The Case for Change: Modernising Recruitment Finance
By Katie Maw, Percipient
Like most industries, recruitment is in constant flux. Economic uncertainty, market fluctuations, wage pressures and an on-going global skills crisis, are converging to create increasingly complex operating pressures for agencies of all sizes.
Against this backdrop, it’s easy for firms to become reactive. But long-term resilience depends on stepping back, and reassessing priorities and risks. This includes asking strategic questions such as:
- Where are the biggest opportunities?
- How can we redirect resources when something goes wrong?
- Are our current systems capable of supporting agility and stability?
For many agencies, the honest answer is no because their operational backbone is still built on manual processes and spreadsheets.
The Real-World Cost of Legacy Finance
Despite their familiarity, spreadsheet-based finance in recruitment introduces serious risks. They slow performance, create data blind spots, and prevent leadership teams from accessing the real-time insights required to steer the business confidently.
Recent research reflects the real-world cost of this. Professional services firms are losing substantial time and resources to manual financial processes, driven largely by gaps in their systems. Every finance professional surveyed reported encountering discrepancies in year-end financials with 77% stating these issues happen frequently, and firms losing 44 hours every week as a result.
Finance Challenges Holding Recruitment Firms Back
Cash-Flow Management
Revenue in recruitment can be unpredictable, making stable cash flow difficult to maintain without accurate, real-time financial insight.
Invoicing Clients
Accurate, timely invoicing is essential for client relationships, cash flow and credit management, but is often slowed by manual processes and fragmented data.
Regulatory Compliance
The regulatory landscape is constantly evolving and are increasingly difficult to adhere to without dedicated systems. Manual errors are inevitable and can be costly.
Monitoring Expenses
Tracking and validating expenses manually is time-consuming and prone to oversight, yet essential for profitability and control.
Contractor Payments
Managing contractor pay can complex, particularly when navigating constant changes to UK tax legislation and compliance requirements.
Building a Data-Driven Finance Culture
Eliminating spreadsheet-based finance in recruitment isn’t just about reducing risk. It equips firms with the structure and intelligence needed to drive efficiency, agility, and scale to support long term planning and performance.
The right culture, led from the top and supported by the right platform is key, as Broster Buchanan’s Head of Finance, Helen Spring, explains:
“One of our major objectives in adopting a new finance platform was to give the board access to live dashboards. Several years on, that’s exactly what we’re doing, and the exec team loves interacting with the intelligence-rich reports we’ve created.
Sage Intacct has been a real catalyst for cultural change. We’ve embraced a new mindset in how we access and use data. The team has seen the value of better insights, and their appetite for more has grown. We’ve moved from pushing reports out to stakeholders to them coming to us asking for deeper insights. This empowerment delivers real commercial advantage.
Transforming Finance with Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct removes inaccuracies, inefficiencies and manual processes by bringing the following benefits to recruiters:
Integration
Seamless integration with systems such as CRM and sales platforms delivers true end-to-end visibility. Real-time data paints an accurate performance picture, supporting stronger and faster decision-making.
Multi-Dimensional Accounting
Track financials by client, job type, recruiter or any relevant dimension, enabling precise profitability and performance analysis across the business.
Project Accounting
Monitor costs and revenues per client, job or project; support time and expense tracking; and analyse profitability by role, department or client.
Subscription & Contract Billing
Automate recurring billing, manage contract lifecycles, and streamline revenue recognition for retainer or fixed-fee arrangements.
Flexible Reporting & Dashboards
Customisable, real-time dashboards provide insights into client profitability, billable vs. non-billable hours, revenue forecasting, recruiter performance and more.
Start Replacing Spreadsheet-Based Finance in Recruitment
To learn how Sage Intacct can bring greater efficiency, agility and intelligence to your recruitment finance processes, get in touch or call us 01606 871332.