Finance function health check

Common questions

Is this a formal assessment of my business?

No. It is a self-assessment based on your own answers to fifteen questions, and it produces general observations rather than advice. It is not an engagement, we are not reviewing your records, and nothing here should be relied on as professional advice. If you want an actual assessment, that is a conversation.

Why do you ask for my details before the questions?

Because a partner writes the breakdown by hand rather than a system generating it, so we need somewhere to send it. Your score still appears on screen the moment you finish, so you get the result either way.

What happens to my answers?

Your details and your answers come to us so that a partner can write up the breakdown and send it to you. That is the whole reason we ask for them. We do not add you to a mailing list, we do not pass anything to anyone else, and if you would rather we deleted it after sending the write-up, say so and we will.

Will you try to sell me an audit?

No. Most of what this looks at has nothing to do with audit, and if you are not required to have one we will say so. If the score points at something we do, we will tell you. If it points at something we do not do, we will tell you that too.

How long does it take?

About three minutes. Fifteen questions across six areas, and your score appears on screen the moment you finish rather than being held back behind anything.

Why there are AI questions in a finance health check

Three of the fifteen questions are about systems and AI, which is unusual for an assessment like this. They are there because the risk moved faster than most finance functions did.

Research published in 2025 found that sensitive data made up 34.8% of what employees pasted into ChatGPT, up from 11% in 2023. In a finance team that means management accounts, payroll files, draft contracts and forecasts. Prompts entered into consumer tier accounts can be retained and used to train future models unless the business is on an enterprise agreement with contractual data protections in place.

There is a second problem, and it is the one that reaches us as auditors. Where staff use unapproved consumer AI tools during the close, the resulting figures often arrive without the audit trail, validation record or change history that an auditor needs in order to rely on them. The work may well be correct. It is simply not evidenced, and unevidenced work has to be redone.

Neither problem requires banning anything. Both are largely solved by a written rule saying which tools are approved and what may never be pasted into an unapproved one. Most businesses we speak to have not written that rule, and a good number are not aware their staff are using the tools at all.

What the health check actually measures

It scores six areas out of 100: cash and working capital, reporting and visibility, forecasting and planning, controls and process, compliance and readiness, and systems and AI. The questions adapt depending on whether the business is owner-managed, investor or lender backed, or part of a group, and the compliance section points at the right regime for the UK, Canada or South Africa.

It is a self-assessment rather than a review of your records, so it produces observations and the questions worth asking rather than conclusions you could rely on.