Independent pieces of work. Buy the one that matches your problem.

No, and it should not. Your accountant handles compliance, statutory filings and tax — obligations with deadlines and legal consequences. This is the management side: what the numbers mean and what to do about them. Most clients keep both, and I am happy to work alongside whoever you already use, including talking to them directly so you are not relaying messages.

Because they are different deliverables. Bookkeeping records what happened; this work changes what happens next. A pricing review that lifts realised margin by two points on $2M of revenue is worth $40,000 a year, every year. The fee should be judged against the decision it improves, not against an hourly rate.

If a piece of work cannot be connected to money, risk or a specific decision, I will tell you that before you buy it.

A Financial Health Review is 5–7 business days. A focused project — pricing, a cash forecast, a controls review — is usually two to four weeks depending on how much has to be rebuilt from raw records. Retained work runs to a monthly calendar agreed at the start. Every proposal carries a delivery date, not an estimate.

Typically a general ledger or transaction export covering the last 12–24 months, an aged receivables list, a payroll summary, and whatever operational records you already keep — job sheets, timesheets, order data. Read-only reports, never system access or banking credentials. The request is specific, and if something on it does not exist we work around it.

No. Xero, Zoho, Sage, MYOB, an ERP, or a folder of spreadsheets. I work from the reports your system can already produce, so what you use is not a constraint and nothing needs migrating. If it will produce a transaction listing, that is enough to begin.

No, and waiting is how a year goes by. If the underlying records exist — invoices, ledger exports, payroll, bank statements — cash flow statements, aged debtors and costing analyses can be rebuilt from them. That rebuilding is frequently the first deliverable, and it is often the moment an owner sees the business clearly for the first time.

Below roughly $300k of revenue, a diagnostic usually finds less than a good bookkeeper and an hour of pricing arithmetic would. I will say so rather than sell you a review. From around $500k — particularly with staff, stock, or customers on credit terms — the questions start having expensive answers.

The method travels: cost behaviour, margin, cash timing and controls work the same way in a cleaning company, a clinic, a wholesaler and an agency. What changes is which drivers matter, and that comes out of the first conversation. Where an industry has genuinely specialised accounting — construction contract accounting, regulated financial services — I will tell you if it is outside what I can do well.

Yes — the work is remote by design and clients are in different time zones. Management accounting, costing and cash analysis are not jurisdiction-specific. Anything that is — statutory filings, tax positions, local audit requirements — stays with your local professionals, and I will say clearly when something falls on that side of the line.

Then we go through the workings, which is why you get them. Disagreement is usually about an assumption — how overhead should be shared out, what counts as a direct cost — and those are your decisions to make, not mine. If an assumption changes, the analysis gets rerun. What I will not do is soften a finding because it is unwelcome.

Nothing, unless you want it to. You keep the report and the schedules, and there is no follow-up sequence. Some clients come back a quarter later with the next question, some move to a monthly arrangement, and some do the plan themselves and never need me again. All three are fine outcomes.

A 30-minute call about the decision you are facing. If I can help, you get a fixed-fee proposal in writing with a defined scope and delivery date. If I cannot, I will say so and point you somewhere more useful. Nothing starts before you have agreed the scope and the price.