About us
About Business Growth by Numbers and how we work
If you’re a CEO or founder of a UK service business, you’ll know that understanding your numbers is one thing. Knowing what to do with them is another.
This is what we do. We provide Fractional Finance Director Services to businesses turning over between £1m and £10m: the ongoing financial thinking, reporting and commercial support that sits between a bookkeeper and year-end accountant.
Founded by CIMA-qualified accountant Sally Farrant, we work with clients across the UK as part of your team. Rather than sitting on the outside, we get inside your business, learn how it works and stay there.
What we do and who we help
Our core services
We work with you on a monthly retainer at whichever level makes sense for where your business is right now.
From monthly financial oversight and cash flow clarity through to strategic FD support with board reporting, scenario planning and modelling, right up to full leadership of your finance function.
Who we work with
You’re running a growing service business and you’ve reached the point where financial decisions carry real weight.
Maybe you need someone to interpret the numbers and help you make sense of what they mean for the month ahead. Perhaps you’re navigating a board, planning for growth or weighing up decisions your current setup can’t properly support. Or you want someone experienced to lead finance strategically from the front. If any of that sounds familiar, you’re in the right place.
Industries we work with / in or specialisms
We work with service businesses; professional services, consultancies, agencies, healthcare, where cash flow and profitability sit at the heart of every decision.
Investment-backed or early stage tech ventures aren’t a good fit for us. The financial modelling of these businesses is specialist work and we think you deserve someone whose expertise matches where you are. We’d rather be straight with you about that from the start.
They had an immediate impact in my business.
They will help you figure out exactly where your money is going and what steps to take to address scarcity.
The team behind the numbers
Sally Farrant
CEO & Fractional Finance Director
Sally spent 25 years working in finance inside large organisations including Channel 4, Guinness World Records and Philips Electronics, partnering with non-financial leaders and helping them understand what the numbers meant in practice, what the business could afford and where decisions would ultimately lead.
In 2018, Sally left corporate life to bring that same level of thinking to CEOs and founders of growing SMEs – and Business Growth by Numbers was born.
Sally leads every client relationship personally. She’ll be your main point of contact, making sense of your accounts, producing clear financial insights, attending meetings, including board meetings and setting up the systems to support your financial growth tailored to how your business operates. She asks the difficult questions, challenges assumptions when needed and helps you see the reality behind the spreadsheets.
Tanya O'Toole
Management Accountant
Tanya is a CIMA fellow with deep expertise in financial planning and analysis, reporting and management accounts.
She works closely with Sally to support our clients, handling month-end reviews and report preparation and working alongside your existing bookkeepers and accountants to make sure nothing falls through the gaps.
Between Sally’s strategic input and Tanya’s operational expertise, you get a complete finance function without having to manage multiple relationships yourself or commit to a full-time hire.
Louise Mackie
Personal Assistant
Louise keeps everything running smoothly behind the scenes, managing schedules, communications and the admin that keeps the rest of the team focussed on the work that matters.
Our history
In 2018, Sally spotted a gap that nobody was filling. Growing businesses, well run, ambitious, with good people at the help, were making important financial decisions without anyone helping them understand what the numbers were really saying.
She’d spent 25 years doing exactly that inside large organisations. So she left, founded Business Growth by Numbers and started doing it for the businesses that needed it most.
Since then, we’ve grown into a small team of experienced associates and evolved to focus specifically on service businesses at the £1m – £10m mark. But the reason we exist hasn’t changed.
Our expertise
Our background is in management accounting, and we bring Financial Director-level thinking to everything we do.
Producing the numbers is one thing, knowing what they mean for your business and what to do next is where the real transformation happens.
This means building financial models, running scenario plans, stress-testing cash flow and understanding the human and commercial implications of what the numbers are saying. Whether that’s a hiring decision, pricing change or shift in direction. This is the level of thinking we bring to every client relationship. Not just reporting what happened but helping you understand what it means, what’s coming and what your options are.
Why work with us
Not your average accountant
No jargon, no dry spreadsheets pushed across a desk, no talking to you in numbers you only half-understand. Just clear, honest conversations about what’s really going on in your business and what to do about it.
We make the numbers make sense
You don’t need a finance background to work with us. We take the facts, explain what they mean in plain English and make sure you leave every meeting understanding your business that bit more clearly. All so you can make the big (and small) financial decisions in your business with complete confidence.
Objective thinking that leads to confident decisions
When you’re inside the business, it’s often hard to see it clearly. We give you an objective, commercially grounded perspective on what your finances mean for the decisions in front of you, whether that’s hiring, pricing, growth planning or understanding what you can realistically afford to do next.
We have the conversations others avoid
If there’s a difficult conversation to be had about costs, team performance or a plan that isn’t working financially, we’ll have it. Straight, calm and with your best interests – and those of your business – front and centre.
Ready to talk numbers?
If you’re running a growing service business and want a clearer financial picture, with straight-talking experts in your corner, we’d like to hear from you.
The first conversation takes just 30 minutes and is usually enough to work out if we’re a good fit.
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