The finance operating layer
Your finance function.
Reconciled every day.
Critical Finance does the accounting work, runs the controls and manages the actions between raw data and a finished pack. It tells you what it completed, what needs judgement, who owns the next action and what value is at risk.
It does the work. It also manages the work.
Only the decisions that need a human come back to finance.
CRITICAL FINANCERevenue £48.2mOp. profit £7.6m Close live
CLOSE CONTROL
DAY 5
What is done, and what needs you
The close ran overnight. These are the only things left.
Done
NOTHING NEEDED✓
Accruals & prepayments posted48 proposals processed
✓
Bank & cashbook reconciledAll accounts, all entities
✓
Intercompany eliminatedDifferences raised automatically
✓
Management accounts producedDashboard, Excel, board report
Open
6 ITEMSAccrued income over 90 daysBill it, or write it down
£1.84mOperationsSupplier statements unreconciledChase, or accept the ledger position
£0.96mAPCash received not appliedRemittances unmatched
£0.42mCredit controlClose work completed overnight7 of 8 steps done automatically
Action routedOwner, instruction and value attached
Built for finance teams that need work completed, decisions surfaced and actions owned.
MORE THAN REPORTING
Most finance software shows you the numbers.
Critical Finance runs the work behind them.
The real finance job is a chain of work: collect, check, accrue, reconcile, question, correct, approve, chase, plan and publish. Critical Finance automates that chain and gives every exception a next action.
Automate the close
Accruals, prepayments, bank reconciliation, intercompany, FX, data checks and reporting run automatically against your rules.
Overnightroutine work completed
Know what needs you
Only judgement and genuine exceptions reach the team, with evidence, recommended treatment, value and the person who owns the next move.
Cleardecisions, owners and priorities
Turn insight into action
Find anomalies, route fixes to entity controllers, model the cash impact and keep the close moving instead of circulating spreadsheets and emails.
Onefinance workflow
FINANCE WORKFLOW
It doesn't just tell you what happened.
It tells finance what happens next.
Critical Finance turns the close into a controlled workflow. Routine work is completed automatically; judgement is brought to the right person; corrections are routed to the right owner; nothing disappears into email.
FIND
Spot what doesn't look right
Every sync can check supplier behaviour, missing costs, duplicates, unmapped accounts, debtor days, bank items and group-level inconsistencies.
Landlord£0Missing
Insurance£27.6kUnusual
Telecoms£2.1kNormal
PROPOSE
Recommend the accounting treatment
Critical Finance explains the evidence and proposes the entry: accrual, prepayment, reclassification or no action, with confidence and an audit trail.
PROPOSEDAccrual £18,500
No invoice received. Billed £18,500 every month for six months.
DECIDE
Keep judgement with finance
The controller sees only the questions that genuinely need judgement. Confirm, adjust or reject. Critical Finance then records the decision and moves the close forward.
Intercompany differenceConfirmed
Accrued income supportAdjusted
Entity reporting basisPending
ROUTE
Give every fix an owner
Ledger errors become a fix list with the value, exact instruction and owner. Send it to entity controllers, AP, credit control or operations and track what is still open.
Duplicate invoices£96.4kAP →
Unmapped accounts£184kController →
Bank items£248kTreasury →
THE CLOSE, MANAGED
One screen for what is done, what is blocked and what needs a human.
Instead of asking ten people for status, the CFO can see the entire close: completed work, outstanding judgements, actions for others, affected value and whether the pack is ready to issue.
Completed automatically7of 8 close steps
Needs judgement3with evidence attached
Routed actions3each with an owner
Value in question£3.54mvisible before issue
SEE THE REAL PRODUCT
Don't take the brochure's word for it.
Watch Critical Finance actually work.
Marie walks through the live demonstration environment, including the close workflow, finance checks, actions, reconciliations, planning and questions a CFO can ask of the numbers.
CLOSE CONTROL
What is done. What still needs you.
The overnight close tells finance what was completed automatically, which decisions genuinely need judgement, what has been routed to other owners and the value tied up in open items.
7 of 8 close steps completed3 decisions surfaced£3.54m value in question
THE PLATFORM
One operating layer.
From source data to finished action.
Critical Finance sits between your source systems and the finance team: doing the accounting work, applying control, orchestrating decisions and then publishing the trusted answer.
01
SAPERPExcelAPI
Connect everything
APIs, secure tokens, file drops, automated email and non-ERP entities all feed the same controlled data layer.
02
CF
Apply your accounting
Accruals, prepayments, revenue recognition, cut-off, FX and intercompany rules are encoded and applied the same way, every time.
03
✓
£0.00unexplained differenceReconcile to the penny
The platform matches, checks and reconciles before anything reaches the executive layer. AI only sees trusted numbers.
04
P&LBSCFPPT
Drive the next action
Publish the dashboard, Excel and board pack. Open issues are routed to owners with the instruction, evidence and value attached.
