Alan Oakes

Each layer depends on the quality of the one below it.

• A forecast built on unreconciled books may look intelligent but is still a confident version of the wrong answer.
• Reports that no one reads do not help, and KPIs drive decisions only when the underlying bookkeeping and reporting are solid.

In The Agency Finance Stack, Alan Oakes lists Layer 1 as bookkeeping, Layer 2 as reporting such as P&L, balance sheet, and aged debtors, Layer 3 as KPIs including cash runway, gross margin, net profit, cash conversion, and owner pay, Layer 4 as forecasting and scenario planning, and Layer 5 as strategic decisions about pricing, hiring, and investment. The post says most agencies stall because reports exist without KPIs, or KPIs exist without forecasting.

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Good bookkeeping is a living system: one workflow for every expense, receipts captured at payment, weekly reconciliation, supplier bills entered and labelled, invoices sent on time, easy client payment, automatic updates, and same-day visibility of outstanding and overdue amounts. The payoff is control over cash flow and margin, with fewer decisions made by guesswork.

Payments flow through Apron, details are captured, and the receipt is attached immediately instead of being hunted down at year end.

• Xero is opened weekly rather than quarterly; the bank feed is reconciled, supplier bills are entered and labelled, and clients pay through Adfin.
• Xero updates automatically, making overdue amounts visible today.

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The sharper questions are internal: how can the work be delivered more efficiently, what does it actually cost, and which expenses are essential to delivery? Most creative agency founders, they say, have never properly compared what they make per project with what they spend delivering it, even though the information is in their accounting software.

The post names hard truths that surface in this review: tools that do not justify their cost, processes quietly eating margin, and ways of working suited to a different size and scale. Alan Oakes frames cutting what does not drive profit as responsible operating, not a fire sale, and says living within your means is how the most profitable agencies operate.

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A fractional finance director is usually one senior person splitting time across businesses, focused on decision-making, strategy, and guidance, but not a full finance function.

• A virtual FD is a service led by a finance director and supported by a wider team handling bookkeeping, reporting, and controls, so the client buys outcomes rather than advice alone.
• A virtual finance office outsources records, invoicing, reporting, tax, and compliance.
• Choosing the wrong label can leave the owner still doing the thinking.

The post defines each term and closes with a distinction: a virtual finance director service is essentially a virtual finance office plus leadership—not just doing the work, but helping decide what the work should be.

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Most owners are behind on something right now, but nobody starts an agency because they love admin.

• The consequences go beyond untidiness: every hire, forecast, and money decision rests on those numbers.
• When the numbers are wrong, the owner is guessing and hoping, not deciding.

One post opens by saying most readers are behind on an invoice, receipts, or reconciliations, then ties that backlog to every decision about money.

• Another recalls a Sunday evening around six o'clock: the dread came not from disliking the work, but from the Monday emails, admin, and volume that would not clear until Friday.
• It then asks agency owners what their biggest stress is right now.

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The priority is to distinguish visible cash from profit kept and challenge the metric owners habitually watch. This is a recurring theme in the finance-education content.

A short post tied to an edition of Smash Your Cash says the bank account looked great last month, but asks whether the owner knows what they kept. It then says the number every agency owner watches is the wrong one.

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It sets out the order of operations before anyone judges a tool, service, or advisor.

Alan Oakes lays out financial capability as five stacked layers: bookkeeping, reporting, KPIs, forecasting, and strategic decisions.

• Each layer depends on the ones below it, so a forecast built on unreconciled books is a confident version of the wrong answer.
• The post pinpoints where agencies often stall: reports get produced but never turned into KPIs, or KPIs exist but nothing is forecast from them.
• It offers a rule rather than a case study, but the framework is specific enough for an agency to test against its own setup.

For brands planning a campaign

A strong anchor piece for a finance-operations advisory campaign. It frames the engagement as a sequence, helping prospects identify their starting point before they hear a pitch.

It gives clients vocabulary to compare providers before a conversation starts.

Alan Oakes separates three services that are often used interchangeably.

• A fractional finance director is usually one senior person splitting time across businesses and plugging into an existing finance setup, offering decision-making, strategy, and guidance but not a full finance function.
• A virtual FD is led by a finance director and supported by a wider delivery team handling bookkeeping, reporting, and controls, so the client buys outcomes as well as advice.
• A virtual finance office is full outsourcing: records, invoicing, reporting, tax, and compliance run like an internal finance department without the overhead.
• Oakes concludes that a virtual FD service is essentially a virtual finance office plus leadership.

For brands planning a campaign

A useful service-tier framework for scoping an advisory engagement and positioning it against competing offers.

Useful for judging whether an existing system is working or merely filing paperwork.

Alan Oakes describes a working bookkeeping system in everyday terms, not as a pile of receipts.

