The situation
An award-winning attraction, busy and planning to triple in size. The business was thriving, but its books were three to four years behind, held by an outgoing accountant on an old system, with no opening position anyone could stand behind.
An audit was coming, and the expansion needed a reliable base.
What we found
- Years of bank statements never recorded, some of them password-locked.
- Cash taken at the gates that had never been recorded in any ledger.
- The only anchor, the last audited balance sheet, was itself wrong: it left out real bank assets.
- VAT returns filed without a reconciliation behind them.
What we did
Recovered and unlocked four years of statements. We checked every month by recomputing the running balance, and rebuilt the ledger from the bank up, transaction by transaction.
Moved the books to Xero, opening on the audited position, with a formal correction for the error we found in it. Over 3,500 bank transactions were coded and posted against real customers and suppliers rather than one generic import account. The cash side was booked from their own sales records, and every one of the fourteen filed VAT returns was reconciled period by period.
A monthly close, the audit pack, and investment cases for the new projects.
None of the gate cash had ever been banked, so it couldn't be found in the bank. It had to come from the client's own sales ledger and then be proved against the filed VAT returns, rather than taken on trust.
For the first time, cash sales were recorded in a compliant manner.
Before and after
| Before | Now |
|---|---|
| Books years behind | Current, closed every month |
| Cash sales never recorded | Cash sales recorded in a compliant manner |
| An audit nobody could prepare for | Books tied to the bank to the fils |
| VAT returns with no reconciliation | Every return reconciled period by period |
| An expansion on estimates | New projects assessed on real numbers |
What runs every month
The monthly close in Xero, a weekly finance stand-up and live numbers on FinPulse.
