Who we work with

We love supporting amazing businesses at every stage of their journey – from busy professionals to growing businesses.

For many, we are their guide

We are trusted advisors to our clients, often being the first port of call for questions about new things happening with their business.

However, as our clients are all different, they have specific needs, and they are at different stages of their business journey, we will wear many hats to cater to their needs. Guide, guru, mentor, coach, sensei...you name it, we’ve been them all.

Why? Because it’s all about the people in business for us.

Yes, we remove the burden of handling finances from business owners. But what really gets us out of bed in the morning is becoming an essential part of our clients’ journey.

Where are you on your journey?

Businesses are all unique in their journey, but we’ve identified three distinct stages our clients reach to help you identify where you are, and what sort of support you may need.

Busy Professionals

Square-Img-busy-professionals

"Knowing that stuff is under control and you're going to send me those little prompts and reminders. It just really helps."

Emily Sweetman.
Helping people and organisations to feel and do better.

Typical services for this stage of your journey:

  • Accounts, Corporation Tax and Confirmation Statement
  • VAT, Payroll, Xero Setup and Training, Interim Reviews
  • Personal Tax and Income planning

Service-based businesses at this stage tend to be one owner/director and are in business following a move out of employment,  knowing that they have a great business offering providing great quality service to their client base.    Once they are established, businesses like this will be generating 50k-100k+ income per year, working with larger businesses who maybe don’t have the skills in-house such as business consultancy, marketing, web designers/developers, coaches, personal development, training, therapists etc.

They might occasionally work with associates to deliver bigger contracts and possibly utilise the services of a virtual assistant to help keep on top of their business admin, it can still be overwhelming trying to covering all aspects of running a small micro business.

Our busy professional clients benefit from our hand-holding service when guiding them through their accounts and tax obligations. Our regular reminders, actionable updates, and when to do them, provide a better sense of control over their business finances, knowing that we’ve got them covered.

While they don’t necessarily have a high volume of transactions in their business and spreadsheets may be the default method to keep a record of their accounting transactions, they may still feel like they are too busy to keep on top of the business finances. This is where our time-saving tech solutions such as cloud accounting and document capture software can help as we can focus on finding the best ways for them to save time and keep on top of things.

Once they’ve moved past the early days of asking the question ‘can I make enough money to live off doing this’ they will have reasonably healthy cashflow with not a lot of expenses going through the business, but they will benefit from advice on how best to take money out of their business as personal income.

New Growth

Businesses at this stage have consciously chosen a strategy of growth and want to build a company that is more than just themselves, to provide the services for which they have created a good reputation. They will typically generate a turnover of £100-£500k and build a team around them to achieve this.

As they continue to provide their professional services to the same clients, they may expand their range of services to a broader client base.

The team could be made up of freelance collaborators or employed staff and could be anywhere between 1 and 10. However, the introduction of managing people and running the business can seem daunting even if they do know who they need to find.

These growing micro-businesses benefit from our hands-on guidance, taking them through the steps needed to get the business registered as an employer, satisfy their Auto Enrolment pension duties, and establish the right software needed to process payroll and communicate with HMRC.

These growing clients often find that meeting for more frequent business and finance reviews helps give them peace of mind that the finances are still under control and have everything covered.

The reviews are the perfect opportunity to discuss any other upcoming changes that may need to be addressed or identify any other tech tools that would help increase their business efficiency.

Their accounts and tax obligations remain the same, but there may be more costs to consider, such as wages, pensions, and office space. As a result, they need to keep a closer eye on ensuring their income is received timely and where costs are increasing to make sure the cash flow stays positive.

Using our practical experience from working within other businesses, we help them to protect their cash flow by giving advice to make sure invoices are paid promptly and help monitor short-term forecasting using tools such as Fluidly Forecasting.

Square-Img-The-New-Growth-Businesses-

"Working with WBS has freed us up to work more on our business rather than trying to muddle through doing our accounts. This has been invaluable as our company has grown and things have become more complex."

Mike Morrison of The Membership Guys
Helping others to start and grow online communities and membership websites via their Membership Academy

Typical services for this stage of your journey:

  • Accounts, Corporation Tax, Confirmation Statement
  • Quarterly or Six Monthly Busines reviews, Cashflow Forecasting, VAT, Payroll,
  • Personal Tax and Income planning

Scaling Up

Square-Img-The-Firmly-Established-Business

"A business should want their finance function to understand the business inside out, from the people, clients, business model, challenges, growth plan – everything! Without this complete knowledge, they’re unlikely to be getting the best out of them. With WBS, you get this.”

Ian McIntosh - MD and Co-Founder of Evolved Search, a specialist search marketing agency (SEO, Paid Search, Conversion Rate Optimisation).

Typical services for this stage of your journey:

  • Accounts, Corporation Tax, Confirmation Statement
  • Monthly Management Accounts, Process Improvements, Cashflow Forecasting, VAT, Payroll
  • Day to Day Communications via channels such as Slack
  • Personal Tax and Income planning

Businesses at this stage have moved past the initial phase of growth and have firmly established their services and structure to support scalable growth.  They will typically generate a turnover above £500k and have a solid team structure with a clear mid to long-term strategy to deliver the specific outcomes they are looking to achieve for the business.

They may not be ready to employ a full time professional, so we work closely with the management team to bridge any gaps there are when it comes to keeping the finance function running smoothly

The expanded team will be more substantial, and a senior management team will be in place to collectively make decisions about the future direction in which the business will move.

Having worked within service-based businesses for many years, we understand the importance of looking after the people who are the biggest asset of a service-based business. So we liaise with the accounts and HR function to ensure the payroll function runs smoothly to keep the team happy!

These businesses need more frequent and timely financial information to share with the management team to make the necessary decisions.

Working closely with the finance team, we step in to prepare and review monthly or quarterly management accounts to ensure that the information contained in them is accurate and representative of the business for that month. In addition, we can support the directors by attending their board meetings to help explain the finances.

Cash is king to businesses like this as the bills are more significant, so it is critical to ensure that the finance function is working proactively to ensure income is collected promptly and any issues discovered early.

With these types of clients, we can help with establishing budgets, in year forecasting, and cash flow planning to help keep on track with the business’s longer-term goals

To see real-life examples of how we’ve helped specific clients at each stage of their journey – see how we work with our clients

Cloud Accounting – for every stage of your journey

Wherever you are on your business growth journey, we can also help you work smarter and faster (not harder!) using Xero. We can help you gain immediate value from using this invaluable tool.

FreeAgent is an invaluable cloud accounting tool for small business owners and we’ve guided many in making the transition over from traditional accounting. As well as this initial step, we also support them in using this tool at every step in their business journey.