What is a VFO?
We are often asked what is a Virtual Finance Office or VFO? A Virtual Finance Office replaces the more traditional in-house finance department or team, with an external third-party virtual finance team.
How does a Virtual Finance Office differ from an outsourced finance function?
Outsourcing your finance function often involves the sending out of work just for processing. In contrast a Virtual Finance Office not only provides the processing of transactions and production of information, but also greater additional financial input, support and advice.
A good Virtual Finance Office, like that provided by Streets VFO, should ideally feel and act like it’s part of your team or business, helping to ensure the quality of work and acting in the interests of you and your business.
Why might a business or organisation use a Virtual Finance Office?
The key reasons that businesses choose to use a virtual finance office include:
- To take advantage of access to professional financial advice and support, often only available or enjoyed by larger more established businesses.
- To address challenges around recruiting, training, and developing an in-house finance department.
- To have greater control of the management of in-house teams and costs.
- To ensure consistency and continuity of service and work with less pressure or impact faced through absenteeism, holidays, illness and staff changes.
- To focus resources on other areas of the business that underpin growth and expansion.
- The cost of a VFO service can often be less, typically by up to 50%, than having your own in-house finance department.
What are the benefits of using a VFO?
Along with the reasons why you might use a Virtual Finance Office, there are a number of other benefits including:
- It frees up entrepreneurs, business owners, directors and managers time, allowing them to focus on the running and development of the business.
- Your VFO team can grow with your business, with the ability to simply add to your VFO team as and when needed. This provides peace of mind that going for growth will not be held back by the size or make-up of your finance department.
Who might benefit from a VFO?
Whilst most businesses and organisation needing a finance team or resource can benefit from a VFO, it can often be more suited to the following:
- Rapid growth enterprises and scale-ups, including those in the FinTech, digital and ecommerce sectors.
- Those in the hospitality, construction and recruitment sectors.
- Those that might have reached £500,000 in annualised turnover and are seeking more hands-on financial assistance.
- Those businesses that have external investors, runway funding, business angels or other enterprise loan investments or funding.
- Those with more complex finance systems or those looking for a fully integrated financial management service.
Streets' Virtual Finance Office service is detailed below:
- YE Account & Corporation Tax
- Director’s Tax Return
- Monthly Bookkeeping
- VAT Returns
- Payroll
- Accounts@ email service
- Xero Licence
- Receipt capture app
- Weekly Bookkeeping
- Monthly or Quarterly Management Reports
- Creditor/supplier payments
- Credit control and debt collection
- Forecasting & variance reports
- Budget & variance reports
Our virtual finance office is based on our use of Xero. In delivering our service we are experienced with apps used by clients – these include Shopify, Stripe, Wix, EPOS Now, LightSpeed, Square, MarketMan, Homebase, TouchBistro, Planday, Revel, Harri, SumUp, Dojo and many more.
Streets VFO has been developed by Ben Steele and Ryan Saward.
Ben Steele is a Chartered Certified Accountant with 15 years’ experience looking after SMEs. He has started his own business from scratch with nothing, so understands the trials and tribulations of growing and running a business.
Ryan Saward is a Chartered Accountant with 10 years’ experience including a Top 4 firm, as well as working in finance teams in industry, working for multi-million pound corporations.
Ben and Ryan are supported by Damon Lisseman, their VFO Manager, who also has experience of running his own small businesses, as well as running finance departments for larger businesses single-handed.
Street VFO look after clients across the UK.
To find out more about the Streets VFO service or to obtain a quote please email streetsvfo@streets.uk or call 0117 332 3640. Alternatively please complete the contact form below.