• One clean workflow handles every expense: payment flows through Apron, details are captured, and the receipt is attached at the time of payment rather than hunted down at year end.
• Xero is opened weekly, not quarterly, with the bank feed reconciled and supplier bills entered and labelled.
• Invoices go out on time, clients get easy payment options through Adfin, and Xero updates automatically so outstanding and overdue amounts are visible the same day.
• The post says these habits protect cashflow and margins and stop owners from guessing.

For brands planning a campaign

A concrete checklist for measuring an advisory engagement, with tools a brand could integrate with or sponsor around.

Alan Oakes argues that in a crowded market, the answer to margin pressure lies inside the business, not in a price rise.

• The questions are how to deliver work more efficiently, what it actually costs to deliver, and which expenses are essential to the project.
• They say most creative agency founders have never properly compared what they make per project with what they spend delivering it, even though the information already sits in Xero.
• The post acknowledges the hard truths: tools that do not justify their cost, processes quietly eating into margin, and ways of working that made sense at a different size.

For brands planning a campaign

A useful angle for a margin-review campaign, supporting content on cost-per-project analysis and lean delivery rather than rate increases.

Alan Oakes says plainly that most readers are behind on something right now: an invoice not raised, receipts waiting to be sorted, or reconciliations a few weeks out of date.

• They point out that nobody starts an agency to do admin, then make the sharper point that every hire, forecast, and money decision rests on those numbers.
• If the numbers are wrong, the owner is not deciding anything; they are guessing and hoping.

For brands planning a campaign

A strong opening hook for an engagement that starts by catching up the numbers before bigger planning work begins.

The post links clean books to cash flow control and decision confidence for creative agencies.

Uses a problem-then-system structure: rejects the common founder view of bookkeeping, then walks through an ideal process using named tools such as Apron, Xero, and Adfin.

For brands planning a campaign

This suits a finance-operations advisory engagement or a campaign for bookkeeping, expense capture, reconciliation, or invoicing software. Brands can assess how Alan Oakes explains a practical weekly rhythm and whether it fits tools aimed at agency owners.

Examples: Source 1

Weak bookkeeping makes every layer above it unreliable; reporting that is produced but ignored does not help.

• KPIs such as cash runway, gross margin, net profit, cash conversion, and owner pay drive decisions only when the earlier layers are solid.
• Forecasting and strategy come last because most agencies never make the first three layers stable enough.

Builds a sequential stack and explains the failure mode at each skipped or weak layer.

For brands planning a campaign

Brands can use this as a finance-maturity framework for educational content, assessment tools, or an advisory offer. It shows how Alan Oakes diagnoses where an agency is stuck and what a finance-operations campaign could promise to fix first.

Examples: Source 1

The better move is internal: examine what it costs to deliver a project, which tools and processes genuinely support profit, and which have become quiet margin leaks.

• The information is already in Xero; someone needs to help the owner talk through it.
• They frame cost control as disciplined operating, not a fire sale.

For brands planning a campaign

This suits a margin-efficiency advisory or a campaign for tools that reveal project profitability, expense waste, and delivery cost. Brands can assess how Alan Oakes turns pricing anxiety into an operational review agency owners can act on.

Examples: Source 1

A fractional finance director is usually one senior person splitting time across businesses, focused on decision-making and guidance but not a full finance function.

• A virtual FD is a service led by a finance director and supported by a wider team doing bookkeeping, reporting, and controls, so the client buys outcomes rather than advice alone.
• A virtual finance office is full outsourcing of records, invoicing, reporting, tax, and compliance.
• They argue that the real distinction is that a virtual FD service is a virtual finance office plus leadership.

Defines each term, contrasts the level of delivery behind it, and closes by distinguishing between doing the work and deciding what the work should be.

For brands planning a campaign

This helps brands compare service models and decide where Alan Oakes fits against other finance providers. It also suits campaigns about when an agency needs advice, delivery, or both.

Examples: Source 1

The post connects that backlog to every hire, forecast, and money decision, arguing that wrong numbers leave the owner guessing rather than deciding. It also acknowledges that nobody starts an agency because they love admin.

Opens with a direct call-out to the reader, then reframes a mundane backlog as a risk to decision quality.

For brands planning a campaign

This suits bookkeeping or cash flow advisory outreach: it meets the audience at a common pain point without suggesting the problem is unusual. Brands can assess Alan Oakes for a campaign that turns admin avoidance into better decision-making.

Examples: Source 1

The post then asks agency owners directly about their biggest stress right now.

Uses a personal scene to establish shared experience, then ends with an open question to invite responses.

For brands planning a campaign

This approach, built on empathy and audience questions, suits community, lead-generation, or advisory campaigns aimed at creative agency owners. Brands can assess whether the conversational format fits an offer to reduce admin or financial uncertainty.

Examples: Source 1

The post calls the number every agency owner watches the wrong one, highlighting the gap between cash in the bank and actual profit.

