Main Content

Peter Carter

Peter works as a freelance part-time Finance Director with 10-15 agencies at any one time, with an emphasis on understanding and modelling both historical and future performance.  His focus is on making the best use of data and technology, and presenting output in the clearest way to enable management teams and boards to understand trends, set and measure KPI’s, and confidently make valid business decisions. 

Areas of expertise

Financial planning: Performance & efficiency Funding System accounting Financial management and budgeting Mergers & Acquisitions
Business processes: Business strategy & planning Business diagnostics Process management 

Experience in the design industry

Design industry experience: 11-20 years

Peter trained with one of the “Big Six” accountancy firms in the mid-90’s, and since founded and ran an outsourced accounting & financial management business for around 15 years.  He has worked alone as a roving FD since selling that in 2019.

The traditional accounting & finance approach is to look backwards at historical figures.  Peter’s priority is to look ahead, partly in terms of periodic budgeting, but far more importantly “real-time” live forecasting based on the latest available information.


Professional affiliations

Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA)

Case studies

Social media agency, Cambridgeshire:

Peter is currently part-time FD for a social agency in Cambridgeshire.  He built an end-to-end set of linked documents providing a real-time P&L forecast, drawing from new business forecasts, weighted pipeline and recruitment plans. 


Digital agency, London (sold 2017):

Peter worked as part-time FD for this agency over a period of around 10 years, providing monthly management accounts for the board, and working towards the eventual sales of the business to a large consultancy firm in 2017.  This included preparing the business for sale in terms of processes and financial rigour, “doing the maths” around the deal amount, and preparing the “data room” for the purchaser.


Design agency, Berkshire:

Peter is currently part-time FD for this design agency, having started just as Covid was beginning to take hold in the UK.  The priority was to move from informal and sporadic monthly figures to a real-time forecasting approach, enabling sales and account teams to feed into the revenue forecast directly.  This meant that the business was able for the first time to measure its recent performance, and more importantly project the coming months / year based on the latest revenue forecasts and staffing plan. 

Contact expert

Use the form below to send an email to Peter Carter.

Cookies

We use cookies to help improve our website. By continuing to use this website, you agree to our use of cookies.