A business and tax advisory firm has launched a new accounts training service to help local businesses better understand their numbers.

Paul Francis, Client Services Manager at Poole-based Inspire, came up with the idea.

The tailored training will be available to suit the client, virtually or in-person, and will be delivered by Paul.

With 14 years’ experience as a Chartered Accountant, Paul identified the opportunity after seeing that many businesses don’t necessarily have the skills within their finance teams or directors to understand and interpret a set of financial statements.

Paul, pictured, said: “From our experience, many business owners and entrepreneurs are very skilfully running their businesses, meeting the needs of their customers and leading teams of people, but have never had the need to fully understand their financial reports.

“There’s a real benefit for businesses to understand their own financial statements, in helping them make strategic decisions, but also to understand what key stakeholders, especially the banks, are looking for to make decisions for loans and funding.”

There will be core pillars covered as part of the training, including UK GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practice), format of accounts, terminology and ratios, as well as a review of a set of financial statements.

But the rest of the session will be tailored to what the individual or team would like a better understanding of, specifically for their role or business.

The benefits for clients after the training will be in their ability to make more informed day-to-day decisions around credit control and taking on new suppliers.

They will also have an understanding of what investors look for in financial statements and a better appreciation of how competitors are performing.

Andrew Singleton, Inspire Director, pictured, said: “For many business owners and managers this is an opportunity that will give them a much better understanding of their business and potentially that of a competitor, customer or supplier, helping them to gain a much broader understanding of their business.

“This is a new offering for the local business community and we’re confident that the training sessions will give a real knowledge boost to understanding of the terminology and influence the strategic decisions that business leaders and finance teams can take, once they’re equipped with this knowledge and confidence.”

The accounts training packages will start from £500 for a small group session.

More information can be found here.

Founded by Warren Munson in 2004, Inspire was awarded Medium Firm of the Year by the industry’s Accounting Excellence awards last year.

Earlier this month, Inspire launched its own podcast, 2 + 2, designed to keep business leaders up to date with the latest news, advice and opinion.