The SME360 Finance Function

Your Business Has Grown...
But Your Finance Arrangement Has Not.

A fully managed finance function for growing Nigerian businesses, so you can see clearly, decide confidently, and engage any bank, investor, or partner without hesitation.

A finance function is not an accountant arrangement. It is financial visibility infrastructure, the systems, processes, and professional capability that produce the intelligence your business needs to operate with clarity, remain fully compliant, access capital, and grow with confidence.

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The Real Difference

An Accountant and a Finance Function Are Not the Same Thing.

Most growing Nigerian businesses have an accountant, or even a finance department of two, three, or four people. Very few have a finance function. The difference is not in the number of people or what they are called, it is in what the function is built to produce.

What a Typical SME Accountant Arrangement Provides

Year-end accounts when required
Aggregate P&L totals only
Tax filing
Reactive, produced when requested
Historical record only
Available when you call
Single deliverable

WHAT SME360 PROVIDES

What the SME360 Finance Function Provides

01 Financial System Setup and Optimisation, properly configured for intelligence, not just compliance
02 Strategic Bookkeeping to Management Accounting Standard, not just year-end compliance standard
03 Monthly Management Reporting and Analysis, interpreted, contextualised, decision-useful
04 Segment Profitability Analysis, by product, customer, location, project, and division
05 Strategic Decision Analysis, breakeven, special pricing, make vs buy, capacity decisions, shutdown analysis
06 Cash Flow Forecasting, Budget and Variance, KPI Dashboards
07 Compliance fully integrated, VAT, WHT, PAYE, Pension Contributions, NSITF Levy, ITF Levy, and all applicable statutory obligations, managed proactively, never reactively

A typical SME accountant records what happened. The SME360 Finance Function tells you what is happening, what will happen, the implications for you, and what you should do about it.

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Why This Matters

The Cost of Running Without a Finance Function Is Already Visible.

You know your business is making money. But you cannot tell which part. You suspect there is a product or a customer that is not pulling its weight, but the aggregate P&L shows a profit, so the problem stays hidden. A project that looked profitable at quoting stage quietly consumed margin during execution. One customer accounts for a disproportionate share of revenue and you have never measured what that concentration risk means for the business.

Cash surprises arrive without warning, because no one is forecasting. Tax deadlines create a scramble, because no one is managing the compliance calendar proactively. A bank asks for three years of management accounts and the next three weeks are spent reconstructing records that should have been maintained all along. A DFI programme requires audited financials, a current Tax Clearance Certificate, PENCOM compliance certificate, and NSITF evidence, and the application stalls not because the business is weak, but because the documentation is not ready.

But these are not the real cost. The real cost is what happens at the competitive and institutional level, when the opportunity arrives and the infrastructure is not there to meet it. A contract went to a competitor. Not because the business was weaker, but because the compliance certificates, the audited accounts, or the financial model required could not be produced in the time available. A DFI funding window closed. Not because the business did not qualify, but because three years of management accounts did not exist in a form any auditor could verify. A strategic partnership conversation ended quietly, no formal rejection, just silence, because the counterparty reviewed the documentation package and concluded the business was not structured at the level the relationship required.

There is a second pattern, equally common, equally destructive. Revenue is growing. The headline number looks strong. The board deck shows the revenue chart trending upward. But costs are growing faster than revenue. Margins are quietly compressing with every new contract won. Operating cash flow is deteriorating even as the top line climbs. Nobody is running the integrated analysis because everyone is celebrating the revenue growth. Vanity metrics, revenue read in isolation, without an integrated view of what that growth is costing in margin erosion, cost behaviour, and cash consumption, create the illusion of performance while the underlying business model weakens. The SME360 Finance Function produces the integrated analysis every month: revenue growth alongside cost movement, contribution margin by segment, and operating cash flow trend, so management sees not just whether revenue is growing, but whether that growth is creating or destroying value.

There is a third pattern that has ended many promising Nigerian businesses, including funded startups with genuine product traction and strong investor backing. The bank balance is high. Nobody is watching the cash flow from operations, which has been consistently low or negative throughout. The business model is not generating cash from its operations; it is consuming investor capital in every cycle. Everyone watches the bank balance. Nobody separates what operations produce from what financing supplies. When the external capital runs out, there is no operating floor beneath it. The SME360 Finance Function disaggregates and interprets cash by activity every month, cash from operations, cash from financing, cash from investing. If operations are consistently cash-negative while financing supplies the balance, that gap is named, quantified, and presented to management with the runway calculation and the operational changes required to reach operating cash flow breakeven before the capital is exhausted.

