We build the automated finance stack that lets you double your turnover without doubling your back-office headcount.
SMEs with turnover up to £10m are stuck in the middle – skilled finance teams buried under manual work that should have been automated years ago.
A bottleneck founder or a Finance Manager buried in paper invoices. You can't scale because your back office can't handle more volume. The solution isn't more people – it's better systems.
Every engagement follows the same proven structure – from understanding your current bottlenecks to a finance function that scales with your growth.
The Assessment anchors Stage 1. Implementation spans Stages 2–3. The Fractional retainer drives Stage 4.
Four interconnected service areas – each designed to remove a different layer of manual work from your finance function.
Here is what the same seven finance tasks look like before and after working with us.
| Stage | ❌ Manual – The Old Way | ⚡ After Digitisation |
|---|---|---|
| Invoice Processing | ✗Finance Manager manually keying invoices from email and post – hours lost daily | ✓Dext/Hubdoc OCR captures and codes invoices automatically – reviewed in minutes |
| Expense Claims | ✗Paper receipts, spreadsheet submissions, manual approval chains | ✓Pleo or Spendesk – real-time spend, digital receipts, auto-coded and approved |
| Bank Reconciliation | ✗Matching transactions one-by-one against the ledger | ✓Auto-matched bank feeds with confidence scores – exceptions only |
| Reporting | ✗2 days building Excel board packs – always out of date by the time they're shared | ✓Spotlight Reporting or Fathom – live board packs at the click of a button |
| VAT Returns | ✗Pulling figures from multiple spreadsheets, manual cross-checking | ✓Auto-populated from coded transactions, reviewed and filed in hours |
| Payroll | ✗Manual calculations, re-keying into multiple systems, email approval chains | ✓Automated payroll run with integrated approvals and same-day exception alerts |
| Audit Prep | ✗4 weeks of locating documents, reconciling ledgers, answering auditor queries | ✓2 weeks – digital audit trail, all documents in one place, queries answered same day |
| TOTAL SAVING | Across all 7 stages of your finance function | £29,000 – £49,000 / year |
Real outcomes from real engagements – anonymised but fully costed.
A growing SME with a Finance Manager spending the majority of their week on manual invoice processing and audit preparation. The audit was taking four weeks every year – consuming senior management time and delaying the annual accounts.
Following a Finance Digitisation Assessment and implementation of a cloud accounting system with automated document management, the company digitised its purchase and sales ledgers end-to-end.
Complete the Finance Digitisation Assessment and we guarantee your business will identify sustainable cost savings of 10–15% of your current finance operating costs – or you pay nothing.
Not a vague report. Not generic best practice. A specific, costed plan built around your team, your systems, and your budget – backed by 20 years of senior finance experience.
Three steps. No jargon. No surprises.
A qualified accountant with over 20 years of finance experience, including 11 years in senior leadership within the charity sector. We have a proven track record of transforming finance departments by identifying and implementing digital solutions that deliver lasting, measurable results.
We have worked hands-on with ERP migrations, process redesigns, automation programmes, and governance frameworks – always with the same goal: giving finance teams the tools and time to do their best work.
Book your free 30-minute discovery call. No obligation. No jargon. Just an honest conversation about where your finance function is today and what it could look like.
Contact Us ✉ sylvie@zemaconsultancy.com www.zemaconsultancy.com