THE EXPERIENCE
From board question
to underlying evidence.
Every headline number is explorable, but the platform also shows what is driving it and what should happen next. Move from group performance to the entity, transaction, exception or action while the meeting is still happening.
EXECUTIVE
Good afternoon, Adam.
Revenue£48.2m↑ 8.4%
Gross margin41.8%↑ 2.1 pts
Operating cash£6.3m↑ £840k
Net debt£11.6m↓ £1.4m
GROUP PERFORMANCE
YTDOperating profit vs plan
APRMAYJUNJULAUGSEPOCTNOVDEC
VARIANCE DRIVERS
LiveWhat changed?
Pricing+£612k
Volume+£388k
Logistics−£241k
FX−£126k
NEEDS ATTENTION
Today3 items to act on
Germany DSO increased 8 daysApprox. £0.32m cash impact if trend continues
→UK freight cost over plan+11.4% versus budget in September
→✦
ASK FINANCE
“Why is EBITDA ahead of plan?”
Pricing and product mix account for £1.0m of the YTD variance, partly offset by £367k of logistics and FX pressure.
Open the analysis →THE FINANCE DAY
Close. Control. Plan. Ask.
All on the same reconciled numbers.
The demo makes the breadth clear: Critical Finance is not just a management-accounts generator. It is a working environment for controllers and CFOs.
01 / CONTROLSRuns every sync
Continuous financial checks
Intercompany agreement, entity reporting, FX consistency, debtor tolerances, bank reconciliation, duplicates, mappings and supporting evidence are checked automatically.
Blocking4fix in the ledgers
Needs a look4review before issue
Passed4no action
Intercompany balances agree Every entity has reported Debtor days within tolerance Chart of accounts mapped
02 / PLANNINGInteractive
See what an action is worth
Turn operating decisions into cash and profit impact. Model debtor days, growth, funding, tax and other scenarios directly from the consolidated position.
Reduction in debtor days10 days
Cash released£1.32m
Interest saved£94k
Debtor days58
03 / ASK THE DATAGrounded in finance
Ask a business question, not a database question
Ask which entity holds the cash-absorbing debt, what happens if rates rise, where margin improvement came from or how much revenue would replace five days of collection.
How much revenue would replace five days of collection?↗
FROM THE DATA
Five days releases about £0.66m. At the current operating margin, generating the same cash through trading would require about £4.2m of additional revenue.
04 / REPORTINGOne source
Board reporting without rebuilding the numbers
Group overview, key numbers, P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, performance bridges, working capital, consolidation and Excel exports all come from the same controlled position.
P&LBalance sheetCash flowBoard packExcelDrill-down
THE DIFFERENCE
Dashboards stop at insight.
Critical Finance carries the work through.
Most finance analytics products wait for clean numbers and stop after the chart. Critical Finance works upstream with the raw data, then downstream with the decisions, corrections and owners needed to finish the job.
Talk through your finance stack →CapabilityCritical FinanceTypical FP&A tool
Works from raw transactions✓Often no
Applies accounting policies✓No
Transaction-level intercompany✓Limited
Automated reconciliation✓Limited
Close workflow & action routing✓Usually no
Human judgement queue✓Usually no
Daily management accounts✓Reporting-led
Cloud, private cloud or customer-hosted✓Varies
DEPLOYMENT & SECURITY
Deploy Critical Finance
your way.
Start with the simplest cloud model, or move to dedicated infrastructure where policy requires it. The Critical Finance application stays the same; the hosting and network boundary change around your requirements.
01RECOMMENDED
Critical Finance Cloud
Fully managed by Critical Finance. We securely connect to your finance systems, operate the platform and keep it continuously updated.
BEST FORMost organisations
- Fastest deployment
- No new customer infrastructure
- Managed upgrades and support
02DEDICATED
Private Cloud
A dedicated, isolated Critical Finance environment for your organisation, including deployment within your own cloud estate where required.
BEST FOREnterprise & regulated teams
- Single-tenant isolation
- Private network controls
- Customer-specific security policy
03MAX CONTROL
Customer-hosted VM
Run Critical Finance on a VM inside your private network, with administration and integrations restricted through approved VPN or private connectivity.
BEST FORMaximum infrastructure control
- Customer-controlled environment
- VPN / private connectivity
- Fits restrictive IT policy
01
Deterministic accounting engineAccounting policies are applied in code with an auditable trail for every transformation.
02
Controlled data boundaryChoose the hosting and network model that matches your data residency, security and governance requirements.
03
AI after reconciliationGenerative AI works from trusted, reconciled finance data rather than an uncontrolled raw ledger.
CRITICAL FINANCE
Stop managing the close.
Start managing the business.
See what finance looks like when the accounting work, controls, human decisions, action routing, planning and reporting run as one system.