Blog
Practical guidance on finance, compliance and sustainability
Written from engagement work rather than from a content calendar. These pieces are about how a finance function is run — the disciplines that hold up when a deadline, a lender or an assessment tests them.
A more informed next step.
Practical perspectives from engagement work
Published
Recent articles.
Strategy and research28 September 20267 min read
Quality of earnings: how much of that profit survives the sale
A buyer is not paying a multiple of last year's profit. They are paying a multiple of what they believe will still be there next year, under their ownership — and those are rarely the same number.
Strategy and research28 September 20266 min read
The working capital peg is where deals quietly lose money
The headline price gets the attention. The working capital mechanism, agreed in a paragraph near the back of the agreement, routinely moves more value — and usually in the direction of whoever understood it better.
Strategy and research28 September 20266 min read
Four advisers, four workstreams, and nobody reading the findings together
Financial, tax, legal and secretarial diligence are usually run by four firms reporting separately. Each report can be competent and the transaction still be mispriced, because the finding that matters sits between two of them.
Tax and compliance28 September 20266 min read
Payroll is not a monthly transfer. It is a compliance cycle.
Salaries going out on time feels like payroll working. The registrations, returns and records that sit around it are the part an inspection asks about, and they are usually the part nobody owns.
Controls that work in practice28 September 20265 min read
What a maker-checker actually prevents
Most businesses that skip separation of duties do so because they trust their people. That is usually well founded, and it is also not what the control is for.
Finance that informs decisions28 September 20266 min read
Your gross margin is an average, and averages hide the loss-makers
A healthy overall margin is compatible with a third of the range losing money. The aggregate figure cannot tell you which third, and pricing decisions made from it are guesses with a decimal point.
Finance that informs decisions28 September 20266 min read
A standard cost set once and never tested is a guess with a decimal point
Standard costing works when the standards are re-tested against what production actually consumed. Set at the start of the year and left alone, it produces a precise number that is quietly wrong, and prices set from it inherit the error.
Tax and compliance28 September 20265 min read
Tax advice after the transaction is just reporting
Once a deal is signed, a structure incorporated or an asset transferred, most of the tax outcome is fixed. What remains is describing it correctly. The window where advice changes the answer closes earlier than most people expect.
Tax and compliance28 September 20265 min read
The registrations nobody told you create obligations
A registration is treated as a box ticked at setup. Most of them start a recurring duty from the day they are granted, and the business only finds out when something is asked for.
Finance that informs decisions28 September 20266 min read
What a marketplace settlement report does not tell you
It tells you what the platform paid. It does not tell you whether that matches what you sold — and the difference between those two is where e-commerce margin goes.
Finance that informs decisions28 September 20266 min read
Deferred revenue, and why your ARR and your P&L disagree
Cash received, revenue recognised and annual recurring revenue are three different numbers describing the same contract. Treating them as one flatters the business until someone examines it.
Finance that informs decisions28 September 20266 min read
TPA receivables: the gap between discharge and payment
A hospital recognises revenue at discharge and is paid whenever the payer decides. Reported as one receivable balance, that gap conceals a working capital position that can be very different from how it looks.
Finance that informs decisions28 September 20266 min read
Cost to complete is the only number that matters
Two projects with identical spend to date can be in completely different positions. What has been spent is history; what remains to be spent decides whether the project still works.
Tax and compliance28 September 20266 min read
A notice has arrived. What to do in the first 48 hours.
The instinct is to reply quickly. The better first move is to establish precisely what is being asked and reconcile the position before responding, because a fast answer built on unreconciled data generates a second notice.
Finance that informs decisions28 September 20266 min read
When a business outgrows its bookkeeper
This is not a judgement about anyone's competence. It is about the point where the work stops being bookkeeping and starts being a finance function, and the signals are specific enough to check against.
Strategy and research28 September 20264 min read
What a first conversation with us actually covers
Not a pitch, and not a proposal. An hour spent working out what the real problem is, whether we are the right people for it, and what a sensible first step would be — including when that step is not us.
Finance that informs decisions21 September 20266 min read
What a dependable monthly close actually looks like
Most businesses do not have a slow close. They have an undefined one. The difference between books that are finished and books that are usable is a published calendar and a named owner for every step.
Tax and compliance21 September 20266 min read
Reconciliation is the compliance job. Filing is the easy part.
Most compliance trouble does not start with a missed deadline. It starts with a mismatch between what you recorded, what your counterparty recorded, and what the return says — discovered months after it could have been fixed cheaply.
Controls that work in practice21 September 20265 min read
What an internal audit is — and what it explicitly is not
The word 'audit' carries statutory weight in India, and that creates a persistent confusion. An internal audit and a statutory audit answer different questions, for different readers, under different authority.
SEZ and foreign trade21 September 20266 min read
SEZ records are a continuous discipline, not an annual assembly
Units operating under SEZ and export schemes carry an obligation to demonstrate, on request, that physical movement and recorded movement agree. That is a daily operating habit, and it does not reconstruct well.
Sustainability you can evidence21 September 20265 min read
Before you report on ESG, find out who owns the data
Most ESG programmes begin with a framework and a target. The question that decides whether either survives is duller and comes first: who, by name, produces each number, and from what.
Strategy and research21 September 20266 min read
What a lender reads before they read your P&L
By the time a credit team opens your financial statements, they have usually formed a view. It comes from how the information arrived: whether it was consistent, complete and internally reconciled.
A note on what you will not find here.
We do not publish rates, thresholds or filing dates. Those change, and a stale figure published under an advisory firm's name is worse than no figure at all. Nor do we publish fees. For anything specific to your circumstances, ask us directly — the answer depends on facts an article cannot know.