Knowing the bank balance is not knowing the business.
Monthly management accounts that explain what moved and why, budget against actual that is acted on rather than filed, and reporting built for the decisions you actually have to make.
experience
worked across
in one team
What our management reporting covers.
Reporting is only useful if someone reads it and does something differently. That is the standard we build to.
Monthly management accounts
Profit and loss, balance sheet and cash prepared to a fixed timetable, from accounts reconciled first.
Commentary that explains the movement
Written analysis of what changed and why — the part that makes numbers usable by non-accountants.
Budget versus actual analysis
Variances identified, quantified and explained, so the budget stays a live management tool.
Job and project profitability
Revenue and cost tracked where decisions are made, so you see which work makes money.
Board and management packs
Reporting assembled for its audience, with detail available but the headline clear on page one.
KPI and non-financial reporting
The operational measures that explain the financial result, reported alongside it rather than separately.
Reporting is built around the decisions your business actually makes, which means the first conversation is about what you need to know rather than what the system can produce. [ASSUMPTION — confirm with HSC Edge: typical reporting turnaround after period end, and whether a standard pack or a bespoke pack is offered.]
A report nobody reads is a cost, not a control.
Plenty of businesses receive monthly reporting. Far fewer change anything because of it. The gap is almost always the same: the pack arrives weeks late, it presents figures without explaining them, and it answers questions nobody was asking.
We fix the timetable first, because reporting that arrives too late to act on has no value regardless of quality. Then we cut it to the decisions you actually make, and write the commentary that turns a variance into a conversation.
Book a consultationFor businesses making decisions that deserve better information.
The trigger is usually a decision that turned out to rest on numbers nobody could stand behind.
Revenue is up and nobody is sure margin is
Growth hides problems. Reporting cut by job or product shows whether the additional revenue is actually profitable, or whether it is simply larger.
A board or funder expects a monthly pack
Where reporting goes to people who were not in the business that month, the commentary matters as much as the figures. We write both.
Work is delivered as jobs, projects or contracts
A profitable month can contain loss-making jobs. Reporting at job level shows which work to price differently, and which to stop taking.
Built around your decisions, not a template.
The first question is what you need to know. The pack is designed backwards from the answer.
Agree what matters
We work out which decisions the reporting has to support, who reads it, and what questions keep coming up that the current reporting cannot answer.
Make the ledger support it
Reporting by job, site or department only works if the underlying data is captured that way. We adjust the chart of accounts and coding so the cut you need is actually available.
Deliver it on a timetable
The pack arrives on the agreed date each period, with commentary, and we walk you through it if that is useful rather than leaving it in an inbox.
Someone has to be willing to say what the numbers mean.
Producing a report is a software task. Interpreting it — recognising that a margin movement is a pricing problem rather than a cost problem, or that a strong month was timing rather than performance — requires someone who has seen enough businesses to tell the difference.
Our principals are Chartered Accountants with more than 20 years across commercial, government, not-for-profit and regulated environments. The commentary in your pack is written by someone qualified to put their name to that judgement.
Reporting questions.
If yours isn't here, send it through and we will answer it directly.
Book a consultation01Do you need to do our bookkeeping to provide reporting?
No, though the reporting is only ever as reliable as the records underneath it. Where we are not doing the bookkeeping, we will tell you what has to be true of the data for the reporting to be dependable, and flag it when it is not.
02Can you report by job, project or site?
Yes, and it is one of the more valuable cuts for businesses delivering work as jobs or contracts. It usually requires some change to how costs are coded, which we set up as part of the engagement.
03We have a budget but never compare against it. Can you fix that?
Yes. Budget versus actual is part of the standard reporting cycle, with variances explained rather than simply shown. Where the existing budget is no longer realistic we will say so and help rebuild it.
04Who writes the commentary?
We do, and it is reviewed by a Chartered Accountant before it reaches you. Commentary that simply restates the numbers is not commentary, so what you receive is an interpretation someone is prepared to defend.
05What does this cost?
Our fees are based on the volume and complexity of the work, including reporting frequency, the number of entities and how much the underlying data needs restructuring first. Ongoing reporting is generally provided for an agreed monthly fee, with setup work quoted separately after an initial review.
Reporting you will actually use.
Tell us what decisions you are making and what your current reporting fails to answer. We will set out what the pack should contain and what has to change underneath to produce it.
We reply to every enquiry directly — no call centre, no sales script.