows in the price, and closing it takes two or three years.
North Northamptonshire Council's investment service states that the local skilled workforce in transport, logistics and manufacturing runs at double the national average, with manufacturing alone employing over 22,000 people. It names DHL, XPO Logistics, FedEx and Wincanton as running major distribution centres across Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough. This work is aimed not at those operators but at the owner-managed hauliers, pallet-network members and handling businesses subbing into them, which carry a large company's contract-margin complexity on a small company's overhead.
Silverstone sits in the south-west of the county, and the Silverstone Technology Cluster puts the surrounding high-tech engineering sector at roughly 4,300 companies and 41,000 employees. For a sub-contract machinist, fabricator or composites shop feeding that work, the issue is project costing: a job quoted on estimated hours, materials bought against it, labour booked loosely or not at all, an invoice at the end. Without it you know the year made money and cannot say which jobs did. See the costing work.
The same service names Weetabix at Burton Latimer and Corby, Alpro at Kettering with a stated £40m investment taking plant-based drink capacity to 400 million litres a year, Whitworths at Irthlingborough, and Blue Skies and Tayto at Corby. Suppliers into that chain live on recipe-level cost, yield and waste, and on rebates landing after the month has closed.
Fees are published and fixed, by Direct Debit, agreed in writing before anything starts. Essentials is bookkeeping and VAT at £95 + VAT a month. Essentials + Books adds year-end accounts and the CT600 at £195 + VAT. Managed adds management accounts at £395 + VAT. Finance Director is the £1,250 + VAT tier above — the full virtual finance director remit. Overdue years are caught up at £450 + VAT per year. No hourly rates — see the price list.
Peter Edwards ACMA CGMA, personally. A Chartered Management Accountant and CIMA Member in Practice, 25 years in finance and most of it as the finance lead in industry: Head of Finance at a pharmaceutical wholesaler growing from £3m to £10m, at a £13m publishing and media group with an ecommerce arm, and at a £15m software company handling cash and treasury through a restructuring, plus a period as Responsible Financial Officer and Deputy Town Clerk at a town council. Contract margin, stock and fleet are not theoretical.
Elsewhere in the county: Northampton, Kettering, Corby, Daventry, Wellingborough, Rushden. Same tier in Cambridge and Rutland, or everywhere we work.
Seven questions you can answer from memory, no logins and no exports. An honest verdict on whether your figures can carry a decision.
Run the free Quick Books Check → Or book a 30-minute initial review