Advisory & Analytics
Advisory & Analytics From the Books, Not Beside Them
A controller's and a CFO's judgement on a standing cadence — what the numbers mean and what to do about them — without hiring for either full-time.
Who This Is For
The usual reasons: a founder or an operator making decisions on numbers nobody has interrogated.
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What you receive
What It Includes
These are the standard services, grouped under the objective they serve rather than sold as a menu.
- A standing review of the numbers with the person who has to act on them — monthly, biweekly, weekly or daily, by the level you choose.
- KPIs defined and reported so each one says what it is and where it came from.
- Budgets and reforecasts, with variance explained against the plan rather than against nothing.
- A cash-flow forecast and runway that are maintained rather than built once and abandoned in a spreadsheet, and covenant headroom looked at before the certificate is due.
- Pricing, margin and unit-economics work grounded in your own ledger — and help hiring, briefing and eventually replacing us with an in-house finance team, when that is the right answer.
Advisory & Analytics — what you receive
Who owns the work
Review, With You, or For You
The same three postures apply to every category. What separates them is who owns the work: all yours at Review, shared at With You, all ours at For You. The final sign-off is your management’s on all three.
- Review
- All yours — your team builds the forecast, the budget and the board package…Review · Advisory & AnalyticsAll yours — your team builds the forecast, the budget and the board package; we read them and write back what we would challenge. We are not in the room.
- With You
- Shared — we build and maintain the forecast, the budget and the metrics…With You · Advisory & AnalyticsShared — we build and maintain the forecast, the budget and the metrics; your team supplies the inputs, takes them into the room and owns the decisions.
- For You
- All ours — we build the numbers and present them in the room, to your management and your board…For You · Advisory & AnalyticsAll ours — we build the numbers and present them in the room, to your management and your board; the decisions, and the sign-off on what is presented, stay yours.
What goes into Advisory & Analytics, and who does it at each posture
| The work | Review | With You | For You |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build the forecast, the budget and the reforecasts | You | Us | Us |
| Define the KPIs and report them, each saying what it is and where it came from | You | Us | Us |
| Maintain the cash-flow forecast and the runway, and look at covenant headroom before the certificate is due | You | Us | Us |
| Pricing, margin and unit-economics work from your own ledger | You | Us | Us |
| Supply the operating inputs | You | You | Us, we fetch what we need |
| Read what was built and write back what we would challenge | Us | — | — |
| Take the numbers into the room and present them | You | You | Us |
| Make the decisions, and sign off what is presented | You | You | You |
The final sign-off is your management’s on every posture; we never sign off on the books or on any engagement.
The boundary
What This Does Not Cover
We are not a signatory on your accounts and we do not move your money. We tell you what we would do; you do it.
What It Runs On
We do this work on Automate Accounting, which has its own page for the same objective. That page says what the software does; this one says what we do with it.
What you hold first
Before You Sign Anything
Three things you have in hand before anything is signed: the first from this site, the other two from the engagement letter.
Your Own Estimate
Before you write to us
A Written Scope and Price
Before we start
An Exit Named in Advance
Before we start
The first conversation is a look at your books and an honest answer about whether we are the right firm for this.