Challenge  

Brearley and Co want to help businesses and sole traders achieve their own business and personal goals. Whether that’s growth overseas, new acquisitions, or increasing margins, they’re ready to offer advisory to help clients succeed. One of the key challenges they face is using clients’ financial information to generate reports that help directors get mortgages and limited companies borrow or secure finance.

Solution

Through the tailoring of several unique reporting packages, Brearley and Co enable their clients to hold their staff accountable in the different areas of their businesses. Managers and business owners can clearly see the areas of their business that need new strategies to achieve their goals.

Results

Since adopting Futrli, Brearley and Co have automated many of their processes, ensuring they get to spend more time performing advisory services. After liaising with banks, they can now create reporting packages that may be used with every lender on the market. One of their proudest recent achievements includes helping a client achieve £1.25 million profit.

Interview in full

Tell us about Brearly and Co

Brearley and Co are a firm based in South Yorkshire. They have three offices based in Swinton, Dinnington and Barnsley with plans to expand in the future. Across these three sites, they look after a wide-ranging portfolio of clients, including thousands of limited companies and around 200 sole traders. Brearley and co are unafraid to admit that they find compliance boring and mundane, favouring advisory services as central to their offering.

Tell us about what brought you to Futrli

Brearley and Co had used Excel for their reporting and forecasting needs. All their accounting information was generated manually in these Excel templates which didn’t offer the flexibility needed for their clients. To achieve the dynamic freedom they needed, they had attempted to layer formulas on top of these templates which – though functional – was often clunky and time-consuming.

In a drive to automate these processes, Brearley and Co looked to technological solutions. Futrli came highly recommended by a senior partner at the firm. Following a meeting at an accounting conference and a demo, it was time to put Futrli to the test and use it on their clients.

Tell us about a client who has benefitted from your advisory services.

Brearley and Co had a new client four years ago in the entertainment industry. They were turning over around £5 million but making poor profits. Their inconsistent support from previous accountants had left the business confused and in need of direction.

Brearley and Co stepped in and took over management accounts and started generating reports with Futrli. The company’s gross margin had previously inconsistently bounced around from 90% to minus 20%. In the first year, Brearley and Co were able to confront this issue and get their gross margin to consistently around 35-45%.

This was great news, but the client sought to improve their margins further. Over the next six months, they wanted to increase their margin to 50%. Brearley and Co were able to step in and offer advice for streamlining costs. Unprofitable spending in marketing was cut, they ensured wages reflected a percentage of sales, and finally, they readdressed their pricing structure.

The result? They are currently sitting on a 50% gross margin and are looking at around £1.25 million on their bottom line. The reports made in Futrli that Brearley and Co provide for their client enables them to make critical pricing and spending decisions. Feeling informed, management can go back to their team and implement changes in line with their vision for the future.

What role has Futrli played in your success?

Brearley and Co are perennially expanding their services, especially with existing clients. Typically, clients initially ask for one set of management accounts a year. But after seeing the reports that Brearley and Co produce, they find such value in the material that they often want more. Yearly accounts become quarterly accounts, and quarterly accounts become monthly. This generates more income for the firm and improves the relationships between Brearley and Co and their clients.