The Pelican Finance Health Check

Know whether your finance function is helping or holding your business back.

The Pelican Finance Health Check is a fixed-fee, CFO-level review of your cash visibility, reporting, controls and finance priorities. You receive a practical scorecard, the top risks, the actions to take first, and an honest view on whether further CFO support is justified.

Fixed fee. £2,500 standard, or £3,500 with one focused deep dive.

Book a Health Check scoping call Ask whether the Health Check is right for your business

Weak information is itself a finding. You do not need perfect reporting before asking for help.

Is this familiar?

Most business owners who book a Health Check describe a symptom rather than a finance problem. These are the ones we hear most often.

  • Cash feels tighter than profit suggests it should.
  • Management accounts arrive too late to change decisions.
  • You do not know whether reporting is reliable enough to run the business on.
  • The business is growing, but control is not keeping up.
  • The finance team is busy but still not producing insight.
  • Your accountant is useful for compliance, but nobody is giving strategic finance opinion.
  • Forecasting is weak, informal or spreadsheet-dependent.
  • Debtor, margin or working-capital issues become visible too late.
  • You are tired of being the only person worrying about cash.

The aim is to move away from running the business on anecdotes and towards decisions backed by reliable financial information. The Health Check tests whether the detail supports what you think is happening. Where cash is the symptom, why profitable businesses still run out of cash explains where it is usually sitting.

What the Health Check reviews

Six areas, assessed against ten underlying diagnostic dimensions. Ratings are judged against your current stage, not against an abstract ideal.

Cash visibility

Can the business see cash risk early enough and manage working capital actively?

Reporting quality

Are reports timely, useful, and clear on where profit is actually made?

Forecasting and planning

Is the business looking forward with credible assumptions?

Finance control

Are responsibilities, approvals and controls good enough for the current stage?

Finance team, process and systems

Is finance capacity and system design matched to business complexity?

Automation opportunity

Where could practical automation improve visibility, speed or reliability?

What the scorecard looks like

The one-page scorecard is the centrepiece of the report. Every dimension carries a rating, the evidence behind it and the action it implies.

Illustrative example. Example output using anonymised sample data. This is not a client report, no real business is shown, and nothing here has been calculated from your information.

Green Good enough for current stage Amber Usable but needs improvement Red Material risk or decision constraint Grey Insufficient evidence

Cash visibility

  • Cash visibility Amber

    Cash is reviewed weekly from the bank balance, but there is no forward view beyond the current month.

  • Working capital control Red

    Aged debtors run well beyond terms with no owner and no routine chase, tying up cash the business is funding itself.

Reporting quality

  • Reporting timeliness Amber

    Management accounts arrive around week four, which is after most of the decisions they should inform.

  • Reporting usefulness Amber

    Reports show what happened but not why, so each month is explained verbally rather than read.

  • Margin visibility Red

    Profit is visible in total only. Nobody can say which services or clients genuinely earn money.

Forecasting and planning

  • Forecasting quality Grey

    No forecast was available to review. The absence is itself the finding: the business is planning without one.

Finance control

  • Finance control Green

    Approvals, bank access and payment authorisation are clear and proportionate for the current stage.

Finance team, process and systems

  • Finance systems Amber

    The core ledger is adequate, but reporting is rebuilt outside it every month.

  • Manual process risk Red

    Month end depends on one spreadsheet maintained by one person, with no documentation and no cover.

Automation opportunity

  • Automation readiness Green

    Two routine reconciliations are well structured and repetitive enough to automate safely and soon.

There is no total and no score. Ratings are stage-relative and evidence-led, and a numeric index would imply a benchmark that does not yet honestly exist. Grey is a real outcome, not a gap in the work: where evidence is missing, that absence is recorded as a finding in its own right.

What you receive

  • A concise written report, not a long consulting document.
  • A one-page executive summary.
  • A one-page diagnostic scorecard, clear enough to share with a co-director, investor, adviser or finance lead.
  • The top five risks and weaknesses.
  • The top five recommended actions.
  • A 30-day and 90-day action plan, with longer-term strategic themes where relevant.
  • The minimum reporting that should exist in your business.
  • Recommended next steps, including no follow-on where that is the right answer.

