Shirley Liu

Areas of expertise

Experience in the design industry

Design industry experience: 11-20 years

Shirley has been working within the design industry for the past 13 years, she formed her own company providing bookkeeping, financial management and Paprika training services 5 years ago.

Case studies

Case Study No.1

Problem:
A branding design consultancy (‘the Company’) with a turnover of just over £1m, recruited a full time financial controller who has not been able to meet their expectation. Due to this, the Company had to recruit an external accountancy firm (Kingston Smith) to oversee the monthly account and produce a monthly management report.

Solution:
I initially joined the Company, working only 4 days per week to deal with the backlog of work, organise the accounts and implement monthly financial planning. This included a regular sales forecast, WIP meeting with the account services team, to prepare a standard weekly cashflow, ensure the Company had a healthy debt and ensure the supplier purchase orders are in place to enable the Company to recharge all third party expenses back to their clients.

After working for 6 months, my 4 days per week, was reduced to 2 days. At the beginning of 2013, the Company’s turnover had almost doubled, which in turn, required more accounting time and in order to facilitate this, I increased my working time back to 4 days per week. Instead of paying a financial controller full time, I have split this into 2 days bookkeeping, and 2 days as a financial controller.

Case Study No.2

Problem:
An advertising company (‘the Company’) with more than 80 people has recently implemented Paprika into their system due to the large volume of staff training and different reports and settings, which the Company required. After six months of installation, the program was not a success.

Solution:
I was appointed to a 3 month contract which was further extended to 9 months, as an in house Paprika trainer to set up the different types of reports to suit the Company’s requirements.

I worked at the Company for 2 days per week and my work involved staff training for the accounts services team and to help them to set up any reports that they might find useful to run the project for clients.

I also devised a strategy, which enables both the accounts team and the client services team to manage sales forecasts, job profitability and cashflow through Paprika. I implemented Paprika training systems into the staff handbook for any newcomers.

Case Study No.3

Problem:
A design consultancy with a turnover of just over £1m, recruited a full time financial controller who was not able to meet their expectation. Due to this, the Company had to recruit a costly external accountancy firm to oversee the monthly account and produce a monthly management report.

Solution:
Shirley initially worked intensively with the agency to get it back on track, dealing with the backlog of work, reorganise the accounts systems and implement monthly financial planning. This included a regular sales forecast, work-in-progress meeting with the account services team, to prepare a standard weekly cash-flow to ensure the business had a healthy debt . Supplier purchase orders were put in place to ensure the business could recharge all third party expenses back to their clients. Shirley was gradually able to reduce her involvement with the company as their turnover almost doubled within a year.

Case Study No.4

Problem:
An advertising agency with more than 80 people switched their accounting and project management software to Paprika to take advantage of the different reports and settings. However, after 6 months the installation was floundering.

Solution:
Shirley was brought in as an in-house Paprika trainer, initially for three months, but later extended to nine. She helped set up bespoke reports to suit the company’s requirements as well as devise a strategy to enable both accounts and client services teams to manage sales forecasts, job profitability and cash-flow through Paprika.