Help and ideas for busy numbers people
Business planning can be full of jargon and buzzwords. I used to think that “roadmap” was one of these – an output used to disguise a lack of a more detailed plan.
I’m changing my view on this quite rapidly. I now think that, as with most business jargon, the roadmap has a place and is meaningful if done properly.
Continue reading “Business planning: Roadmaps through uncertainty”
Balance sheet reconciliations are a key component of regular accounting to ensure that your transactions are correct. They help you detect issues such as missing transactions or failure of controls or process. This article sets out what they are, what they’re for and how to do them.
Continue reading “Balance Sheet Reconciliations”
Managing mental health in the workplace is really important to me. I want to be happy, and I want my teams and people I work with to be happy too. I once worked for a mental health charity and picked up a few tools for thinking about and managing wellbeing and mental health.
This post explains the ACE approach – Achieve, Connect, Enjoy. In one sentence – we need to achieve a balance of these things in our daily lives.
Continue reading “Mental health in the workplace – the ACE approach”
If you’re managing a finance team, at some point you (or someone in the team) will need to prepare some kind of year end accounts, also known as statutory accounts. I’ve been doing this for many years now and in this post I will share my observations about what makes for a smooth year end process.
The short version of this; planning in advance will always reap dividends. As you will see, most of my advice concerns things you can and should be doing well in advance of year end.
Continue reading “A smooth year end accounts process”
Have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) ever featured so much in our news bulletins? As a nation we are suddenly poring over death and testing rates and graphs as never before.
Our new-found love of stats highlights six lessons I’ve learned over the years from producing board reports and analysis.
Continue reading “Coronavirus and Key Performance Indicators”
I’ve experienced a number of finance system implementations in my career. My early experiences have made me very reluctant to implement new systems, not because I don’t enjoy it, but because I know they are often very disruptive and don’t solve the underlying issues. Or they save finance time, but at the expense of budget holder time (this has been my experience of most purchase order systems in large organisations).
I’ve also had experiences of lots of accounting systems, and none have ever blown me away. Some are worse than others, definitely, but I have long since given up on the idea that there is the perfect package out there, particularly when you consider that every organisation’s needs are different.
This isn’t to say you should just make do with the status quo. It’s about making sure that you are replacing the system for good reasons.
So over time, I’ve evolved a bit of a checklist to think about whether or not a new system is necessary.
Continue reading “Do you really need a new finance system?”
I’m ashamed to admit I’m one of those who initially thought of Power Query as being a toy for hardcore financial modelling, or manipulating enormous data sets within multinational companies.
This may be because these are often the sort of examples provided. It’s very easy as a busy finance professional in a small or medium finance team to assume based on this that there are better things to spend your time on.
It was only after my second attempt at learning Power Query that I truly grasped how revolutionary it could be for all finance professionals and teams. If you use Excel to do anything at all, the chances are Power Query will allow you to do it better. In this article I’ve set out four areas where knowledge of a bit of Power Query could transform your professional life.
Continue reading “Why you need Power Query even if you don’t use Big Data”