Insights
Notes on the finance function.
Practical writing for leadership teams: what a working finance function looks like, and how to build one.
Margin · 14 September 2026 · 3 min read
Rayhaan Moughal
Your gross margin is probably wrong
Most businesses of a few hundred people report a gross margin nobody has examined in years. Where you draw the line decides what you sell, what you charge, and which customers you keep.
Controls · 11 September 2026 · 3 min read
Zain Malik
The spreadsheet that runs your business
Every finance function of this size has one: undocumented, unversioned, understood by a single person. How to find yours, and what to do about it without banning spreadsheets.
Cash · 10 September 2026 · 3 min read
The 13-week cash forecast: the one report every CEO should see weekly
Profitable businesses run out of cash. A short-term, direct-method cash forecast is the cheapest insurance there is, and most businesses under a thousand people do not have one.
Reporting · 8 September 2026 · 3 min read
The management accounts your board will actually read
A forty-page pack that nobody opens is a reporting failure, however accurate it is. What belongs in a monthly pack for a business of a few hundred people, and what does not.
Systems · 5 September 2026 · 3 min read
Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or NetSuite: when to move, and when not to
The ledger is the foundation of the finance function. Outgrowing it is real, but so is the cost of a migration you did not need. A practical view from the inside of all four.
Close · 3 September 2026 · 3 min read
Getting to a five-day month-end close
If your management accounts arrive three weeks after month end, they describe a business that no longer exists. Here is how to bring the close forward without adding headcount.
Leadership · 1 September 2026 · 3 min read
Do you need a CFO, or a finance function?
Most businesses between 100 and 1,000 people are told they need a CFO. What they usually need is the machinery a CFO relies on, and someone senior to run it.
Pricing · 27 August 2026 · 3 min read
Rayhaan Moughal
Pricing is a finance decision, and finance is usually not in the room
In most businesses of this size, price is set by sales, discounted by sales, and reported on by finance once the year is already lost. A practical way to bring the numbers forward.
Reporting · 18 August 2026 · 3 min read
Zain Malik
KPIs that survive contact with the business
Two people quote the same metric and mean different things. The problem is rarely the choice of measure. It is that nobody ever wrote down its definition.
Funding · 6 August 2026 · 3 min read
Rayhaan Moughal
What to fix before you raise, and how long it takes
Diligence does not fail on the strength of the business. It fails on the state of the records. A practical checklist, in the order we work through it, with realistic timings.
Revenue · 28 July 2026 · 3 min read
Zain Malik
Revenue recognition for service and subscription businesses
Cash in the bank is not revenue, and an invoice raised is not revenue either. Where the judgement actually sits for the models we see most, and what happens when it is wrong.
Team · 16 July 2026 · 3 min read
Rayhaan Moughal
The finance hires to make, in order
Finance teams at this size are usually built by reaction: someone leaves, someone is drowning, a role is posted. The sequence that actually works, and the hire almost everyone makes too early.
Working capital · 7 July 2026 · 3 min read
Rayhaan Moughal
Getting paid: collections as a process, not a personality
Debtor days are treated as a fact about your customers. They are mostly a fact about you. What a functioning collections process looks like, and the cash it releases.
Assurance · 24 June 2026 · 3 min read
Zain Malik
Preparing for your first audit
The first audit is rarely difficult in substance. It is difficult because a business is asked, for the first time, to evidence things it has always simply known.
Planning · 12 June 2026 · 3 min read
Rayhaan Moughal
Your annual budget is wrong by February. Use it anyway, differently.
Six weeks of negotiation produces a plan that is obsolete by the end of the first quarter. The answer is not a better budget. It is a smaller one, with a rolling forecast doing the work.