Bookkeeping, kept current
Bank feeds reconciled, purchases and sales coded properly, and your records kept up to date through the month instead of reconstructed at the end of the year.
Virtual Finance Department
Your finance team,
built for growth.
Everything an in-house finance department does — the bookkeeping, the payroll, the monthly numbers, the forecasting, the Making Tax Digital filings and someone senior to talk it through with — for one monthly fee, without hiring anybody.
One feefor your whole finance function.
Why it exists
When a set of annual accounts stops being enough.
There is a point in a growing business where the year-end accounts arrive, tell you what happened nine months ago, and change nothing. The decisions that mattered were taken long before the figures landed.
What you need by then is different. Numbers you can trust during the month, not after it. A view of what is coming rather than what has gone. Somebody to sit down with before you take on the lease, the van or the two new staff — not after.
The usual answer is to hire: a bookkeeper, then a management accountant, then eventually a finance director. That is three salaries, three recruitment rounds and a lot of management before any of it pays for itself.
Our Virtual Finance Department is the other answer. One team, already assembled, that does the whole job — and scales with you rather than being rebuilt every time you grow.
The records are kept properly as the month goes along. The management accounts arrive on a date you can set your watch by. The VAT and Making Tax Digital obligations are filed on time without anyone chasing you. And when something needs thinking about, there is somebody senior who already knows your numbers.
It is everything you would expect from an in-house finance department, without the cost, the complexity or the commitment of building one yourself.
What’s included
The whole finance function, in one place.
Payroll and pensions
Monthly payroll, RTI submissions, auto-enrolment, starters and leavers, payslips and P60s — run to the same date every month.
Monthly management accounts
Profit and loss, balance sheet and the handful of numbers that actually tell you how the business is doing, delivered on an agreed date each month.
Cash flow forecasting
A rolling view of what is coming in and going out, so a tax bill, a quiet month or a big order is something you planned for rather than discovered.
VAT and Making Tax Digital
Returns prepared, checked and filed through MTD-compatible software, on time, every quarter. Compliance is part of the service, not an extra.
Budgets and targets
An annual budget you helped set, then monthly reporting against it, so you can see where the business is ahead and where it is drifting.
FD-level advice
Someone senior to talk to about pricing, margins, funding, hiring or whether you can afford the thing you are thinking about. Included, not billed by the hour.
Year end, handled
Because the records have been right all year, the statutory accounts and corporation tax return are a formality rather than a three-month scramble.
Making Tax Digital
Compliance is not a bolt-on. It is part of it.
HMRC is moving every business on to digital record keeping and quarterly filing. For VAT-registered businesses that is already here. For sole traders and landlords over the income thresholds, it arrives in stages from April 2026.
It means records kept in compatible software, a digital link all the way from the transaction to the return, and quarterly updates rather than one filing a year.
For most businesses that is a genuine change of habit. Inside a Virtual Finance Department it is simply how the month already works — the records are digital, current and linked, so the quarterly filing is a by-product of doing the bookkeeping properly rather than a separate job to remember.
- MTD-compatible software
- Digital links end to end
- Quarterly updates filed for you
- Deadlines tracked, not chased
- Xero certified
If you only want the Making Tax Digital side sorted, that is a service on its own — you do not have to take the full department to be compliant.
The comparison
Hiring a finance team, or having one.
| Building it in-house | Virtual Finance Department | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Three recruitment rounds, notice periods, onboarding | Running inside a month |
| Cost | Bookkeeper, management accountant and an FD — before software, pensions and cover | One monthly fee, agreed in writing |
| Holiday and sickness | Your problem | Ours — the work still happens |
| Breadth of experience | Whatever your hires happen to have seen | A practice that works across eleven sectors |
| Scaling up | Hire again, manage again | Change the scope, same team |
| Scaling back | Redundancy | A conversation |
| Software and compliance | Chosen, paid for and maintained by you | Included and kept current |
How it works
Four steps, then it just runs.
We look at where you are
A proper look at your records, your software, your deadlines and what you actually need each month. No charge, and no obligation at the end of it.
We agree the scope and the fee
What is included, what the monthly reporting looks like and what it costs — written down and fixed before anything starts.
We take it on
We move the records across, set the software up properly and pick up the deadlines. If you are leaving another accountant, we handle that too.
You get your month back
Figures on a set date, filings done, and somebody to ring when a decision needs making. That is the part people notice.
Who it suits
Businesses with something to keep on top of.
It tends to make sense once a business has staff on a payroll, VAT to file, more than a handful of transactions a week and decisions that cost real money — roughly the point where the owner stops being able to hold it all in their head.
We work with construction and trade, nurseries and childcare, estate agents and property investors, care homes, professional services, and limited companies and partnerships of most shapes. The reporting changes with the sector; the principle does not.
It is probably not for you if you are a sole trader with a few invoices a month — one of our fixed packages will do the job for a fraction of the cost, and we will tell you so rather than sell you something you do not need.
Let’s talk
Ready for a finance team that just runs?
Book a free, no-obligation look at where your business is now and what it needs each month.