Sets up a contrast between visible cash and profit, then promises an explanation in a named edition or series.

For brands planning a campaign

This suits cash flow or profit-education content, including a sponsored series or collaboration around agency finance. Brands can assess how Alan Oakes uses a recurring format to challenge a familiar but misleading metric.

Examples: Source 1

In a separate post, they say the information a founder needs about project profitability is already in Xero. They state no commercial relationship with Xero.

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The details are captured.

• The receipt is attached straight away.”
• They state no commercial relationship with Apron.

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They state no commercial relationship with Adfin.

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Both treat routine bookkeeping as a base layer that operational staff can handle, and place VAT, compliance, management reporting, tax planning, and strategic advice above it as work requiring specialist expertise.

• Both also describe a hybrid arrangement where daily finance tasks stay inside the business while reconciliations, reporting, and planning go to an outside specialist.
• They illustrate the argument with sector-specific compliance detail rather than generic accounting talk.

The client is a UK pharmacy rather than a creative agency, so the specifics are NHS income, VAT treatment, and HMRC compliance for pharmacy businesses.

• The offer is framed around a sector-specific accounting firm.
• The posts read as summaries of an article with a service call to action at the end, while Alan Oakes's posts offer direct explanations, named software (Apron, Xero, Adfin), and a layered framework readers can follow step by step.

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Jachimiak's post on paying yourself last explains how to set a real, non-negotiable owner draw, build it into break-even, separate personal and business accounts, and review it quarterly.

• That sits close to Oakes's argument about owner pay and a bank balance that looks healthy while the owner does not know what was kept.
• Jachimiak's second post makes the same distinction Oakes draws between accurate records and records that tell you what to do next.

Emily Jachimiak draws on running IPOs and uses small business finance as a contrast: public-company numbers arrive reconciled and checked, while in a small business the numbers are the work and precision is not the goal.

• The audience is small business owners generally, not creative agencies, and the writing builds around one lesson from a career shift.
• Alan Oakes works within a single sector and organizes the subject as a sequence: bookkeeping through reporting, KPIs, forecasting, and strategy.

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Both connect a clean ledger to calm and better business decisions, and address owners doing client work and back-office work at the same time.

The posts use humor, emoji, hashtags, and a free discovery call link, keeping the practical detail general and aiming to book a conversation.

• Alan Oakes's posts explain specific mechanisms, such as one workflow per expense, weekly reconciliation, and same-day visibility of overdue balances, and build toward a question or framework instead of a call to action.
• Grace Lee Ostiguy also writes for small businesses of many kinds, while Oakes writes for creative agency owners.

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The posts frame the finance decision as in-house pharmacy bookkeeper versus outsourced specialist pharmacy accountant, then present a hybrid model for NHS statement reconciliations, VAT treatment, HMRC compliance, management accounts, tax planning, and virtual CFO support. For an agency serving pharmacy clients or needing sector-specific compliance alongside bookkeeping and reporting, Buhir Rafiq is a closer topic match than Alan Oakes.

The tradeoff is creative-agency relevance.

• Alan Oakes's posts do not cover agency bookkeeping rhythms, reporting and KPI practice, forecasting for project-based businesses, or agency margin reviews.
• A creative agency would need to translate pharmacy compliance language into its own operating model.
• Ask for agency examples and campaign-fit claims, which the posts do not provide.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Emily Jachimiak's posts address paying the owner first, setting a baseline draw, building that draw into break-even, separating personal and business accounts, reviewing the draw quarterly, and asking what must be true for a number to hold.

• They also describe a move from IPO work to small-business finance, where the numbers are the work and the real question is often not the one being asked.
• That fits an agency founder who is underpaying themselves or making hiring and investment decisions based on unclear cash forecasts.

The tradeoff is operational depth.

• Emily Jachimiak's posts do not show the weekly reconciliation workflow, receipt capture, invoice chasing, tool stack, or five-layer bookkeeping-to-forecasting model covered by Alan Oakes's posts.
• An agency seeking hands-on bookkeeping and reporting should ask whether Emily Jachimiak delivers that work or focuses only on CFO-level draw and cash planning.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The posts present virtual bookkeeping as protection from late tax notices, messy historical records, missed deadlines, and audit risk, promising reconciled ledgers, categorized expenses, verified net profit margins, optimized tax reserves, and audit-ready books. For an agency that mainly needs routine bookkeeping cleaned up and a low-friction way to start, this is a more direct service match than Alan Oakes's advisory-led stack.

The tradeoff is strategic depth and editorial fit.

• The posts lean on humor, hashtags, and a discovery-call call to action; they do not show a forecasting framework, KPI design, agency-specific margin analysis, or the fractional and virtual finance-office scoping covered by Alan Oakes's posts.
• A creative agency seeking advice on pricing, delivery cost, and forecasting should ask whether Grace Lee Ostiguy's offer extends beyond bookkeeping and compliance.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2