A specialist school which provides music, dance and drama training for its students (ages 7 to 21) with a turnover in excess of £3.5m. When I was initially engaged the school had, for a number of reasons, been forced into its bank’s business support department and was experiencing severe cash flow difficulties. My initial instruction was to assist the Board of Directors with preparation of an integrated forecast pack required by reporting accountants who had been put in by the school’s bankers.
I successfully completed this first piece of work, getting agreement from the bank to the recovery plan, but at the bank’s request was retained to oversee close management of the school’s cash flow which they felt I was crucial to. During discussions with the School’s board it became clear that they were in desperate need of an improved monthly reporting pack together with a number of other improvements in the finance function.
The monthly reporting pack was implemented and I was asked to continue to produce this pack, report to the board and assist within the finance function as necessary.
In the last 9 months the board took the decision to embark on a further phase of expansion. This required a revised business plan to be prepared together with an integrated thee year forecast pack to support an application to the School’s bankers to provide the necessary funding.
Having secured this funding, the bank has asked the client to provide monthly cash and profit reporting during the development phase as well as close monitoring of the project itself. The building was successfully handover to the client last month.