Fractional Financial Controller for SMEs and scale-ups. Clean numbers and a forecast you can run the business on — from one day a month to full-time interim cover.
Engagement — tap to explore
From one day a month to full-time interim · scale up or down as the work demands
60-second diagnostic
Seven questions across control and commercial. Tap an answer and watch the shape build. No email required.
Goes straight to Ahmed, nothing stored
Services
Clean numbers, a commercial view, and someone who can handle the big moments. Take all three or just the part you're missing.
Five working days, with commentary the board can act on.
Aged differences cleared, reconciliations rebuilt, discipline that holds.
IFRS and FRS 102 accounts. Big 4 audits led end to end.
Contracts, obligations, deferred and accrued income.
Rolling forecasts tied to pipeline and delivery, not last year plus five per cent.
Thirteen-week cash model, debtor days, and the levers that move them.
Profitability by client, contract and service line — and what to do about it.
Sitting with budget holders so the numbers change decisions, not just reports.
Financial diligence, data room, and a clear read on what you're buying.
One chart of accounts, one policy set, one reporting pack. Done properly.
NetSuite and Dynamics NAV implementations, plus automating the manual.
Getting the data and controls right so automation pays off instead of multiplying errors.
Commercial & growth
Most forecasts are last year's numbers with a growth rate on top. A useful one is built from pipeline, delivery capacity and payment behaviour — and it tells you when to hire, when to hold, and when you run out of room.
Pipeline by stage and probability, delivery and resourcing plans, contracted revenue and renewal dates, actual payment behaviour by customer, and the cost base broken into fixed, variable and discretionary.
When you can afford the next hire. Whether a contract is worth winning at that price. How long the runway really is. What happens to cash if your biggest customer pays thirty days late.
Reforecast monthly, compare to actuals, and investigate every variance until the model learns. A forecast nobody revisits is a document. One that gets corrected is an instrument.
The close
Commercial insight needs a foundation. Same tasks, two-thirds of the time — the sequence gets fixed, dependencies get broken, and review stops happening last.
Transactions
Integration is where value gets made or lost. I've done both sides — diligence before, and the unglamorous work of making two finance functions into one afterwards.
Quality of earnings, working capital norms, and what the numbers don't say.
Financial diligence support, data room, and challenging the seller's adjustments.
Completion accounts, working capital true-up, and opening balance sheet.
Payroll, banking, reporting lines. The things that must not break on Monday.
One chart of accounts, aligned policies, a single consolidated reporting pack.
Proving the case actually delivered — or telling the board honestly that it didn't.
AI in finance
The prize isn't headcount savings — it's a finance function that spends its time on the questions that change decisions. But AI accelerates whatever process is already there, including the bad ones. Clean data and real controls come first.
Reconciled ledgers, consistent coding, no legacy differences.
A close timetable and controls a machine can follow.
Matching, reconciliations, first-draft commentary, forecasting inputs.
An accountant signs the number. Always.
Routine matches cleared automatically. The team reviews exceptions only.
Obligations, terms and billing triggers extracted from a contract stack in days, not weeks.
Variance narrative straight from the ledger movement. The team edits rather than writes.
Pattern-based revenue and cash forecasts run alongside the manual model, so you see where judgement and history disagree.
Continuous review of postings, coding and cut-off — catching errors during the month, not at audit.
Audit trail, accuracy ownership, data confidentiality. The part most businesses skip entirely.
I've spent my career implementing ERP systems and automating recurring reporting, and I approach AI the same way: prove it against a known-good result, keep a human accountable for the number, and never let a tool sign off on something an accountant should. Used properly it doesn't replace the finance team — it moves them from assembling the pack to arguing about what it means.
Fit
Being clear about this saves us both a call.
Case studies
Five engagements, and what actually changed. Tap any one to open it.
◆ Tap to expand
Three entities, inconsistent revenue treatment, and a Big 4 audit approaching.
Revenue was being recognised differently across the UK, US and Belgian entities. Deferred and accrued income schedules didn't tie back to billing, control accounts carried aged differences nobody could explain, and the close ran long enough that analysis never happened.
Reviewed the contract base and reassessed performance obligations, then rewrote the group revenue recognition policy so all three entities applied IFRS 15 consistently. Rebuilt the deferred and accrued income schedules to reconcile to billing and the revenue ledger monthly. Rebuilt the balance sheet reconciliation pack from scratch and cleared the aged differences. Implemented Oracle NetSuite as the group ERP and Avalara for US sales tax.
Close delivered within five working days of month-end. One consistent revenue policy across three jurisdictions, with contract liability roll-forwards the auditors could follow. Legacy inconsistencies resolved rather than carried forward.
Every acquisition arrived with its own revenue treatment and an unreconciled balance sheet.
A highly acquisitive group where each acquired business recognised subscription, licence, implementation and support revenue differently. Legacy balance sheets carried unreconciled control accounts and revenue cut-off errors that had never been corrected.
