The clock does not start when you sign. It starts when we have the records, and that gap is where most onboarding loses its first fortnight.

Scope agreed in writing

We agree exactly which work is ours and which stays with you. Who raises sales invoices, who approves supplier bills, who chases debtors, who runs payroll. Scope ambiguity is the most common reason a transition drifts, and it is the easiest thing to prevent.

Client due diligence and AML checks

Ardein is registered for anti-money-laundering supervision. UK firms must complete client due diligence before any work begins, so identity and ownership checks come first. This is usually quick. It is also non-negotiable, and an owner who will not complete it is an owner we cannot act for.

Records collected and the handover managed

If you already have an accountant or bookkeeper, we write for professional clearance, request the records and agree a transition plan around your year end. You do not run that conversation. People worry about the awkwardness of leaving; in practice the outgoing firm is dealing with us, not with you, and the request is routine.

Understanding how the business really runs

Before anything is changed, we read recent bank statements, the accounting records, payroll arrangements, outstanding debtors and creditors, and whatever systems already exist. Changing a process you have not understood is how good businesses end up with tidy books that describe the wrong thing.

Month one has one job. Make the records complete, accurate and reconciled, and find out what the old system was hiding.

That means bookkeeping brought up to date, every bank and card account reconciled, and supplier and customer balances that stand up to a question. Aged debtors full of invoices settled two years ago is a common find. So is a creditors list carrying duplicates from a change of software.

What tends to surface

Reconciling a sales ledger against delivery records is how we found an owner-managed trading business had supplied twenty thousand pounds of goods and never invoiced for them. The invoices were raised and collected, and invoicing moved permanently into the month-end routine. Reconciling funding awards against income received, line by line, is how we found a grant-funded not-for-profit with over two hundred thousand pounds of funding whose paperwork had never been completed. The claims were completed and submitted, and that organisation now keeps a funding register updated monthly and reviewed at each board meeting.

Neither was clever. Both came from asking why a number looked the way it did.

Responsibility mapped

By the end of month one you have a written map of who does what and when information moves between you and us. Bank feeds, receipt capture, payroll data, sales invoices, funder claims. Each has an owner and a date. If you have ever waited a week to find out whose job something was, you know what this is worth.

Expect questions in month one. More than you will get at any later point.

Month two turns a cleaned-up set of records into something that stays clean without heroics.

Fixed routines

Each part of the finance process gets a cadence and a date. Bookkeeping worked to a weekly rhythm rather than a month-end scramble. Supplier bills captured, approved and scheduled. Credit control chased on a schedule rather than when cash feels tight. Payroll prepared to a known cut-off with auto-enrolment duties handled alongside it. Reporting to a fixed monthly date.

Checks and controls

Controls in a small business should be proportionate and boring. Bank reconciliations reviewed before anything is reported. Supplier bank details verified before a change is paid. Approval thresholds that match who actually makes the decisions. For grant-funded organisations, restricted funds tracked so that evidence of where money went can be produced in an afternoon rather than a fortnight.

Taking work out

Where it is practical, duplication goes. Two spreadsheets recording the same sales, a paper approval that repeats a digital one, a chart of accounts with ninety codes and no one using forty of them. A chart-of-accounts rebuild in Xero often does more for the usefulness of a report than any amount of extra commentary underneath it.

First real reporting

Management information starts in month two, usually in draft. It is deliberately a draft, because the first version is where you tell us which numbers you actually make decisions on, and which ones we can stop producing.

By the end of the ninety days the finance function should run without anyone pushing it, and you should know the date your numbers arrive.

What you have by day 90

• Accurate, complete records, reconciled and current rather than three months behind.
• Clear visibility over cash, debtors, creditors and performance.
• Monthly management information delivered on the agreed date, provided the information is with us.
• VAT, payroll and auto-enrolment running on a known cycle.
• A corporation tax position that is visible long before it is payable.
• For funded organisations, a claims and reporting timetable the board can see.

What that changes for you

The point of all this is the decision you have been putting off. Whether the next hire is affordable, and from which month. Whether the price rise is due, and on which contracts. Whether the supplier switch improves margin or just moves the problem. Whether you can answer a funder’s question in the meeting rather than a week later.

Year end also becomes a different event. Statutory accounts that reconcile back to clean monthly records are a confirmation of what you already knew, rather than an investigation into what happened.

After day 90

From there it is routine rather than rescue. Prompt answers to queries, accurate data, and reports on the agreed dates, with the reporting developed further as the business grows. Most clients add something in year one: a cash forecast, a margin analysis by service line, a board pack that finally matches how the board thinks.

Ninety days feels long when you are mid-year and busy. It is worth being straight about what the delay is actually costing.

Every month you cannot see the numbers is a month you make the same decisions blind. The hire gets made on a feeling about how busy everyone looks. The price stays where it was because nobody can prove which work carries the margin. The debtor that quietly aged past ninety days keeps ageing. None of this shows up as a loss on a filed set of accounts, which is exactly why it persists.

The honest objections

Two worries come up regularly, and both are fair.

The first is losing in-house knowledge. If your bookkeeper leaves as part of the change, something goes with them. That is why the responsibility map in month one is written down, and why we ask how things are done before we change them.

The second is cost you did not expect. Ardein prices a monthly fee scoped to the work, agreed after we have seen the records and understood how the business runs. There is no separate charge for the normal handover from your current accountant or bookkeeper. Nothing about the transition is billed as a surprise afterwards.

Timing

There is no perfect month to start. Starting shortly after a year end is tidiest, because the historic position is fixed. Starting mid-year is common and works fine, with a slightly longer month one while the year-to-date is brought into line.