about...
20 years of useful, relevant experience, at your service
I started my first business 20 years ago - a small wine importer operating from home. It went through a number of incarnations (even achieving some notoriety in the notoriously stodgy wine trade for its slightly radical consumer-led approach!), before I somewhere lost my passion for it. It was a great grounding in all aspects of business - from marketing and finance through all aspects of general management, but they always said the only way to make a small fortune in the wine trade is to lose a large one. And since I didn’t have a large one to lose…
I adopted accountancy as a profession after being asked by my own accountant if I’d like to sort out the financial admin for a new client of theirs. Before I knew it I actually understood the difference between a debit and a credit and over the next 13 years went on to build a healthy and appreciative client base as a freelance management accountant.
I specialised in devising appropriate accounting systems, improving the quality of day to day financial control, and reducing year-end accountancy bills - and of course giving my clients clear, meaningful and timely management information and producing financial forecasts. It gave me exposure to businesses of many sizes in many sectors - and most importantly it’s been at the sharp-end of day to day accounting and business, rather than in the rarefied and often rather disconnected world of formal compliance accounting.
Along the way in recent years I co-founded and managed the finances of an internet start-up which raised £250k in business angel investment, and built a complex business model and forecast for a £5m incineration company which raised over £2m in a package of loan, asset and debt finance for capital expansion.
Over the last eighteen months I've been doing more and more forecasting and I've now embraced it as a speciality. It exploits my experience but It's more creative and rewarding than the more routine accountancy I've done for so long. My competitive 'edge' is stronger and I hope it’s something that will benefit you.
Simon Thompson
