For UK founder-led businesses

FullFinancialControl. Senior Finance Support for founder-led businesses across the UK.

Experienced UK finance oversight for founder-led businesses — without the cost or commitment of hiring a full-time Finance Director.

Book a finance review

A short conversation about what's working, what's stretched, and where better support could help.

The problem

Your business has grown. Your finance setup needs to catch up.

As your business grows, finance gets harder to manage with the same setup. Four shifts happen before founders notice.

  • 01

    Invoices go out late.

    → Cash is not coming in as quickly as it should.

  • 02

    Payments become reactive.

    → There is not enough control over cash going out.

  • 03

    Reports take longer to prepare.

    → Month-end is not giving you the clarity you need.

  • 04

    Finance becomes a bottleneck.

    → Decisions slow down. Risk goes up. The business carries it.

You've outgrown your current setup

Six signs the finance layer needs an upgrade.

If three or more of these are familiar, your finance setup is being held together by founder time and luck.

  • Month-end close takes longer than 10 working days, and reports land after decisions are needed.

  • You catch errors and unusual numbers yourself, after the fact, rather than the system flagging them.

  • Different teams are running off different numbers — sales, ops, and finance never quite line up.

  • Finance lives in one person's head. If they were unavailable, the business would stall within days.

  • You're spending nights on spreadsheets that should have been automated routines a year ago.

  • Cash decisions are made on instinct because the forecast isn't trusted — or doesn't exist.

What this means for you

Finance, made easier to manage.

Senior Finance Support means an experienced finance professional sits inside your business — on retainer, not on payroll. Reviewing your numbers, tightening the routine, owning the cadence. The hands-on accountant or bookkeeper stays in place. We sit one layer up, making sure the work happens, the numbers are trusted, and the founder gets time back.

Senior finance support

What we cover

What we help put in place.

  • Creditors Review

    Invoices issued on time, in the right format, with the right follow-up behind them. Helping reduce debtor days and free up working capital.

  • Payables Review

    A structured payment process, with approvals in the right place and fewer surprise outflows. Suppliers are paid on terms, not chased at the last minute.

  • Month-end reporting

    A clean monthly close. Financial information that becomes usable for reporting and decision making.

  • Finance controls

    Approval thresholds, segregation of duties, audit trail. The boring layer that prevents the expensive mistakes.

  • Cash visibility

    Helping you understand what is coming in, what is going out, and what needs attention.

  • Process structure

    Repeatable routines documented so finance doesn't depend on one person. The business carries less risk; the team carries less load.

Compare your options

How Senior Finance Support compares to the alternatives.

Bookkeepers, accountants, Senior Finance Support and Finance Directors all serve different functions for a business. This section shows where each row fits and the gap Senior Finance Support is designed to cover.

Bookkeeper

Day-to-day finance ops
Yes — primary role
Statutory + tax filings
Often not
Forward-looking advice
No
Strategic + board input
No
Cost (typical UK)
£500–£2k / mo
Best fit
Pre-revenue → £1m

Accountant

Day-to-day finance ops
Reviews only
Statutory + tax filings
Yes — primary role
Forward-looking advice
Occasional
Strategic + board input
Limited
Cost (typical UK)
£3k–£10k / yr
Best fit
Every business needs one

Senior Finance Support

Day-to-day finance ops
Strengthens + structures
Statutory + tax filings
Coordinates with accountant
Forward-looking advice
Yes — core role
Strategic + board input
Yes — monthly cadence
Cost (typical UK)
Scope-based monthly
Best fit
£1m–£25m founder-led

Full-time Finance Director

Day-to-day finance ops
Yes — oversees
Statutory + tax filings
Yes — oversees
Forward-looking advice
Yes — core role
Strategic + board input
Yes — daily
Cost (typical UK)
£90k–£140k / yr + equity
Best fit
£25m+ / pre-IPO

The deliverable

What improves inside your finance function.

Senior Finance Support strengthens the finance function behind your reporting, forecasting and financial decision making.

  • Finance performance review
  • Internal control improvements
  • Cleaner financial information
  • Scalable finance structure
Senior finance support
EM

Senior advisor

Enting Man

Founder, Cunos Consulting

Senior advisor

I have spent over a decade working across finance functions in private and publicly funded businesses, founder-led companies, and MNCs across APAC. What I kept seeing was that growing businesses do not always need more finance admin. They need better finance structure.

