We run the finance function for small and growing businesses. That covers bookkeeping, VAT, payroll and compliance through to management accounts, forecasting and Finance Director-level strategy. Some clients hand us the whole thing. Others take one service. We are based in Portishead and work with businesses across North Somerset, Bristol and the wider South West.

A traditional accountant looks backwards. You send records after year end, they file accounts, and you learn how the year went nine months after it finished. A Virtual Finance Office works in real time. We manage your numbers month-by-month, so decisions rest on current information rather than history. We are not your traditional accountants and we do not disappear until the next deadline looms.

Pick what you need. Every service works on its own, whether that is VAT returns, a Xero migration or a quarterly cashflow forecast. Plenty of clients start with one thing and build from there. 

We start with a free thirty-minute conversation about your business and where the numbers currently let you down. From there we agree the right level of support, you sign a Letter of Engagement, and we send onboarding details to collect what we need: UTR, VAT and payroll references, company number and Companies House codes. AML checks complete quickly through a secure link. Then we set up your systems and get to work.

You get a dedicated Client Manager and Assistant as your main points of contact. You will not be bounced between departments, left waiting on a generic inbox, or handed to a rotating cast of strangers. Sapphire is a small, consistent team who will actually know your business.

Everything sits securely in Karbon, our client portal, where we share documents and request approvals in one organised place. Anti-money laundering checks run through the ICB, covering photo ID, proof of address and identity verification.

Only if you want to. Everything runs through cloud systems you can access yourself, so location makes no difference to the service. Local clients often prefer face to face for reviews, and Leadership VFO includes monthly in-person meetings depending on location.

No. We are based in Portishead and know North Somerset and Bristol well, which helps for local knowledge and in-person meetings. The work itself is cloud-based, so we support businesses across the South West and beyond.

A Fractional Finance Director gives you senior financial leadership scaled to what your business actually needs, rather than a full-time salary regardless of workload. You get strategic input on growth, pricing, funding and investment, plus someone who will challenge your thinking, without carrying a six-figure fixed cost.

What is a Fractional Finance Director?

A bookkeeper records what happened. A Fractional Finance Director tells you what to do about it. If your questions are about accuracy and compliance, solid bookkeeping covers you. If your questions are about pricing, growth, funding or whether the next hire is affordable, you need Finance Director-level input.

Outgrowing Your Bookkeeper? Here's How to Know for Sure

The usual signal is that your questions have changed. You have stopped asking whether the figures are right and started asking what to do about them. If you are making pricing, hiring or investment decisions on instinct because nobody is turning your numbers into insight, you have outgrown basic bookkeeping.

Outgrowing Your Bookkeeper? Here's How to Know for Sure

Foundation covers the essentials properly: bookkeeping, VAT, payroll, CIS, compliance, deadline monitoring and bi-annual reviews. Insight adds quarterly management reporting, quarterly review meetings, commentary on performance and support with short to medium-term decisions. Leadership adds the strategic layer: budgeting, cashflow forecasting, scenario modelling, KPI dashboards, funding support and ongoing Finance Director-level challenge.

Foundation suits businesses that want the fundamentals covered without paying for reporting they are not yet ready to use. Insight suits businesses that have the basics handled but want genuine understanding of performance. Leadership tends to fit businesses around the 15 to 25 employee mark, where decisions affect multiple departments and the cost of getting them wrong has grown with the business. If you are unsure, that is exactly what the initial conversation is for.

Yes and most growing clients do. There are no fixed packages and no long lock-in contracts disguised as flexibility. We adjust the blend of operational support and strategic input as your business changes.

Not usually. We often work alongside an existing bookkeeper, adding oversight, systems improvement and the strategic layer they are not there to provide. Where a client wants to hand the whole function over, we can do that too.

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax replaces the single annual Self Assessment with quarterly digital updates to HMRC plus a final declaration. You need to keep digital records and submit through compatible software. Spreadsheets on their own no longer meet the requirement. 

Making Tax Digital: Who It Affects and When

Timing depends on your qualifying income from self-employment and property. The threshold began at £50,000 from April 2026, drops to £30,000 from April 2027, and to £20,000 from April 2028. If you sit anywhere near a threshold, check now rather than assuming you fall below it.

Yes. The four quarterly updates do not replace your year end position. You still submit a final declaration pulling everything together, including anything the quarterly updates do not capture. We handle both.

HMRC operates a points-based penalty system for late submissions, with points accumulating before financial penalties land. The practical risk matters more than the punitive one. Businesses that leave record-keeping until year end cannot produce four accurate quarterly updates, and the resulting scramble costs more than getting set up properly in the first place.

