Twenty-two years in business, and finally able to see it

Gary had been running his business for over two decades, but he'd never really been able to see it. He'd inherited the person who looked after his finances when he split from a former partner, and everything stayed grey. He couldn't put a proper business plan together, the cost analysis didn't stand up, and he never quite knew how much the business owed at any one time.

We got him onto a cloud system and, as he puts it, everything turned crystal. He could finally see what was coming in and what was going out, with projections to match. We found money sitting uncollected too. As a subcontractor he had retention held back on completed jobs that nobody had been chasing, so we put a system in place to make sure it gets claimed. I go into his bank and invoice finance meetings with him now, with the numbers ready, so he's never the one promising to get back to them on a question.

One thing he didn't expect. After a while I told him he no longer needed me two days a week, that one would do. He took that as a sign he could trust me, rather than the other way round.