5 Ways to Check If Your Finance Function Is Holding Back Your Growth
Finance is one of the most critical functions in any growing business, yet it’s often treated as an afterthought. While other teams focus on driving growth, finance is left to quietly clean up the fallout.
That might work to begin with, but as your business scales, pressure builds. Questions around cash flow, budgets, and forecasts become more urgent, and if your systems were set up reactively, they’ll start to creak under the strain.
A high-performing finance function should do more than keep the lights on. It should enable growth, provide clarity, inspire confidence, and offer strategic insight. If it’s not doing that, it may be holding you back.
Here are five signs to look for, and what you can do about them.
1. You Rely on One Person Who “Knows Where Everything Is”
Every growing business has that one person. The one who knows everything about your finance function off the top of their head, they’re key in closing the month, know where all the spreadsheets live, and probably know the account codes off by heart.
But, overreliance on one person is risky. If they’re off sick, decide to leave, or become overwhelmed, the entire finance process can grinds to a halt.
How to Spot It:
Ask yourself: “If [Name] disappeared for a week, could someone else run the finance function?”
Review your documentation. If key processes live in someone’s head, that’s a red flag.
What to Do:
Start small: Document month-end processes, set up shared folders for key reports, and define repeatable processes. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just consistent.
If you're not sure where to begin, an external audit (like the ones we offer) can help map your finance landscape clearly and quickly.
2. Month-End Takes Forever (and Everyone Dreads It)
If your month-end close drags on, your leadership team is flying blind. You can’t make forward-thinking decisions if you’re stuck waiting for last month’s numbers (especially if they’re unreliable).
In fact, when a business is acquired or receives funding, one of the first expectations from a board, is a fast, accurate and reliable close. If yours isn’t, your team is spending too much time looking backwards.
How to Spot It:
Track how long it takes to close your books after month-end.
Ask your team: Is it a structured process, or a last-minute, high-stress, scramble?
What to Do:
Start by automating where possible, think: bank feeds, invoicing, accruals. Then audit your month-end checklist and stirp out friction.
Often the biggest gains can come from a change of mentality, moving from “this is how things have always been done” to “how can this be improved?”.
3. Your Finance Team Is Always Chasing, Never Advising
When finance is reactive, time is often spent putting out fires. You’re reconciling accounts, finding missing receipts, cleaning data. Which leaves no room for analysis, or strategic insights.
The best finance functions don’t just report the past, they reliably shape the future.
How to Spot It:
Is more time spent on transactional work vs. analysis and strategy?
Is finance regularly involved in leadership meetings, or just called upon afterwards?
What to Do:
Rebalance the workload. Finance should be a key strategic stakeholder, if your most senior finance employee is working on low-value tasks, time should be spent on automation, delegation or a new hire.
Give finance a seat at the table, or if they’re not equipped yet, bring in external support to bridge the gap. It’s possible to switch from reactive to proactive in a matter of weeks with the right setup.
4. Budgeting Is an Annual Event
If your budget is static, built once a year and rarely revisited, you’re not budgeting, you’re guessing. Agile businesses need dynamic financial models that keep pace with change.
Forecasts should be updated regularly. Scenario planning should be simple, not a spreadsheet nightmare.
How to Spot It:
When was your forecast last updated?
Can you model “what if” scenarios easily, or does it take hours of wrangling, and guesswork?
What to Do:
Adopt rolling forecasts. Tools like Power BI, or a smart Excel model can turn forecasting into a regular, lightweight habit.
The key is to build a flexible core model, that’s easy to iterate. We can help clients create lean forecasting frameworks they can run for themselves confidently in house.
5. Other Teams Are Making Decisions Without Finance In the Room
This is the silent killer. If marketing, product, or ops are signing off hires, contracts, or strategic changes without first consulting finance, you're flying blind.
It’s not about control, it’s about visibility. Finance should be a embedded in decision-making from the ground up.
How to Spot It:
Are major commercial decisions made with little to no finance input?
Do other teams see finance as a blocker, or as a resource?
What to Do:
Start embedding finance in decision-making conversations early. Build lightweight approval processes and cross-functional planning habits.
This definitely isn’t about introducing red tape, it’s about creating clear processes, that provides necessary data both ways. Finance can’t influence what they don’t know is happening.
Final Thoughts:
Finance should accelerate your growth, not waste your time.
You don’t need a big team, or enterprise tools, to run a smart finance function. But you do need the right structure, systems, and mindset - especially when your business is scaling.
The good news? Most of these fixes are within reach. And if you’d rather not spend hours diagnosing it alone, that’s where we come in.
Aascend Group helps growing businesses build lean, future-ready finance systems, that give you clarity, not chaos.
→ Want to know if your finance function is holding you back?
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