How it works

  1. Scoping call

    Twenty to thirty minutes to confirm the problem, agree whether the Health Check is the right step, and set scope and price. Free.

  2. Information request

    A short, specific document list. What you cannot provide is recorded rather than treated as a blocker.

  3. Leadership interview

    Sixty to ninety minutes, structured around the ten diagnostic dimensions, testing whether the reports match your lived experience.

  4. Analysis

    Each dimension is rated with evidence, rationale and a recommended action, and root causes are separated from symptoms.

  5. Findings call

    An hour walking through the conclusions together, so you hear what is recommended and why before anything is written up.

  6. Final report

    Around two weeks from receiving sufficient information. An expedited option is available for acute cash pressure.

Price

Standard Health Check

£2,500

Fixed fee. The standard review across all ten scorecard dimensions.

Health Check + focused deep dive

£3,500

Everything in the standard Health Check, plus a deeper review of one priority area where the issue is already clear or urgent - for example funding readiness, working capital or acute cash pressure.

Choose this when you already know one area needs closer attention.

The fee is agreed before work begins and will not increase. If you go on to engage PelicanCFO on a retained basis within 60 days, the Health Check fee is credited against that engagement.

Confidentiality and data handling

You are being asked to share your numbers. It is reasonable to want to know what happens to them first.

  • Your information is used only for the engagement you have agreed.
  • Only authorised PelicanCFO personnel see it.
  • No client-identifiable information is used in marketing without your written approval, and no client data is ever used in demonstrations.
  • Anything shared is provided directly to us during a scoped engagement. There is no upload on this website, and nothing is connected to your bank.
  • Any anonymised learning or benchmarking use requires appropriate engagement terms, agreed in writing.
  • Confidentiality and data-use terms are set out in the engagement letter before any information is requested.

What happens afterwards

The report recommends only what the findings justify. What follows depends on what the diagnostic actually finds.

No follow-on is a legitimate result. If the finance function is in reasonable shape for your stage, the report will say so. A diagnostic that always recommends a retainer is a sales funnel, not a diagnostic.

Questions business owners ask

Our information is not good enough to show anyone yet.

Weak information is itself a finding. The Health Check records what was available, what was missing, what that absence implies and what minimum reporting should exist next. For many business owners that turns out to be the most useful part of the review. You do not need to tidy up first.

Is this an audit?

No. This is not an audit and it is not assurance work. We are not independently verifying your numbers. We are assessing whether your reporting is reliable enough to run the business on, and where the finance function is creating risk. It is also not tax work, statutory accounts or bookkeeping.

Is this software, or is someone actually looking at our finances?

A person. The Health Check is CFO-level judgement applied to your business, supported by practical analysis tools. It is not a bookkeeping product, an accounting package or an automated diagnosis, and no software here replaces the judgement. You are buying an opinion you can act on, not a dashboard.

Do we have to connect our bank or upload statements?

No. There is no upload on this website and no connection to your bank. During a scoped engagement you provide documents directly to us, under the terms set out in the engagement letter, and you decide what you share.

What if we do not need ongoing support?

Then the report says so. The Health Check is bounded and useful on its own terms, and it is designed to be worth the fee even if nothing follows it.

How long does it take, and what do we have to do?

Around two weeks from the point where we have enough information, with an expedited option for acute cash pressure. Your time commitment is a short scoping call, sending what you have, a sixty to ninety minute interview, and an hour on the findings call.

What size of business is this for?

Owner-managed UK SMEs, typically between £1m and £20m of revenue: large enough to have real finance complexity, not necessarily ready for a full-time CFO. Most are in Guildford, Surrey and the wider South East.

Would it be useful to know whether your numbers are ready for the decisions now in front of you?

The scoping call is free, takes twenty to thirty minutes, and gives you a straight answer on whether the Health Check is the right next step for you.

Book a Health Check scoping call Ask whether the Health Check is right for your business