How a vertically integrated D2C food business passed a complex VAT audit, fixed their stock tracking, and finally achieved absolute financial clarity without hiring a generic Finance Manager.
The client is a fast-growing, vertically integrated food business. Despite 20 years of history, the business had been under-invested and had recently survived two administrations before being acquired by a new owner in 2025.
The owner soon realized the business was hemorrhaging money: losses were £45k/month vs an expected £15k, but had no idea where. Was it theft? Wastage? Poor butchery skills? Or simply bad margins? With no stock tracking system and a rudimentary P&L based on an incorrect Chart of Accounts set up by administrators, the data was invisible.
To fix this, the owner was about to hire a single junior Finance Manager to cover everything: bookkeeping, systems, stock, and strategy. A remit far beyond what one junior person could realistically deliver.
Legacy of Failure
20 years of issues and 2 administrations.
Triple Reported Losses
£45k loss vs £15k expected monthly loss.
Manual Risk
Handwritten intake sheets not matching invoices.
Inventory Blindness
Systematically black "disappearing" finished products.
Operational Black Box
Production data disconnected from finance.
Data Paralysis
Leadership were unable to trust any reported number.
The owner halted their recruitment process and appointed us to deploy a complete, modular finance team immediately. He now has access to an entire finance team, from Ledger Clerk to Strategic CFO, but crucially, he only pays for the exact number of hours he needs at each level.
We performed a forensic clean up of 12 months of trading data, correcting thousands of misallocated transactions. We engineered a manufacturing grade Chart of Accounts from scratch, transforming a black hole of data into a crystal clear financial map.
We replaced handwritten, blood stained delivery notes with Cin7, a robust cloud based stock tracking system. We configured it to handle complex meat assembly (1 carcass = 70 SKUs) and trained the staff to ensure 100% traceability for a clean VAT audit.
Our Financial Controller now drives the monthly management meetings to challenge performance. Our Strategic FD advises on long term valuation creation. The Finance Manager acts as the daily system owner, ensuring the numbers feeding the board pack are accurate.
We launched the Finance Command Centre with role specific views. We built live dashboards for the Production Manager (tracking yields & waste) and the Product Manager (tracking margins), alongside a consolidated cash view for the owner with automated forecasting.
By replacing a single point of failure with a robust, multi-disciplinary team, we transformed a chaotic, loss-making operation into a data-driven business ready for scale. Crucially, the owner now accesses an entire finance team, from Ledger Clerk to Strategic CFO, for the cost of a single hire, paying only for the exact hours needed at each level on a single subscription.
VAT AUDIT
The business faced a high risk VAT audit during a turnaround. Because we correctly cleaned the data and corrected historical coding errors, the audit concluded without a single penalty or adjustment.
LIVE INVENTORY
Gone are the days of manual stock takers. The business now tracks stock live. The Production Manager identifies wastage and theft issues in real time via the system, not at month end.
VS SINGLE HIRE
For the cost of the single junior hire they planned, the owner now accesses a multi disciplinary team: strategic guidance, forensic control, and operational support. It is a complete function, not just a person.
INTELLIGENCE
Data is no longer an island. Role specific dashboards for Sales and Operations give the team the agency to fix issues instantly, rather than waiting for month end reports.
A vertically integrated D2C food brand was losing £45k/month due to manual inventory blindness, poor financial systems, and historical data errors from previous administrations.
The Full Finance Stack deployed a modular team to forensicially clean 12 months of data, implement a Cin7 cloud inventory architecture, and provide ongoing board-level CFO oversight.
By unifying production and financial data, the business passed a high-risk VAT audit with zero penalties, securing the enterprise value for the new owner.
The business transformed from operational blindness to crystal-clear intelligence. Leadership now makes decisions based on real-time data for wastage, yield, and margins, eliminating the "data paralysis" that had plagued the brand for 20 years.
"Finance is no longer a bottleneck or a risk area; it is a platform that actively supports growth. We have visibility over our margins that we never had before."
— owner, D2C Food Group