Help and ideas for busy numbers people
I hadn’t done much with carbon accounting in my professional life before 2020. It’s only mandatory for the largest companies and organisations so hasn’t been a requirement for me. But focussing on my personal carbon footprint this year has made me determined to bring carbon accounting into my professional life.
Continue reading “Carbon accounting – what gets measured gets done”
“Well, you know, it is month end”, I say, and colleagues nod sympathetically and steer clear for a while. For most non-finance types, it’s a mysterious process that seems to cause a lot of stress. For finance types, it is a beast to be tamed.
By “month end” or “month end close”, I’m referring to the process by which a month (or other period) is brought to an end in the financial system. This means trying to get the numbers as accurate as possible for some sort of eventual output. This could be management accounts, a report for a funder, a VAT return or just the sense of achievement and closure.
It means making sure you have accounted for all the expenditure and income for that month. Depending on the organisation you may also carry out certain “month end” tasks such as calculating depreciation, reconciling the bank and other balance sheet accounts.
In this post I set out a few things to consider which might make a month end less stressful.
Continue reading “Why is month end such a hassle?”
Managing stress at work is the responsibility of employers, and yet most search results on this topic focus on what employees should be doing to manage their own stress.
However, a couple of years ago I came across this guidance from the Health and Safety Executive. I think this, and in particular, the “Six Management Standards” is a really helpful tool for employers to assess and address the causes of stress at work.
Continue reading “Managing stress at work – what can employers do?”
Like many finance professionals, I began my career in audit. Here are five things that I learned from auditing and still use many years later.
Continue reading “Five things I learned from auditing”
Power Query gives you many more tools beyond standard Excel for automating management accounts. This post sets out some points to consider. It is not intended as a step-by-step guide, because one size does not fit all, and the path you take will vary depending on what you want to report and your source data.
However, the key message is that Power Query makes complex and lengthy transformations really easy, and completely repeatable. Whatever you want to do, you can do it better with Power Query.
Continue reading “Automating management accounts with Power Query”
I read a really great article a few weeks ago. Headlined “Why we need the office and why you might not realise it“, I agreed and disagreed with parts of it with equal vehemence.
In fact, it was often the same point I was agreeing with and disagreeing with. For example, I agree that human connection is really really really really important. However, I’m increasingly convinced that most offices are not automatically conducive to quality connections and fulfilling relationships. And I say this as an extrovert who really needs to be around people and values lots of casual interactions. That is, offices are designed around my needs as it is.
Continue reading “It’s not where you work, it’s how you work that matters.”
What would happen in your organisation if you stopped producing management accounts?
I’ve had to delay issuing management accounts a few of times in my professional career. (It’s funny, it feels scary even admitting that, such is the sacred status of the Month End Routine. It makes me feel like I’ve failed as a finance director.)
Continue reading “Who would miss your management accounts?”
Because I was once an auditor, I have an obsession with useless controls. This is where an organisation makes you do something which they think is providing some kind of internal control. However, when you think about it in more depth, you realise it isn’t providing any control at all.
I had locked myself out of the online portal for an old pension scheme. I rang up and gave my account number. They asked for my full address as a security measure before they reset my account.
Continue reading “Useless Controls”
How much Excel do you need to know as a Finance Director?
After all, you should be beyond the detail by this point, busy strategising and partnering, not spending all day with your face in a spreadsheet. Right?
Continue reading “Excel for Finance Directors”
When I had more junior finance roles in larger organisations, I often found the annual budgeting process to be somewhere between traumatic and soul-destroying. Week after week of meetings and emails and multiple versions of clunky spreadsheets.
So when I became a Finance Director, I thought long and hard about what made organisational budgeting so awful. I then identified four key components of a happier budgeting process;
This post explores these further.
Continue reading “A happier annual budgeting process”