Nobody has three days to sort it out
Small organisations accumulate information in layers. A finance package that only one person understands. A dozen spreadsheets, three of them nearly identical. Files inherited from a treasurer who left in 2021. Bank statements as PDFs. Somewhere in there is the answer to a question the committee keeps asking — and getting it out takes days that nobody has, so it doesn't get done and decisions get made on a guess.
The work, in plain terms
Everything into one place
Multiple spreadsheets, system exports and PDF statements merged into a single dataset with consistent columns, formats and dates. Duplicates removed, names and codes standardised, obvious errors flagged rather than silently corrected.
Making the figures agree
Cross-checking one system against another — cashbook to bank, ledger to statements, membership list to income — and showing you exactly where and why they disagree, with the differences itemised rather than described.
What the numbers are telling you
Trends over several years, actual against budget, cost breakdowns by activity or site, income patterns by source, and comparison against similar organisations where published data allows it.
Something a committee can read
A written report with clear charts and commentary that explains what the numbers mean, not just what they are — written to be understood by people who are not accountants, because that is who has to vote on it.
Registers and records
Asset registers, membership and beneficiary lists, grant and funding records, contract and lease schedules — reconstructed from source documents where the original has drifted or been lost.
Something you can maintain
You keep the clean dataset and a working template with the formulas built in, so the next year's version takes an afternoon rather than starting again. We would rather not be needed twice for the same job.
Organisations with obligations and no finance department
The pattern is always the same: statutory or funder reporting to produce, a part-time officer or volunteer producing it, and a governing body that has to approve figures it cannot fully see behind.
Parish and town councils — budget models, multi-year trend analysis, reconciling the cashbook to the bank, rebuilding records for the year end.
Charities and CIOs — restricted and unrestricted fund analysis, donor and membership data, grant reporting, several years of accounts consolidated so trustees can see the direction of travel.
Village halls and community centres — hire income by room and by user, cost recovery, the case for a fee increase set out in numbers.
Sports and social clubs — subscription and membership records, bar and event trading analysis, ground and equipment registers.
PCCs and church bodies — consolidating parish records ahead of the annual return.
Internal drainage boards — rate and levy data, asset and maintenance records.
Residents' management companies — service charge analysis, arrears, apportionment across units.
If your organisation is not on that list but the description fits, it probably applies.
- Work carried out by
- Peter Edwards ACMA CGMA
- Experience
- 20+ years senior finance
- Typical turnaround
- Two to three weeks
- Fee
- Fixed, agreed before we start
- Data agreement
- Written, before anything is sent
Four steps, no obligation to start
1. A conversation. Tell us what question you are trying to answer and what state the information is in. We will tell you honestly whether it is worth doing and roughly what it involves. If the answer is that you could do it yourself in an afternoon, we will say so.
2. A written scope and a fixed fee. What we will produce, what we need from you, what it costs, and when you get it. Agreed before any data changes hands, alongside a written data-handling agreement covering what we receive, what we do with it and when it is deleted.
3. The work. We take what you have, in whatever state it is in. We will come back with questions where the records are genuinely ambiguous — and we will tell you what we assumed rather than quietly deciding.
4. Delivery. The report, the clean dataset, and the template. Plus a short note of anything we found along the way that you did not ask about but ought to know.
Your data is handled under a written agreement, used only for the work you have commissioned, never shared, and deleted on the timetable we agree. Where the information includes personal data, you remain the data controller and we act on your instructions. Our privacy notice sets out the detail.
Describe the mess
An email explaining what you are stuck with is enough to start. There is no charge for working out whether we can help.
peter@edwardsbros.co.uk
07540 288077
Peter Edwards ACMA CGMA · Director
Edwards Bros (Spaldwick) Ltd
Glebe Farm, Barham Road, Spaldwick,
Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire PE28 0YT