Scale-up Guide: Are you scaling your business with the optimal finance function?

To read an overview of other ways to grow your business, download our Scale-up Guide here.

It is essential that you have a strong finance function in place. This means having readily available and robust financial information that is prepared efficiently and allows you to make sound business decisions. Poor financial information could have an impact on the success of investment rounds as incorrect financial reports could cause delays with securing funds.

As your business grows, you are likely to outgrow your finance function several times. The balancing of your finance structure is a delicate art, and will be primarily driven by what is affordable to your company as well as your stage within the growth cycle.

To help you with this, we have included 5 factors to consider in deciding which finance function will work for you:

1. In-house expertise

Be honest about what existing in-house expertise you possess.

2. Capacity

Be clear about your capacity to perform financial and administrative tasks, and don’t underestimate how long these can take. 

3. Complexity of business models and transactions

Your finance function needs to support your business model and have the ability to effectively manage your transactions, which may be complex or lack uniformity. 

4. Level of automation in accounting software 

An accounting software application may be the right solution for you if want to spend less time on processing your finances. The level of automation in these systems directly reduces the amount of hours required to produce accounting records, or close periods. Your accountant should be able to advise you on which software is most appropriate for your business.

5. Cost

You might find cost to be a deciding factor in which finance function you need, and the variety of costing options may be confusing. We find that early stage companies generally wait too long before making their first finance hire and end up, for example, with a bookkeeper when they should be employing an accountant. Alternatively, they hire a newly qualified finance director when an experienced person is required. Therefore you should speak to an adviser to avoid underestimating the value of an effective finance function.

During your business lifecycle stages, the following solutions are likely to provide you with optimal financial function support:

Finding an effective finance function that will align with your growth is likely to be challenging, and it can take time. We hope the above overview will be useful in finding the optimal solution to achieve your scale-up goals.

Download our Scale-up Guide: innovative financial advice to help you grow

We have created the Scale-up Guide, a practical guide that covers 20 topics on a wide range of financial advice. Download the guide to sense check and develop your understanding of key considerations to take into account on your growth journey.