Real businesses. Real relationships.
Four problems established businesses often bring to MBS — and what changed once the accounting, bookkeeping and reporting behind them was properly sorted out.
See which one sounds familiar.
Each of these is a genuine MBS client story. Pick the problem that sounds most like yours to jump straight to it.
“We're busy, but we're not making enough money.”
On paper, this £1.5m IT services business looked like it was doing fine — plenty of work coming in. But nobody had properly gone through costs, pricing and margin service-line by service-line, and the business was quietly losing around £80k a year.
Going through the numbers properly — costs, pricing and margin, service line by service line — so the business could see exactly where money was, and wasn't, being made.
An £80k annual loss became a profit of more than £100k in the first year, without taking on new clients or a round of cost-cutting.
“A previous accounting problem has left us rebuilding.”
The problem. A VAT error made by this £3m turnover professional services firm's previous accountant wiped out an entire year's profit — and the business needed properly rebuilding from there.
What MBS helped with. Cleaning up and rebuilding the numbers, then supporting the business properly through the recovery.
What changed. The business is back to £3m turnover with annual profit of more than £600k — including a best month since of £135k profit.
“I don't really know how the business is doing month to month.”
This £800k service business had no real visibility on monthly profitability. Their previous accountant only got in touch months after the event.
Cleaning up the books and delivering proper monthly management accounts — visual, easy to read, and in every month by the 15th.
Within 90 days they were making decisions off the numbers every week — and in the first month, MBS caught a pricing problem that had been quietly running for two years.
“We're growing, but are we focusing on the right work?”
This £1.8m B2B services business had two revenue streams with very different margins — but day-to-day focus and effort weren't matched to that difference.
Revenue stream A
- Margin: around 30%
- Where most of the day-to-day focus was going
Revenue stream B
- Margin: closer to 60%
- Where the reporting showed the real profit sat
What changed. Once clear reporting made the margin gap obvious, the business could shift focus toward the more profitable stream — more profit, without more revenue or extra headcount.
A few more, from Google.
Highly recommended. A modern approach to accounting, we always feel on top of things and it's good to know so far in advance how much our tax bill will be, allowing time to prepare.
Absolutely amazing service and stress free accountants. The team are great and answer any questions big or small and we really trust them with our accounts.
MBS Accountants have been doing our company accounts for more than 7 years and their attention to detail and depth of knowledge is exceptional.
Your business doesn't need to look exactly like theirs.
The right place to start is with the problem you're trying to solve today.