A monthly management accounts service built for operators.

A monthly management accounts service delivers a profit and loss account, balance sheet, cash flow statement and variance analysis for a completed month, with written commentary. Accountaire issues the pack by the fifth business day, comparing actuals against the prior month, the prior year and budget where one exists.

Most SMEs receive management accounts late and shallow. Late, because the underlying books take ten or fifteen working days to close. Shallow, because the output is a P&L printout with no commentary, no variance analysis, and no view of what the numbers mean for the next month's decisions.

We do management accounting differently. The five-business-day close discipline gives leadership teams numbers while they're still relevant. Variance analysis is built in, not as an optional extra, but as the default treatment. Every monthly pack compares actuals against prior period, prior year, and (if you have one) budget, with written narrative on the meaningful gaps.

For businesses ready for it, we layer in Fathom or Spotlight: live dashboards that surface unit economics, customer cohorts, gross margin trends and cash runway in real time. The static pack remains the auditable record; the dashboards become the daily-look operational tool.

A monthly review call (optional but recommended) walks you through the pack with your lead accountant. We answer questions, surface trends you might miss, and flag the operational decisions that the numbers suggest. By the time you walk out of the call, the next month's focus areas are clear.

A five-day close is a sequence, not an effort. Day one is bank, card and payment processor reconciliation. Day two is accounts payable and accounts receivable cut-off, which is where most closes actually slip, because a supplier invoice dated the 28th and received on the 6th still belongs in the month it relates to. Day three is accruals, prepayments, depreciation and deferred revenue. Day four is review by a second pair of eyes against the prior month. Day five is commentary and issue. Anything that cannot be answered by day four goes in as a booked estimate with a named owner, rather than holding the pack.

These are management accounts, not statutory accounts, and the difference is worth stating plainly. Statutory accounts are the annual filing that a UK company files at Companies House, normally within nine months of the accounting reference date, in a prescribed format under UK GAAP or IFRS. Management accounts answer to nobody except you, which is exactly why they can be cut the way your business actually runs: by channel, by site, by cohort, by contract.

A worked example of what variance analysis is for. Gross margin falls from 62 percent to 57 percent in a month. The pack does not stop at the number. It shows that revenue mix moved 9 points toward a lower-margin channel, that freight per order rose $1.80, and that one supplier price increase landed on the 12th. Three causes, three different owners, one of which is a pricing decision and two of which are operational. A P&L without that split tells you something is wrong and nothing about what to do.

Revenue recognition is where sector detail decides the shape of the pack. A SaaS business recognising annual contracts over the term under IFRS 15 or ASC 606 needs deferred revenue and ARR reported alongside cash collected, because the three move independently. An online retailer needs marketplace settlement timing and inventory on the same page or the margin line is fiction.

The pack is only as good as the ledger under it, which is why this service assumes cloud bookkeeping is in place. Where the numbers need someone to argue with, the fractional CFO service adds the strategy layer and a rolling 13-week cash flow model. A clean monthly close also cuts audit fieldwork, which matters if audit preparation is on the horizon. Fees sit on the fixed-fee pricing page. Management accounts are one part of a wider range of accounting services that most clients draw two or three services from.