Finance Partner to Owners
Your business has grown. Has your finance support grown with it?
A fractional CFO for owner-managed businesses across Northern Ireland, the UK and Ireland.
- Chartered Management Accountant, ACMA CGMA
- Former Big 4 manager, leading a team of ten
- Finance leadership in private-equity-backed businesses
- M&A and post-acquisition integration
Whitepark Bay, County Antrim
The gap
Profitable, and still flying half blind.
You can run a profitable business and still be guessing at the things that matter.
If your margin is an estimate and your cash position is whatever the bank says this morning, the reporting is landing too late to be any use.
Your accountant is doing their job. Statutory accounts, tax and VAT get handled, your bookkeeper processes the transactions, and none of it was ever meant to tell you what to do next. Nobody sits above it turning the numbers into decisions.
That is the job here.
Whitepark Consulting is the commercial layer above that. It picks up the questions you have been carrying around: whether your pricing has moved in three years, and which of your best-looking clients is quietly costing you money. It answers what the business would be worth if you wanted out in five.
These are answerable questions. You have probably just never had anyone in the room whose job it was to answer them.
Four ways in
Two fixed-fee diagnostics, an ongoing relationship, and scoped project work.
The retainer is the core relationship. If you are not sure yet, start with the audit.
-
01
Fractional CFO
The core relationship: a finance director in your business, every month.
From £1,500
per month
Ongoing
-
02
Financial Clarity Audit
The fixed-fee diagnostic, if you are not sure where to start.
£3,500
fixed fee
3–4 weeks
-
03
Exit Readiness Review
For owners with investment or an exit in view.
£4,750
fixed fee
6–8 weeks
-
04
Strategic Projects
Defined pieces of work with a deliverable and an end date.
From £5,000
scoped and fixed before work begins
Typically 4–12 weeks
What you get
Six areas, rated on a single page.
Every diagnostic ends in a scorecard, benchmarked against how a well-run business of your size actually operates. A green rating means you can leave that area alone, and a red one means it is costing you money this month.
Financial Clarity Scorecard
- Turnover
- £4.2m
- Staff
- 38
- Reviewed
- 4 weeks
- Overall
- Act now
- Rated red
Cash
Debtor days at 74 against a 45-day benchmark. £310k sitting outside terms. No forward cash view beyond the bank balance.
- Rated red
Margin
Profit is visible at company level only. Three of eleven job types are probably loss-making and nobody can prove otherwise.
- Rated amber
Pricing
Rates unchanged since 2023. Recovery running at 71% of standard. Discounts agreed on the shop floor, not reviewed.
- Rated amber
Finance function
Month-end closes on working day 18. One person holds the ledger, the payroll and the bank. No cover, no documentation.
- Rated amber
Reporting and KPIs
A profit and loss account, six weeks late. No cash forecast, no order book view, no agreed KPI set.
- Rated green
Owner position
Drawings comfortably covered by profit. £250k of undrawn facility. Succession not yet discussed with the next generation.
The rating is the easy part. What follows it is the top five risks and what each will cost you, then a ranked ninety-day plan with the cash or profit impact set against every action.
See the Financial Clarity AuditReadiness Scorecard
- Turnover
- £6.8m
- Shareholders
- 2
- Horizon
- 2–3 years
- Reviewed
- 7 weeks
- Rated amber
Quality of earnings
£165k of £260k in add-backs will survive scrutiny. The rest are running costs wearing a different name.
- Rated red
Owner dependency
Both shareholders sit personally in all ten of the largest client relationships. Nothing is held by the business.
- Rated red
Revenue quality
Largest client is 31% of revenue on 30-day rolling terms. 62% of income is project work with nothing contracted beyond it.
- Rated amber
Due diligence survivability
Monthly reporting stops at gross margin. Job costing lives in a spreadsheet that reconciles to nothing.
- Rated green
Structural hygiene
Shareholder agreement current and signed. Intellectual property and property titles sit where they should.
- Rated red
Owner readiness
Interviewed separately, the two shareholders described different timelines, two years and five, and different numbers.
What follows this one is the earnings a buyer will actually accept, the gap between that and what you need to net, and a twelve-month plan to close it.
See the Exit Readiness ReviewThese are designed to tell you things you would rather not hear. That is what you are paying for.
In a client's words
Peace of mind, and the numbers to back it up.
Richard Creed
Founder and Principal, Creed Solicitors
“Before working with Bryan, I ran Creed Solicitors the way many founders do: busy, doing good work, but making commercial decisions largely on instinct. As sole shareholder, I also had no one to test my thinking against. Every decision about pricing, cash and the direction of the business sat with me.
I brought Bryan in because I wanted an experienced finance perspective from someone who understands how professional services firms work, and who would challenge me rather than simply report the numbers back.
Bryan prepares a three-to-six-month financial forecast for the business, including runway modelling, so I have the actual numbers showing where the business stands rather than relying on an educated guess. Knowing we're in a good place, and being able to see it, has genuinely eased my mind.
Just as valuable is the way he thinks about the business. Bryan encouraged me to focus on building a recurring revenue base through client retainers, rather than bouncing from one piece of project work to the next. We're working towards evening out the peaks and troughs, which will give the firm stable foundations to grow from. It's changed how I approach business development.
The biggest change is peace of mind, along with a much clearer view of where I want to take the business. Bryan quietly challenges my thinking on the direction of the firm, and I have someone experienced to bounce ideas off who keeps me accountable for following through.
Beyond the numbers, Bryan is simply a lovely person to work with: positive, clear and straight-talking. He checks in regularly to see how things are going without ever being pushy, and he's always happy to pick up the phone.
If you're running a professional services business, particularly as a sole owner, I'd strongly recommend talking to Bryan. He'll give you the numbers to back your judgement, and the perspective to sharpen it.”
Who you are dealing with
The person you meet is the person you are dealing with.
Bryan Carson is a Chartered Management Accountant who spent his early career at a Big 4 firm, running a transformation programme and a team of ten. After that came senior finance roles in private-equity-backed and international businesses, including M&A and the integration work that follows it.
So when the conversation turns to what a buyer will accept as sustainable earnings, he has sat on both sides of that table.
Start with a conversation.
If you own a profitable business and you are making decisions on information you do not fully trust, that is the conversation worth having.
Book a callThirty minutes, and you will know whether it is worth taking further.