"The quality of every business plan, financial model, and funding application is entirely determined by the quality of the underlying financial record it is built on. If the records are incomplete, unreconciled, or structured to produce totals rather than insight, every downstream output will reflect that, and any sophisticated counterparty will identify it."

None of this is a reflection of how good the business is. It is a reflection of what happens when a business outgrows its finance infrastructure. The business has scale. The finance arrangement does not.

SME360 closes that gap, permanently. Not as a one-time project, but as an embedded, ongoing managed function that ensures the financial infrastructure never falls behind the business again.

The Finance Function

What SME360 Runs as Your Finance Function.

Every engagement is scoped to the specific business. The core of what SME360 delivers, in the correct sequence:

Financial System Setup and Optimisation

The infrastructure layer, governed by the principle of beginning with the end in mind. Before a single account is created, we establish what management needs to see every month and what the system must ultimately produce. The chart of accounts, class tracking, project costing, bank feeds, and multi-entity structures are all built backward from those answers. Nothing downstream is reliable until this foundation is correct.

Strategic Bookkeeping and Financial Records Management

The data integrity layer. The difference is not in the person, it is in the standard. Compliance standard produces totals. Management accounting standard produces intelligence. The same transactions, maintained differently, to produce a completely different output.

Monthly Management Reporting and Analysis

The intelligence layer. Not just accounts produced, but interpreted. What drove the result, where performance diverged from plan, what cash is doing and why, and what management needs to act on. Decision-useful intelligence, not compliance documents.

Segment Profitability Analysis

Profitability broken down by product, customer, project, location, and division, across revenue, costs, and contribution margin, by class, and benchmarked against budget and prior periods. Revenue analysis, expense analysis, and product profitability by segment, all in one view. Revealing what aggregate totals permanently conceal, which parts of the business are generating value, which are consuming it, and by how much.

Cash Flow Management, Forecasting and Strategic Decision Analysis

13-week rolling cash flow model and 12-month strategic projection, disaggregated by activity: cash from operations, cash from financing, cash from investing. A high bank balance and a healthy cash flow from operations are not the same thing. The Finance Function tracks the difference every month, calculates the operational runway, and identifies what the business must do to reach operating cash flow breakeven. Budget development and monthly variance analysis. KPI framework and real-time dashboard. Financial records maintained continuously to audit standard. Strategic decision analysis, breakeven, special pricing, make vs buy, capacity decisions, operating cash flow breakeven, the management accounting intelligence that determines whether a decision creates or destroys value.

Payroll Processing and Compliance Management

Monthly payroll processed accurately and on time. All statutory deductions correctly managed, PAYE remittances to relevant tax authorities, pension contributions, NSITF Levy, and ITF Levy all remitted, integrated into the management accounts.

Business Plan Development and Financial Projections

Business plans and financial models built from the verified operational data the finance function produces, assumptions that any bank, DFI, or investor can interrogate and verify, because they are grounded in real financial history rather than estimates.

CFO Advisory

Strategic financial guidance beyond the operational numbers, capital structure thinking, investment readiness support, financial scenario analysis, and the advisory that helps management make better decisions at the points where the stakes are highest.

How We Work With You

Fully Managed, Co-Managed, or Embedded Alongside Your Team.

Every business is different. The SME360 Finance Function is structured to fit your specific situation, not a fixed package applied uniformly.

Fully Managed

SME360 runs the entire finance function. No internal finance staff required. Cloud-first, remote-capable, embedded in your operations as an ongoing managed function.

For businesses without internal finance capacity.

Co-Managed

SME360 works alongside your existing bookkeeper or junior accountant, providing the senior intelligence layer above them, directing their work, and producing management reporting and analysis.

For businesses with execution capacity but no senior finance function.

Embedded / Augmented

Targeted senior support for a specific gap, system setup, financial model, compliance remediation, or CFO advisory on a significant decision. Frequently becomes the gateway to a longer engagement.

For businesses needing a specific high-value intervention.

In every mode, the Principal Advisor leads and is accountable for the quality of every deliverable. Execution is structured, cloud-first, and remote-capable, designed to serve businesses across Nigeria without geographic constraint.

We build it. We run it. We stay.

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Start with the Diagnostic. Understand Exactly What Your Business Needs.

The Business Infrastructure Diagnostic assesses your current finance infrastructure and identifies exactly what needs to be built. No obligation. No sales pressure. Just clarity.