Reviewed revenue treatment across the acquired businesses and standardised it, rebuilding deferred income schedules onto a single group basis. Remediated the legacy balance sheets — clearing unreconciled control accounts, correcting cut-off and deferred income errors — and established monthly reconciliation disciplines inside each business. Led post-acquisition consolidation, process alignment and system integration.
One group basis for revenue across businesses that had never shared one. Reconciliation disciplines that survived integration rather than lapsing once attention moved to the next deal.
A budget nobody owned and no reliable weekly view of cash.
Forecasting accuracy was weak because targets were set centrally rather than with the people accountable for delivering them. Senior leadership had no dependable weekly cash position, and CapEx decisions lacked a consistent appraisal basis.
Delivered the full annual budget by working directly with operational budget holders to align financial targets to commercial strategy. Led the CapEx budgeting process — appraising investment cases, testing feasibility with stakeholders, allocating capital against return. Built and maintained the weekly group cash flow forecast model, and owned IFRS 16 lease budgeting into planning and reporting.
A budget owned by the people accountable for it. A weekly cash model adopted and used by senior leadership. Variance analysis presented to budget holders monthly, with drivers and corrective actions rather than just numbers.
Acquisitions across two continents, each on its own reporting structure.
A buy-and-build platform acquiring across Latin America and Europe. Newly acquired businesses ran different accounting policies, reporting structures and processes. Billing wasn't aligned to asset and income recognition, so revenue didn't reflect investment completed. Debtor days were high.
Led the financial integration of the acquired businesses, standardising reporting structures, accounting policies and operational processes. Business partnered Country Leaders and Regional VPs on budgets, cash forecasting and billing completeness. Worked with Asset Management to align billing to asset and income recognition. Reviewed country submissions for completeness and challenged performance against prior year, budget and forecast.
Consolidated monthly management accounts and board packs delivered to private-equity timetables. Revenue reflecting investment actually completed. Standardised reporting across countries that had previously each done their own thing.
General ledger integrity across twelve European entities.
Twelve European subsidiaries with balance sheet accounts that had drifted, multiple year-end processes to deliver, six audits to support, and VAT obligations running on monthly, quarterly and bi-monthly filing cycles.
Produced and reviewed subsidiary balance sheets, P&Ls and reconciliations across all twelve entities, restoring and then safeguarding the integrity of every general ledger balance sheet account. Compiled year-end data and reconciliations with local accountants. Prepared and submitted VAT returns across all filing cycles. Supported monthly cost centre reviews with Heads of Department, explaining variances to non-finance stakeholders.
Twelve year-end processes and six audits delivered. Balance sheet integrity restored across the group and held in place through a monthly review discipline.
Practicalities
About
Half this job is making the numbers right. The other half is making them useful.
I get called for the parts nobody else wants — inconsistent revenue treatment, control accounts that haven't reconciled in two years, a reporting pack that made sense at £10m and doesn't now. That's the foundation, and it has to be right.
But a clean ledger isn't the point. The point is a business that knows its margin by contract, can see when cash gets tight twelve weeks out, and can price a deal properly. That's where I spend the rest of my time.
SaaS businesses, private equity portfolio companies, and international groups running UK, European and US entities — including several buy-and-build platforms where the finance function had to absorb an acquisition every few months.
FAQ
Whatever the work requires. Some clients take a day a month — enough to review the close, challenge the numbers and keep the board informed. Others need three days a week during a remediation or an integration. It's normal to start heavy and taper as things stabilise.
Usually within two weeks, sometimes sooner for a diagnostic. If I'm mid-engagement I'll tell you honestly rather than stretch myself thin across too many clients.
The diagnostic stands alone — about a week, and you get a written report whether or not we go further. Beyond that, remediation work realistically needs three months to hold. Ongoing oversight can be as light as a day a month.
Both, and the second is usually why people keep me. Forecasting, margin analysis by contract and client, pricing input, investment appraisal, and sitting with budget holders so the numbers actually change decisions.
Yes — either side of it. Financial diligence and quality of earnings before, then completion accounts, day-one continuity and full integration afterwards. I've integrated acquisitions at ClearCourse, Telecom Infrastructure Partners and elsewhere.
Mostly remote, with on-site days where they earn their keep — the first fortnight, month-end, audit fieldwork, and anything involving getting a team to change how it works.
Day rate or a fixed monthly retainer, agreed up front. Fixed scope where the work is well defined. No surprise invoices.
Do it. I'm in the ledger, in the reconciliations, in the model and in the audit file. The management and mentoring happens alongside, not instead.
Your team has run the new process at least twice without me, everything is documented, and you have a written handover. I stay reachable for month-end review if that's useful.
Get in touch
Twenty minutes is usually enough to tell whether I'm the right person. If I'm not, I'll say so.