If you are VAT registered, yes. MTD for VAT has applied to all VAT registered businesses since April 2022. If you are still keying figures into the HMRC portal from a spreadsheet, you are either non-compliant or relying on bridging software worth reviewing.

Do not put the letter in a drawer. Send it to us. We handle HMRC enquiries and disputes, deal with correspondence on your behalf, and make sure responses go back accurately and on time. Most HMRC contact is routine, and the ones that aren’t get considerably better outcomes when handled early.

What Happens If HMRC Contacts You? A Calm Guide

Possibly, so send it to us before you pay it. Penalties can be appealed where you have reasonable excuse, and some arrive because HMRC holds incorrect information rather than because you did anything wrong. Appeals carry deadlines, so speed matters.

Talk to us before the deadline passes. HMRC offers Time to Pay arrangements and businesses that approach them early get better terms than businesses that go quiet and get chased. We will help you build a realistic proposal and handle the conversation.

Yes. Once you authorise us as your agent, we handle submissions, correspondence and queries directly. Plenty of clients say this alone is worth the fee!

We monitor and manage every statutory deadline across accounts, tax returns, VAT, payroll and Companies House filings, and chase you for what we need well ahead of time. Proactive deadline management sits at the centre of how we operate rather than being something we deal with after a penalty lands. We do rely on you getting information to us when we ask, because HMRC and Companies House apply interest and penalties regardless of who was waiting on whom.

No, though we recommend it and we are Xero Partners. Xero gives you real-time visibility, connects to the apps that remove admin, and makes management reporting straightforward. If you are committed to another system, tell us and we will work with what you have.

Yes. We handle Xero migrations including historic data, so you do not lose trading history in the move. We plan around your VAT quarters and year end to keep disruption minimal.

Yes. We provide tailored Xero training built around how your business actually works rather than a generic walkthrough, with particular focus on reporting and the numbers you use to make decisions.

That depends where your admin bottleneck sits. Document capture and automation remove most manual data entry and keep everything paperless. Beyond that, the right choice differs for a construction firm tracking job costs, a hospitality business managing stock and tronc, and a creative studio tracking project profitability. We advise on what earns its subscription.

Yes, and CIS is core to what we do. We handle subcontractor verification, monthly returns, deduction statements and reclaims, alongside job and project profitability tracking so you can see which work actually makes money. In construction, one bad job can quietly undo the profit from three good ones.

If you are VAT registered and supplying construction services to another VAT registered contractor, it almost certainly affects you. The domestic reverse charge shifts responsibility for accounting for VAT from supplier to customer, and it catches out construction businesses regularly. Retentions and staged payments cause similar problems. 

Domestic Reverse Charge VAT for Construction, Explained Simply

Yes. Hospitality margins move weekly rather than annually, and decisions about staffing, stock and pricing get made faster than most reporting cycles allow. We track wages, food and beverage costs and tronc arrangements properly, and build reporting you can read between shifts.

Yes. Tronc arrangements sit inside our hospitality payroll support, handled alongside wages and the rest of your cost base so nothing gets treated in isolation.

Yes. Client and project profitability, irregular income, and the jump from sole trader to limited company are the usual pressure points. Busy and profitable are not the same thing, and most creative business owners learn that the hard way. Making Tax Digital hits this group hardest because record-keeping habits often have not caught up with the requirement.

Fees depend on the level of support and the complexity of your business, and we quote once we understand both. We deliberately avoid fixed, one-size-fits-all packages, so you pay for the support you actually need rather than extras bundled in to justify a price point. You get a clear figure before committing to anything.

We invoice at the end of each calendar month with standard payment terms of fourteen days. Most clients work on a monthly fee, which makes budgeting straightforward and means you never hesitate to pick up the phone in case a clock is running.

No long lock-in contracts. There is a Letter of Engagement setting out what we do and what it costs, which protects both sides, but nothing designed to trap you if your needs change.

A full-time Finance Director in the UK typically costs £80,000 to £130,000 in salary, and £110,000 to £170,000 in year one once you add employer National Insurance, pension, bonus, recruitment fees and onboarding time. Most businesses save 40 to 60% with fractional support, while getting access to broader expertise than a single hire provides. 

Fractional FD vs Full-Time: What's the Real Cost Difference?

Yes. Our founder Tracy Hill spent twenty years in the finance industry before founding Sapphire Finance. The wider team holds ICB and AAT qualifications, with several members currently studying towards further accreditation including CIMA. Anti-money laundering supervision runs through the ICB, and we are Xero Partners.

Easily and it is less awkward than people expect. We write to your existing accountant for professional clearance and handover, collect what we need through onboarding, and take it from there. You do not need to have the difficult conversation yourself, and switching mid-year is entirely normal.