If you’re running an ambitious small or medium enterprise, you already know that growth brings complexity. More clients, more invoices, more suppliers, more employees…and suddenly, your evenings are spent chasing payments and worrying about cash flow instead of planning your next big move. Sound familiar?
You might be thinking: “I’ve got an accountant - isn’t that enough?”
Here’s the truth: an accountant and a finance department are not the same thing.
Your accountant plays a vital role: compliance, tax returns, statutory accounts. They’re brilliant at making sure you stay on the right side of HMRC and Companies House. But their focus is largely backwards-looking, what happened last quarter, last year, last tax period.
A finance department, on the other hand, is your forward-looking engine. When done well, it works in harmony with your accountant (and can even replace them) but takes you far beyond compliance.
Some companies start with one person handling everything. This is great while the company is small, but as the company grows it needs a wide skillset: from bookkeeper and credit controller, to finance manager and director. Finding one person who can do all that is rare and expensive. Paying a senior finance professional to do basic bookkeeping is not a good use of money.
The Smarter Solution - a Scalable Finance Department
A full finance department will offer you everything from bookkeeping to forecasting. Large companies can justify building this in-house, but for most SMEs, there’s a better option: an outsourced finance department.
Here’s why outsourcing works:
- Cost-effective
- Access every skill needed without the overheads of hiring
- Flexible
- Scale support up during rapid growth or seasonal peaks and down when things stabilise
- Stress-Free
- No recruitment headaches, payroll complications or hiring commitments, just a team that gets the work done
What a Scalable Finance Department Delivers
- Free up your time
- No more juggling day-to-day finance tasks. A finance team can handle debtor chasing, supplier payments and keep your cash flow healthy.
- Proactive cash management
- Instead of reacting to problems, you’ll have someone monitoring and managing cash flow before issues arise.
- Budgets and forecasts
- Know where you’re heading, not just where you’ve been.
- Performance insights
- Get real-time reporting against your goals and KPIs, so you can make informed decisions quickly.
- Strategic support
- With the right leadership (think experienced CFO-level guidance), your finance function becomes a growth partner, not just a cost centre.
Why does this matter? Because scaling without a robust finance function is like hiking without a map. You might be moving, but you have no idea if you’re heading towards your destination or towards a dead-end.
If you’re serious about growth, don’t settle for “just an accountant.” Build or outsource a finance function that scales with you. It’s not a luxury; it’s a necessity for ambitious SMEs.
Ready to take finance off your plate? Book a call with Superstar FD today and see how they can help you realise your ambitions.