Where the Money Leaks, by Sector
The financial mistakes that drain businesses are remarkably common. But where they hide is sector-specific — and an accountant who treats a restaurant like a software company will miss exactly the things that matter.
Startups & Technology
The hard problems here are cash runway and capital structure, not bookkeeping. Founders burn through funding without a clear month-by-month view of how long it lasts, and they get equity, ESOPs, and valuation mechanics wrong in ways that haunt the next round. Revenue recognition on subscriptions and milestones trips up most generic accountants. We keep the runway visible and the cap table clean.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing lives and dies on costing, and work-in-progress inventory valuation is where most accountants get it wrong — under- or over-stating WIP quietly distorts your margins and your tax. Add machinery depreciation, input credit on capital goods, and the working capital locked in raw material, and small errors become large ones. We get the cost sheet right, because everything downstream depends on it.
Retail & E-commerce
The pain here is reconciliation at volume. Marketplace settlements, payment-gateway deductions, returns, and the GST treatment of platform commissions create a flood of small transactions that rarely tie out cleanly. Sellers routinely lose input credit and over-report revenue because the marketplace reports differ from the bank. We reconcile the platforms to the books so you're taxed on what you actually earned.
Professional Services
For firms billing time and expertise, the issues are TDS on receipts, the timing of revenue against work delivered, and partner remuneration structured tax-efficiently. Cash flow swings with collection cycles that nobody plans for. We smooth the timing and structure the draw.
Trading & Distribution
Thin margins and high volume mean working capital is everything — and it's all tied up in stock and receivables. The killer is slow-moving inventory and stretched debtors quietly eating a profit that looks fine on the P&L. We watch the working-capital cycle, because in trading that's where the business actually is.
Hospitality
Restaurants and hotels run on cash, perishables, and tight margins, with GST rules that differ by service type and a constant temptation toward off-books transactions that wreck your audit and your loan eligibility. Wastage and pilferage hide in plain sight. We build the controls that keep the numbers honest and bankable.
Healthcare
Clinics and practices juggle exempt and taxable supplies under GST, high-value equipment financing, and TDS on professional and contractual payments. The exempt-vs-taxable line determines your input credit and gets misapplied constantly. We map it correctly so you're neither overpaying tax nor under-claiming credit.
Real Estate
This is the most complex GST environment of all — different rates for affordable and other housing, the under-construction versus completed distinction, joint development agreements, and revenue recognition spread across long project timelines. Errors here are large by definition because the transactions are. We handle the structuring before the first sale, not after the notice.
