Education & Training: Part-time finance director, five days a month

Twin Training and Travel, based in Lewisham, started trading in 1993 from the spare room of their managing director’s house. In the years since, it has grown to a substantial size, providing educational and life learning experiences for students - work experience programmes, internships, English language courses, plus much more.

We were asked to get involved by Barclays in November 2004 following the departure of Twin’s financial controller, initially with a brief to produce reliable management accounts and a budget. But as is often the way, we stayed on to do much more.

Within two weeks we had prepared a set of management accounts, with - for the first time - a balance sheet, to assess the current position, and two weeks after that had produced a budget for 2005, which together gave the bank the comfort that it was seeking.

Accurate management accounts have been prepared on time every month since.

Our involvement has continued, following the recruitment of the new financial controller. Ian Parlane’s role is very much part-time finance director, attending board meetings, managing the accounts production process, updating forecasts and overseeing ongoing systems improvements.

The number of people in the accounts department has been halved. The 2004 statutory accounts were filed on time at Companies House (they were late in 2003), and our work resulted in an easier and more cost-effective audit.

Ian is on site about five days per month. On the back of the enhanced level of financial control in the business, Twin’s bank has agreed a higher financing level to support the company's growth.

Caroline Fox, joint MD, commented:

”Prior to the arrival of Ian as our FD, we were running the business without clear financial controls, budgets, forecasts, cost management systems or breakeven analysis. We were previously led to believe that because we were a group of companies, a group balance sheet would be impossible to produce. Ian immediately identified the true position within the group, oversaw cost reduction, and implemented a sales forecasting system in order for us to plan ahead and gain control of the whole company.

“The biggest lesson that my colleagues and I have learnt from Ian is financial discipline and the importance of planning acquisitions and business growth and concentrating on the detail.

“We cannot recommend Ian more highly; not only is he extremely professional and quick to grasp situations, he also has an excellent sense of humour".