What makes us different
The manual work lives in the gap between two suppliers
An ERP consultancy configures your system and hands over. An accountant works from whatever the system produces. Both do their job properly, and nobody is responsible for the space in between — which is exactly where the reconciliations, the rebuilt reports and the correcting journals live.
- One team either side of the handover
- Reporting designed into the configuration
- One point of accountability
The gap
What falls between the ERP partner and the accountant
None of this appears on either scope of work. It accumulates quietly, and after a year or two it is simply how finance operates.
The report that gets rebuilt every month
The system version is nearly right, so somebody exports it and fixes it in Excel. That workbook becomes the real management pack and nobody owns it.
The reconciliation only one person understands
Two figures that should agree do not, for a reason buried in configuration. A manual reconciliation was built to bridge them and has run ever since.
The correcting journal
A journal posted every month to fix something happening upstream. The cause is a system setting nobody has been asked to look at.
The chart of accounts nobody will change
It does not support the reporting the board wants. Changing it is an ERP job; needing it changed is a finance problem. It stays as it is.
The question that takes three days
A director asks why margin moved. Answering means pulling from the system, the workbook and someone’s memory of a process change.
The handover that never happened
The implementation finished, the consultants left, and the finance team worked out for themselves how to close the month in it.
How we work
The people who configure the finance module also use it
This is unusual, and it is the reason most of our work lands. It is not a broader service list — it is the same team on both sides of a handover that normally loses information.
When the same team configures the ledger and produces the management accounts from it, a whole category of problem disappears. The chart of accounts gets designed against the reporting it has to produce, because the people designing it are the ones who will have to produce it. Reconciliations get built into the configuration rather than bolted on afterwards. And when a number looks wrong, working out whether it is a data problem, a process problem or a configuration problem takes an afternoon rather than a fortnight of correspondence between two suppliers.
In practice we work in one of three ways. Some clients have us implement or fix the system and keep their own finance team, with us on hand for the parts that touch configuration. Some have us run the bookkeeping and management reporting on a system somebody else implemented. And some have us do both, which is where the approach is worth the most, because every manual workaround we find in the finance process is one we can go and fix at source.
The honest limit: this is bookkeeping, management reporting and finance process work alongside ERP consultancy. It is not an audit practice and we do not hold ourselves out as your statutory accountants or tax advisers. Where you need those, you keep the firm you have — and in our experience they welcome receiving a clean, reconciled trial balance from a system that actually agrees with itself.
What changes when one team does both
- Reporting designed in, not rebuilt monthly
- Reconciliations configured, not manual
- Root causes fixed at source
- One point of accountability for the numbers
How it works in practice
Where the two sides meet
Chart of accounts designed for reporting
Built backwards from the management pack the board actually wants, so the analysis comes out of the ledger rather than out of a mapping table.
Reconciliations built into the system
Control accounts, stock-to-ledger and bank designed to agree by construction, so month-end is a check rather than an investigation.
Management reporting from the ledger
The monthly pack produced from the system, tied back to the trial balance, with definitions everyone has agreed.
Bookkeeping inside your ERP
Day-to-day processing done in SAP Business One or Business Central itself, so the system stays current instead of being reconstructed later.
Finance process improvement
The manual steps mapped and then removed at source — by configuration, validation or automation rather than by working faster.
Clean handover to your accountant
A reconciled trial balance and supporting analysis your statutory accountant or auditor can work from without rebuilding it.
How we start
Finding the manual work, then removing it
Map the close
We sit with your finance team through a month-end and write down every manual step, workbook and reconciliation actually used.
- Observed, not surveyed
- Every workaround listed
- Time attached to each
Find the causes
Each manual step is traced to its cause: configuration, process, data quality, or a genuine gap in the software.
- Cause not symptom
- Configuration reviewed
- Data quality assessed
Prioritise
A written list ordered by time saved against effort. Some items are an afternoon’s configuration; some are not worth fixing at all.
- Effort and benefit stated
- Quick wins identified
- Honest do-not-bother list
Fix at source
Configuration changes, report building, validation and automation, so the manual step stops being necessary rather than being done faster.
- Configuration first
- Reports built properly
- Validation at entry
Run or hand back
We either run the finance function on the improved system, or hand it back to your team documented, with the workarounds gone.
- Documented process
- Training if handing back
- Ongoing option
What changes
What this is actually worth
We deliberately do not publish an average time saving. What you get back depends entirely on how much manual work has accumulated, and a number without your context behind it would be marketing rather than information.
A shorter close
Manual reconciliations replaced by configuration that agrees by construction, so month-end shortens instead of slipping.
Reporting that stops being rebuilt
The management pack produced from the ledger, reconciled, and not dependent on one person’s workbook.
Questions answered the same day
When the numbers are in one place and reconcile, explaining a movement is a query rather than an investigation.
Less key-person risk
Processes documented and inside the system, so finance does not stop when one person is away.
One supplier to ask
No triage between the ERP partner and the accountant to work out whose problem a wrong number is.
Fit
Whether this applies to you
A good fit if
- Your management pack is assembled outside the ERP every month
- The close takes longer than it should and nobody can say exactly why
- You run reconciliations that only one person fully understands
- Your ERP partner and your accountant point at each other
- Finance volume has grown faster than the finance team
- You want the system and the numbers looked after together
Probably not us if
- You need statutory audit — we are not an audit practice
- You need formal tax advice or filings — keep your existing firm for that
- Your finance function is already running cleanly out of the system
Common questions
Questions we are asked before a project starts
Are you accountants or ERP consultants?
Both, deliberately. We provide ERP consultancy — implementation, development, integration and support — and bookkeeping and management reporting services alongside it. What we do not do is statutory audit or formal tax advice, and we will always tell you where that boundary sits rather than let the ambiguity work in our favour.
Do we have to use you for both?
No, and plenty of clients use one or the other. The approach is worth most when we do both, because every manual workaround we find in the finance process is one we can fix at source. But we will happily implement a system for a finance team that stays in-house, or run reporting on a system someone else built.
Do we still need our accountant?
For statutory accounts, audit and tax, yes — keep the firm you have. We work alongside them rather than replacing them. In practice they tend to prefer it: they receive a reconciled trial balance from a system that agrees with itself, rather than a set of exports and a workbook to unpick.
How do you charge for this?
Project work is quoted against a written scope. Ongoing bookkeeping and management reporting is a monthly fee based on transaction volume and what is in scope, agreed in advance. We do not charge a percentage of savings — that would give us a reason to leave the inefficient things in place for longer.
How much manual work can actually be removed?
It varies enormously and we will not guess before looking. What we can say is that the map-the-close exercise reliably finds more manual steps than the finance team expected, and that a meaningful proportion of them usually turn out to be configuration decisions that can be changed in an afternoon. You get the list, with effort and benefit against each item, and you decide what is worth doing.
Related
Where to go next
Accounting & Finance
Bookkeeping, management accounts and financial reporting, run by people who know your ERP.
Read more
SAP Business One
Implementation, support and development for the system underneath the finance function.
Read more
Reporting & Analytics
Getting the management pack out of the system instead of out of a spreadsheet.
Read more
Walk us through your month-end.
Tell us what your finance team does between the last day of the month and the management pack landing. We can usually tell you within the conversation which parts are configuration problems rather than workload.
Or call +44 7493 619245 — Monday to Friday, 09:00–17:30.