Why Your Business Angels

Your Business Angels has been working with Australian businesses in financial difficulty since 1995.

Over those 31 years, we have seen businesses arrive at financial pressure in almost every imaginable way. Rapid growth. Poor pricing. Tax debt. Weak margins. Bad debts. Expensive finance. Poor financial records. Excessive drawings. Operational problems. Changing markets. And sometimes simply years of small financial decisions that eventually catch up with the business.

That experience has taught us something important:

Experience That Goes Beyond the Accounts

Through Your Business Angels and our accounting firm, Fresh Numbers, we have a team of nearly 50 people supporting Australian businesses.

That gives us the accounting capability to go deeply into the financial position of a business — but our work does not stop at producing accounts.

We want to understand what the numbers are telling us.

• Why isn’t profit becoming cash?
• Why is the tax debt increasing?
• Why aren’t customers paying?
• Why are margins disappearing?
• Why is finance becoming necessary?
• Why is the business busy but still short of money?

And importantly: what needs to change?

More than three decades of working with businesses under pressure has taught us to look for the patterns behind the numbers and then work with the owner to do something about them.

Accounting and Business Reconstruction Together

Reliable financial information is the foundation of our approach.

Through Fresh Numbers, we can work with the accounting records to establish the true position of the business. Through Your Business Angels, we use that information to help the director understand the problems, make decisions and implement change.

That combination matters.

We are not looking at the business from a distance.

We are working with the information that drives it — the Balance Sheet, cash, debtors, creditors, taxation obligations, employee entitlements, loans, profitability and the everyday financial decisions being made by the business.

And when the numbers lead us into questions about pricing, quoting, customers, staffing, productivity, operations or other areas of the business, we have those conversations as well.

A Process Built From Experience

Our approach to Safe Harbour has not been created as a theoretical exercise.

It has developed from decades of working with business owners when money is tight, decisions matter and problems cannot simply be pushed into the future.

• We establish the truth.
• We identify what needs to change.
• We build the course of action.
• We measure what happens.
• We challenge the results.
• We correct what isn’t working.
• And then we measure again.

The process is structured because experience has taught us that good intentions are not enough.

Change needs information. Change needs action. And lasting change needs repetition.

Wherever You Are, Start With the Truth

The best time to address financial pressure is early.

But we also understand that many directors don’t recognise the seriousness of the position immediately. Sometimes they arrive after months or years of increasing pressure.

Our first job is not to judge how the business got there.

Our first job is to establish where it stands today.

From there, we can determine what needs immediate attention, what can be changed and what options should be considered.

After more than 31 years, our philosophy remains remarkably simple: