Welcome to Crunchers Bookkeeping

From investigating the websites of many other bookkeepers around the UK, it is clear that most accountants and bookkeepers provide a broadly similar menu of services for small businesses. 
 
Effectively they see their role as scorekeepers i.e. recording your income and expenditure, calculating PAYE and accounting for tax.  These activities are, of course, essential in any business but Crunchers  have a totally different mindset.
 
In and of themselves such activities are a cost to your business enabling you to comply with the tax regulations i.e. it reduces the bookkeepers role to acting as a glorified agent of HMRC. 
 
At Crunchers we make sure that the essential data recording activities are carried as cost effectively as possible, even to the extent of empowering you to do your own bookkeeping with our support if you wish.  Also, calculation of PAYE can easily and cheaply be handled online. 
 
We outsource the tax calculations, often working in tandem with your accountant, who is presented with fully accurate and reconciled bookkeeping records thereby utilising as little of your expensive accountants time as possible on low value activities.

But the potential saving in accounting costs is not the main benefit of working with Crunchers. 

As far as tax is concerned, our mindset is that you first have to make money, as much money as possible, before you even start worrying about saving tax. 
 
We think that much greater emphasis needs to be placed on producing meaningful management information that helps you to understand what is happening in your business so that you can take the necessary steps to improve and grow the business. 
 
For example, if your gross margin is reducing then you need to understand 'why' so that you can do something about it fast.  You need to understand things like your breakeven point, your liquidity position, whether debtor and creditor days are slipping.
 
More sales may not necessarily be a good thing if the bottom line is shrinking or you cannot pay your bills when they fall due.  Alternatively, what are the key activities required to grow your sales and what impact will they have on your cash flow?
 
Also, you need to understand whether the number of customers is growing or reducing, what the average transaction value and frequency are and why they are changing for better or worse. 
 
Does your management information allow you to test and record the impact of changes to your business? Do you know the profit contribution from each of your products and services?  How is the sales 'mix' changing?
 
In many businesses, battling for survival against the competition is a much more important priority than whether or not they can save a few pounds in tax, although this would of course help!
 
Every business has key points of leverage, key income and cost drivers - you need to know what those are in order to monitor them closely and improve them. 
 
In our opinion, producing and understanding this sort of information is the key role of the bookkeeping function in any business.  To regard bookkeeping in any other light is to waste the main value of the bookkeeping activity.

Do you want a 'score-keeper' or a 'score-maker'?
 
So next time you are considering a bookkeeper, ask yourself whether you are getting what you need from the bookkeeping function in order to control and grow your business. 
 
If you are 'flying by the seat of your pants', then maybe you need to find a different type of bookkeeper, one that can help you to change the bookkeeping function from a 'cost' to an 'investment'.
 
We taker a wider view on how your bookkeeping fits into your business.

How to Improve the Profitability of Your Business

To illustrate how knowing the right kind of information can have a dramatic impact on the profitability of your business, we have written a short e-book entitled 'How to improve the profitability of your business' - simply input your contact information below and we will send you a copy.

This e-book discusses such topics as:

What Crunchers Can Do For Your Business

We can help you to improve and understand the information you are currently extracting from your existing bookkeeping system.

If you are inexperienced with bookkeeping or have little financial knowledge we can quickly train you to use our own simple bookkeeping system.  With around 90 minutes of video training, you will be able to confidently start doing your own bookkeeping and we will support you all the way. 

The software will be configured to provide only the information that you need to run your business.

If you prefer us to do the bookkeeping, you can hand over the whole problem to us and we will send you monthly or quarterly reports on your progress.

Alternatively, we can do a combination where you do some and we will do the bits you don't want to do.  In other words, we are flexible and we will tailor our service to meet your needs.