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These are the control gaps we find most often once a business has scaled past the point where one person can hold it all in their head.
No defined limits on who can approve what, so a £200 expense and a £50,000 supplier payment go through the same single click. One person leaving on holiday should never be a single point of failure for the bank account.
The close happens whenever someone gets around to it, reconciliations are inconsistent, and management accounts arrive too late to influence the decisions they were meant to inform. Nobody can say with confidence the close is complete.
Weak segregation of duties between purchasing, invoicing, and payment is one of the most common ways cash leaks out of a growing business, often well before anyone notices, and frequently surfaces as a finding in due diligence.
Without a defined KPI library and reporting standard, sales counts revenue one way, finance counts it another, and the board pack contradicts itself month to month. Decisions get made on numbers nobody fully trusts.
Former employees still hold live logins, junior staff carry senior-level permissions, and nobody can produce an access list on request. Over-permissioned systems are one of the first things an auditor or buyer's adviser will test.
Control weaknesses that have sat quietly for years suddenly become a formal finding the moment a statutory auditor, lender, or due diligence team starts asking for evidence. Fixing them under that kind of scrutiny costs far more than fixing them early.
A structured approach that improves control and reporting quality without creating bureaucracy that slows the business down.
We review approvals, payment controls, access rights, and reconciliations to identify exactly where risk sits, then prioritise it so you fix what matters first, not everything at once.
We design the payment run process, segregation of duties, supplier validation checks, and banking control points that protect cash without adding friction to day-to-day operations.
Payment fraud rarely announces itself. It hides inside a finance process nobody has stress-tested.
A documented close calendar, a complete reconciliation pack, and clear review sign-offs so close happens on the same schedule every month and produces numbers you can actually defend.
We define your KPI library, MI pack structure, variance standards, and reporting cadence so every department is reading from the same numbers, and the board pack stops contradicting itself.
Rebuilt the KPI library for a 40-person services business after sales and finance had been quoting two different revenue figures in board meetings for over a year.
Role-based permissions, periodic access reviews, and control points built into your finance systems and workflows, so the right people have the right access and nobody else does.
Purchasing, expenses, delegated authority, and core finance procedures documented clearly enough that your team can actually follow them, reducing the key-person risk that comes from process living in one person's head.
Most growing businesses end up choosing between three approaches. Here is what each one actually delivers.
| Capability | Consult EFC Controls & Governance |
Leave As Is Hope & habit |
Big Four Firm £40k+ retainer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Practical controls scoped to your actual size | ✕ | ||
| Reconciliation pack & close calendar built and handed over | ✕ | ||
| Partner-level attention throughout | ✕ | ✕ | |
| Fixed fee, agreed before work starts | ✕ | ✕ | |
| Risk addressed before it surfaces in audit or due diligence | ✕ | ||
| Right-sized for a 10 to 75 person business | ✕ |
Controls and governance only work when they fit the size and risk profile of the business, so we are deliberate about scoping the engagement correctly from the start.
You have crossed roughly 15 to 20 staff and the informal habits that worked when the founder reviewed every transaction personally no longer scale to the volume the business now runs.
You have an external audit, a debt facility, or a transaction on the horizon and want control gaps addressed and evidenced before someone outside the business finds them for you.
A funding round or a new finance hire is the natural moment to professionalise process, and you want it designed properly the first time rather than retrofitted under pressure later.
A duplicate payment, a missed reconciliation, or a reporting error has already caused a problem, and you want a proper diagnostic rather than a one-off fix that leaves the underlying gap in place.
We move quickly because the cost of a control gap compounds the longer it sits unaddressed.
We talk through your current process, headcount, and any specific incidents or pressures driving the need. You leave with a clear sense of where your highest risk areas actually sit.
We review approvals, access, reconciliations, and reporting to build a prioritised risk register. This diagnostic shapes the whole engagement so we fix what matters most first.
We build the approval matrix, close calendar, KPI library, and policy documents, designed around how your team actually works rather than a generic template.
We train your team on the new process, run the first close cycle alongside them, and hand over documentation your finance function will actually keep using once we step back.
Free · No obligation · Available within 48 hours
No generic frameworks and no hourly billing surprises. Share a little about your business and Kish will respond personally with where your priorities should sit and a fixed fee, usually within 48 hours.
Confidential · No obligation · Usually a response within 48 hours
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