An assessment, a correction, and a standing arrangement. Each one ends, and each one is worth having on its own.
The three stages are the same work at three sizes. Most companies go through them in order, but none of them obliges you to take the next one. The assessment is built so that you can act on it without me.
Stage one
Assessment
Fixed scope, fixed price, agreed before it starts.
I look at the month-end close and how much you can rely on it. The reports that go to the owner, the board or the group. Cash: where it is and how far ahead you can see it. The budget and forecast, and whether anyone ever compares them to what happened. Who can approve what. The systems, and how much is still done by hand around them. What the accounting firm does and what you do. And the state of the audit file.
You get a written account an owner, a board or a parent company can read: what is wrong, what it costs you in money or in risk, what can be fixed in a week, and what is a project. It ends with the order I would do it in, and why.
Stage two
Correction
Scope, price and end agreed after the assessment, because until then neither of us honestly knows what belongs in it.
Usually some of this: a close that is faster and no longer depends on one person. Reports that match what the group sees, without a spreadsheet nobody else can rebuild. A budget and a rolling forecast that hold up during the year. A cash plan that looks months ahead instead of days. The audit file ready before the auditor asks. A system move, or the finance clean-up after an acquisition.
The handover is part of the job, not a favour at the end. What I build has to keep working when I am not there.
Stage three
Ongoing
An agreed share of my time each month, reviewed on a date we set rather than running forever.
I own the finance calendar and the figures that leave the company. I answer to the owner, the board or the parent, in English, and I explain a number rather than forwarding the question to somebody else. I hold the accounting firm and the auditor to their work. And I tell you about a problem while it is still small, which is most of what this arrangement is for.
This is what replaces a finance director you do not need full time. It is the only one of the three that is open-ended.
Cash, which is usually the real question
Profit on paper and no money in the bank is the most common thing owners ask me about, and it always has an answer. The money is somewhere: in invoices nobody chased, in stock you bought too much of, in tax paid ahead, in a loan repayment that was in nobody's plan.
I show you where it went, and then build a cash plan that runs months ahead, week by week. The point is simple: you should see a gap coming while you can still do something about it, and not on the day the salaries are due. A company does not fail because it is unprofitable. It fails because on one particular Tuesday the account is empty.
This can be a piece of work on its own. It does not have to wait for anything else.
Work that does not depend on the country
Most of what I do runs in Sweden. Three things do not, and you can buy them on their own, wherever the company sits.
A second opinion
You have figures in front of you, you suspect something about them, and you want someone senior to look before you act. The first conversation costs nothing. If it turns into real analysis and a written answer, that is quoted as a small fixed piece of work before it starts.
A model, or a plan
What it costs to start or to expand. What has to be true for it to work. What the first years look like if it goes well, if it goes badly, and if it goes the way things usually go. This is also the work for someone who has not started yet and needs the numbers before anything is registered.
The order of moves
When a group opens in a country it does not know, or an owner faces a decision that is expensive to undo: what has to be decided first, what can wait a year, what to ask a local accountant or lawyer, and how to tell whether the answer was any good.
What I do not do
I do not keep the books and I do not register companies. You will have people for that. My job is to tell you what to ask them, and whether the answer was any good.
I do not audit, and I do not check my own work on your behalf.
I do not sell software, and I am not paid by anyone whose system I recommend.
I do not name a client, or anything about their figures, without their written permission.
What it costs
The assessment is a fixed price, quoted once I know the size of the company and the state it is in. It does not change afterwards. A correction is quoted the same way, against a scope written down before it starts. An ongoing arrangement is a monthly fee for an agreed share of my time.
There is no hourly rate and no meter running. If the work turns out to be bigger than the scope, that is a conversation before it happens, not an invoice afterwards.
What you are buying is an amount of senior time, not a discount on it. The fee follows how much of the work you hand over. The standard does not move with it.
Thinking about working for yourself? Salary or own company? shows what you would keep from a salary, an enskild firma, an aktiebolag or egenanställning.
Not sure which of the three you need? Describe the situation and I will tell you, including if the answer is none of them.