Founders are often very strong at what they do, but the finance function can become reactive, manual, or unclear as the business grows.

Cunos exists to help at this stage. We provide senior finance support on a retainer basis, sitting alongside your accountant and bookkeeper to make the numbers more reliable, the processes stronger, and the finance function easier to scale.

Enting Man

Founder, Cunos Consulting

Who this is for

If this sounds like you,
the fit is good.

Senior Finance Support is designed for founder-led businesses that have outgrown bookkeeping but can't yet justify a full-time Finance Director. Especially useful when finance has quietly become the founder's job — and growth needs a senior pair of hands without the full-time cost.

By industry — SaaS Digital agencies Professional services

You have

  • A high-growth founder-led business
  • An accountant or bookkeeper already in place.
  • Growth that's outpaced the finance setup.
  • A leadership team that needs better numbers.

You need

  • Senior finance oversight without hiring a full-time FD.
  • A monthly cadence the leadership team can rely on.
  • Financial information you can use to make real decisions.
  • Finance to stop being a bottleneck in the business.

How we work

Four steps to bring structure to the finance function.

  1. Week 1 01 / 04

    Review the current setup

    A short call and read-only system review to understand how finance currently works before we recommend changes.

  2. Week 2 02 / 04

    Identify what needs attention

    We highlight what is working, what needs attention, and where better structure would have the most impact.

  3. Month 1 03 / 04

    Create a cleaner month-end close

    We improve the month-end routine, tighten key controls, and make the numbers easier to trust.

  4. Monthly 04 / 04

    Keep the finance function on track

    We review progress, make improvements, and keep the finance setup aligned as the business grows.

The engagement

How working together actually looks.

  1. Week 1 01 / 03

    Discovery + finance review

    A short, structured review of how finance currently runs.

  2. Weeks 2–4 02 / 03

    Routine + controls in place

    We build a structure with your team to maintain strong controls and clean finance procedures.

  3. From month 2 03 / 03

    Retained advisory

    A senior finance partner on retainer providing regular reviews, ad-hoc strategic calls and ongoing support.

Cadence

Monthly retained

Commitment

Rolling, no lock-in

Pricing

Scope-based — shared after the review

The outcome

A finance function that feels less reactive.

With the right support, finance becomes easier to manage. You have clearer processes, cleaner reporting, fewer missed steps, and a stronger foundation for making decisions.

The aim isn't to make finance more complicated. It's to make it easier to see what's happening, what needs attention, and what to do next.

FAQ

Questions founders ask before booking.

office@cunos.co.uk
  • A bookkeeper records the numbers. An accountant files them. Senior Finance Support sits at the layer above — making sure the numbers are reviewed, decisions are informed by them, and the finance function is structured to scale with the business.

  • Roughly one focused session per month, plus the occasional decision call. The point of Senior Finance Support is to take finance management off the founder, not to add another standing meeting.

  • Yes — we work alongside whoever you already have in place. We typically plug into Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite, or whatever you run on. We do not replace your accountant; we strengthen the layer between them and you.

  • Founder-led businesses doing roughly £1m to £25m in revenue, where finance has outgrown basic bookkeeping but a full-time Finance Director is either too expensive or too soon.

  • No long lock-in. The retained advisory engagement runs month to month after the first review. We aim to make the value obvious; if it stops being obvious, you can stop.

  • Scope-based. We agree on what is in and out of scope during the initial review, then a fixed monthly fee that reflects the cadence you need. No hourly billing, no surprises.

  • Month one is mostly diagnostic and structural — rebuilding the reporting layer, plugging into your stack, and tightening the close. Most clients describe a “before and after” moment around month two or three, when the monthly pack becomes the spine of how the leadership team runs the business.

  • Yes. Senior Finance Support is an oversight + advisory layer, not a replacement for your bookkeeper or finance admin. Your team keeps doing what they do — we make sure the structure, controls, and reporting around them are designed to scale.

  • Yes — standard practice. We sign a mutual NDA before any data is shared. The first review is confidential, and there is no obligation to engage further afterwards.

Next step

Ready to take finance off your plate?

Book a 30-minute finance review. We'll look at what's working, what's stretched, and where better support could help. No commitment after.