Most owners spend their days in the business. We spend ours looking at it from the outside. That difference matters. After a few weeks of trading, every owner builds blind spots, familiar problems start to look normal, awkward conversations get postponed, and trends get explained away.
A Full Business Review is the antidote. We come in with no preconceptions, look at the figures, the structure and the way the business runs, and feed back what we find. The aim is not to tell you what you want to hear. The aim is to tell you what is true.
Some reviews surface a single issue that has been hiding in plain sight. Others confirm everything is roughly fine but point at three changes that lift performance noticeably. Either way, you finish with a clearer view than you started with.
Tick two or more and a Business Review will probably pay back several times over.
You have not had an external set of eyes on the business in the last 12–18 months.
The numbers feel slightly off and you cannot quite put your finger on why.
Margins have slipped over the past year and the reasons are not clear.
You are thinking about raising finance or restructuring existing debt.
An exit is on the horizon, somewhere in the next two to five years.
You recently took the business over, inherited it, or bought into it.
You have been making decisions on gut feel and want a check against the figures.
A trusted adviser has told you the business is fine and you are not convinced.
A Business Review is not a single document, it is a body of work across the parts of the business that matter most. Each area can be done on its own, but they tend to overlap.
An honest read of how the business is performing financially. Not the version the accounts present at year-end, the live, month-by-month story they actually tell.
Where your pricing helps the business, and where it leaves money on the table. Most small businesses underprice. A few overprice quietly and lose customers. We work out which is happening.
Existing debt assessed for cost, fit and risk. If your current lending arrangement is working, we will say so. If it is costing you more than it should, we will show you what to do about it.
Sales targets that are based on something. The figures get set against capacity and conversion, not pulled from a hat, and there is a way to track them month-to-month that does not need a finance team.
A practical route from where you are now to where you want the business to be in two to three years. Not a vision document, a plan with numbers and dates.
A typical review runs over three to four weeks. The headline shape of it looks like this.
Free, no obligation. Forty-five minutes by video or phone. We talk through the business, what is on your mind, and whether a review is the right move at all. If it is not, we will say so.
If both sides want to proceed, we agree the scope, deliverables, timeline and fee in writing. No commitment until that is signed off.
We agree what information we need and how we get it, accounting software access, recent management accounts, contracts, customer data. We work around your team to keep the disruption to a minimum.
The heavy lifting. Numbers worked through, patterns identified, questions raised. Expect a couple of clarifying calls during this stage, some things only make sense once we have looked at them properly.
Before the written report, a face-to-face or video session walking you through what we found. This is where the conversations happen, you push back, we explain, things get clearer.
The findings written up properly, with prioritised next steps. Not a 60-page doorstop, a focused document you will actually read and use. Delivered within a week of the findings session.
A check-in call a month later. Questions answered, drift caught, decisions sense-checked. Included as standard.
One thing runs through every service: we explain it in language that does not need a glossary. Technical jargon gets translated as a matter of course, so you actually understand what you are signing off, what the figures mean, and what to do next. That promise is built into the price.
A Business Review ends with something you can hold, share and act on, not just a meeting you remember bits of.
The written report is the core deliverable. Plain English throughout, structured around the findings rather than the process, with prioritised next steps clearly called out.
If yours is not here, ask us in the first conversation.
Usually two to four weeks from data access to final report. Larger or more complex businesses can take longer. We agree the timeline in writing before starting.
It depends on the size and complexity of the business and which of the five areas you want covered. Most reviews fall in a fairly predictable range, and we agree the fee up front in writing, no surprises at the end.
A free initial conversation is the right way to get a meaningful figure.
For the financial performance side, yes, we cannot review what we cannot see. That is usually read-only access to your accounting software (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and similar are all fine), plus the last two years of management accounts and statutory accounts.
Everything is covered by a confidentiality agreement signed before the work starts.
You push back, we discuss, we look again at the data. That is the value of the findings session, conversations happen before the report is final. We are not here to win an argument. We are here to get the read right.
If you want us to, yes. Some clients take the report and run with it themselves. Others want us alongside while they work through the changes. We can either step away after the report or roll into a Virtual CFO arrangement, whichever suits the business.
The work is confidential. We do not contact your accountant, bank or any third party unless you ask us to. Many clients do bring their accountant into the conversation once the report is in hand, the two pieces of work are complementary, not competing.
Book a free, no-obligation conversation. We will tell you where we can help, and where we cannot.
