CloudCFO: accounting with a rock and roll approach
Helping independent businesses rethink their books
We sat down with Rich, founder of CloudCFO, to learn how his unique approach to accounting — ‘Rock and Roll accounting’ — is helping independent businesses rethink their books.
How did CloudCFO come about and what’s the offering?
CloudCFO came about somewhat by accident, after a break from a traditional ‘Big Four’ accounting stint, Rich started getting texts from friends about helping with keeping the books with their restaurants and bars. But before that started he says: ‘I used to be cool… I played in bands, and I try to bring that same energy to the marketing and of course, offering of CloudCFO.’
‘In my more traditional corporate accounting career stint, I ended up in M&A, feeling a bit like Patrick Bateman for a short while, before finding myself in a start-up in the peak of London’s startup growth around Shoreditch.’ Rich explains his eventual destination of the early stage start-up scene is what taught him a far more agile approach to finance: ‘In short, I learnt what it would and could look like to deploy a virtual Finance Director in that scale of business… So after a few texts from friends to help them out with their tax bills for their restaurants, I ended up running an accidental virtual Finance Director side hustle for nearly three years.’
Today, CloudCFO is a collection of three accounting practices, each designed to service a slightly different scale and mode of independent business operator. Rich still likes to bring his true self to those offerings, in what he calls ‘Rock and Roll accounting.’ Rich loosely defines Rock and Roll accounting as non-traditional and actionable, allowing clients to ‘do less keeping the score and more trying to win the game.’
Rich’s approach to accounting processes and client experience differs greatly from that of the very start of his journey into the profession, via big four accounting frameworks and workflows. At its core, his Rock and Roll fundamentals are about agility and energy that grants CloudCFO’s clients a level of fluidity in their financial planning; the very same fluidity that Apron is also centred around.
Apron impact
‘While in that side hustle phase, I spent time exploring products, outsourced teams and everything in between so that we could better improve our service to clients…we found Apron when they reached out via The Accountants Growth Club and it felt like the perfect partner and of course, tracks with my manifesto of Rock and Roll accounting’ Rich says, as he thinks back to how Apron fell into the CloudCFO armoury.
For Rich, the proposition is simple, it’s to have the slickest workflows possible across all tasks CloudCFO takes care of for the clients. Apron allows for all this and in turn, CloudCFO is able to spend more time informing their clients on logical steps for growth; Rich gives an example: ‘With some of our restaurant clients, we’re right in the weeds thanks to the accuracy of the data and can provide context on average spend per cover (booking) and things that these guys have never had access to before with such ease…helping us work through and forecast what growth will look like for them is really important.’ The backdrop to unlocking forecasting and cashflow rigour isn’t news to independent business owners and operators today: in the UK alone, 82% of businesses fail due to poor financial management; the core at which Rich says is rooted in simply knowing what’s likely going to happen and how to respond to it, also known as: forecasting.
‘In short, Apron unlocks actionable insights for our clients, with its Xero integration and all-encompassing payables function, there’s great visibility with relatively little legwork… we know that this helps our clients and allows me to stay true to my version of accounting, which is focused on agility and of course, a bit of Rock and Roll.’
