Why you need a Part-time Finance Director on Board

It’s hard work running a business.

Read this important information for business owners and improve your decision-making and profitability.

As an owner/manager you’re constantly thinking about all aspects of your business. There are always questions that need answering, decisions that need making and sometimes you wish you could just get on with running your business and have someone else take care of the accounts and the finances.

A good Finance Director can do that and more. And a part-time FD brings a huge amount of experience and skill to your business for a fraction of the cost of a full time FD.

Here are 6 key things a part-time FD can bring to your business.

1. Free your time – create extra value

Free yourself from dealing with the accounts and use that time to create more value using your skills and experience in other areas of the business. Let the FD take care of the finances.

2. Make the figures work for you – improve your business performance and profits

Used properly, your accounts can help you improve your business. An experienced FD will know how to analyse your figures, will spot trends, identify anomalies and be able to use this information to change your business for the better. Detailed analysis can help identify cost savings or highlight areas of your business that are less profitable and how to improve this.

3. Manage cash flow

Finance Directors are well versed in dealing with banks, customers and suppliers. They know the tricks that customers try to use to slow down payment and how to manage payments to suppliers. FDs are comfortable having those difficult conversations and it can often help that it’s the FD rather than the owner or MD of the business dealing with issues – a version of ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’!

4. Streamline processes

A good Finance Director will have experience of different ways of working in a number of organisations and will bring that knowledge to your business. Recently in one of my new clients I changed tome of the accounting processes and introduced a modern accounting system and this resulted in cutting the time to enter invoices and prepare the accounts in half. The savings for the business were significant.

5. Help with important decisions – and a sounding board

When your business is growing there are many decisions to make:

• How much should you charge for a product or service?
• Will this new customer be profitable?
• What extra resources will you need to support a new venture or product? New vans, more staff, bigger premises?
• How can you finance the growth?

An FD can help with those questions and more. Sometimes you might just like to bounce ideas off an experienced knowledgeable person.

6. Help prepare for the future, and ensure adequate finance is in place

You want your business to grow and a Finance Director will be able to help you plan for this. An FD can input into strategies to achieve the growth you want, and can also prepare financial models and to forecast what that growth would look like. This can be used to ensure that the appropriate finance is in place to fund the growth.

Author: Gordon, Company Finance Expert and BGS Associate FD.