Driving Growth and Profitability Through Outsourced Financial Expertise
Shift⁶ founder Edwina Eddleston partnered with Gravita for monthly bookkeeping, VAT returns, payroll and management accounts. She streamlined her PR business’s financial operations, supporting growth and profitability before working with Gravita for a seamless exit.
The Shift⁶ Story
Seven years after founding PR agency Shift⁶ in 2017, Edwina Eddleston decided to exit her business in early 2024 due to prevailing economic uncertainty, the fact she’d ‘hit her magic number’ and the birth of her fourth child. Gravita worked with Edwina and Shift⁶ from the beginning. We expanded the services we provided the agency in 2019.
Shift⁶ was founded on Edwina’s passion for the drinks industry, cultivated through years of experience in traditional and specialist PR firms. When she launched the company, she started to work with some of the world’s most prestigious drinks brands. Shift⁶ grew quickly, running PR and advocacy strategies for consumer and trade audiences alike, on a domestic and global level.
As the company started turning over £1m+, financial management became increasingly demanding. Running a PR agency can involve anything from buying props for photo shoots to buying flights for press trips – but the agency’s biggest investment was in personnel, whether it was the team’s salaries or their expenses. To manage these challenges, Edwina engaged Gravita, seeking a comprehensive financial solution that meant expanding our existing service to the business.
Financial Challenges
As a service-based business focusing on client projects, Shift⁶’s financial management had a number of challenges:
- The nature of PR work required frequent and large expenses for press trips, photo shoots and campaign management. This made expenses time consuming to reconcile and complicated.
- With a growing team, managing payroll for new hires and pay rises for existing employees became an increasing need.
- Despite the company’s healthy year-on-year revenue growth, financial insights were required to manage bottom-line profitability
Having had previous experience of using several different financial advisors, Edwina saw the value in investing in a single good accountancy firm. She wanted a comprehensive solution that would lessen the burden of day-to-day accounting tasks, and trusted advisors who could provide strategic insight into the firm’s long-term profitability.
Shift⁶ and Gravita
To address these challenges, Edwina called on Gravita’s Accounts and Outsourcing team to provide Shift⁶ with a tailored solution that covered all aspects of financial management.
Gravita took over the management of day-to-day bookkeeping and expenses, ensuring that all transactions were recorded accurately and promptly. This service was crucial for Shift⁶, given the high volume of expenses related to its client projects.
The team continued to lead payroll management, including registering new employees, salary adjustments and pension contributions. This relieved Edwina from the administrative burdens, allowing her to focus on running the business.
We knew that Edwina needed to use her time to make informed decisions about the business, so we developed a financial reporting system that provided real-time insights into Shift⁶’s income, costs and, ultimately, profitability. Having accurate and up-to- date numbers freed her up to focus on
As well as day-to-day financial management, Gravita’s team provided strategic financial guidance. Edwina worked closely with Sudhir Rawal, Accounts and Outsourcing Partner, who highlighted key financial trends, including a critical insight: that despite Shift⁶ doubling turnover in one year, its bottom line remained almost flat. This prompted Edwina to take a deep dive into the company’s profitability and its approach to certain client contracts, encouraging growth that followed through to the net profits.
Results and impact
By making use of Gravita’s Accounts and Outsourcing team, Shift⁶ achieved several key outcomes.
With Gravita handling bookkeeping, payroll and expense management, its internal processes became more efficient. The company could focus on client delivery, while we ensured financial accuracy behind the scenes. Outsourcing day-to-day financial tasks saved Edwina and her team significant time, which gave them the opportunity to engage in high-value activities such as client service and business development.
By integrating bookkeeping, VAT returns, payroll and management accounts and providing strategic advisory services, Gravita enabled Shift⁶ to streamline its finances, improve profitability and focus on what they do best – delivering exceptional PR and advocacy services to global drinks brands.
In early 2024, after seven years of trading and working for a plethora of household names in the global drinks industry, Edwina called again on the services of Gravita to make the business exit as tax efficient as possible. On the advice of Sudhir, she is in the process of successfully applying for Business Assets Taper Relief (formerly Enterpreneurs’ Relief) to reduce the amount of Capital Gains Tax when selling Shift⁶’s assets.
Outsourcing at Gravita
Management Accounts
We support your management team in monitoring KPIs, cash flow and spend against budgets. Our team will produce monthly or quarterly management accounts, with data graphics, expert commentary and strategic advice. We also provide payroll processing, cash flow forecasting, budgeting, VAT return services, director’s remuneration schemes, partnership and small business accounts and records of aged creditors and debtors.
Gravita provides a ‘one stop shop’ for all your accounting and tax requirements including the following:
- Bookkeeping
- Management accounts
- Statutory accounts
- Making tax digital
- VAT
- Payroll
- Budgets and forecasting
- Company secretarial services.
Year End Accounts
We embrace year-end. But we know many business owners don’t. That’s why we take over the ongoing management of your annual statutory accounts for you and submit them to Companies House and HMRC at year-end. From bank reconciliations, to records of profit and loss, they’ll ensure your accounts are correct, complete and paint an accurate picture of the financial health of your business.
Learn how Gravita can help your business – email us at hello@gravita.com
Sudhir Rawal
Sudhir has been with us for almost 10 years but brings with him 40 years of experience. He specialises in advising businesses in professional services and the creative, media and technology sectors.
