Financial advisory Romania: the layer above the statutory accounts
Financial advisory in Romania starts where the bookkeeping stops. A Romanian company gets a statutory trial balance, a set of annual financial statements and a tax return. None of those was designed to run a business. They are built to a legal format, at a legal rhythm, for a reader who is not you.
The management layer answers different questions. Which clients or products actually make money after the costs that belong to them. Whether the margin moved because of price, volume or cost. What the cash position looks like in eight weeks, not last month. Whether the company can afford the hire, the machine or the extra stock. Those answers come from the same data, organised differently.
We build that layer for two kinds of company: owner-managed businesses with no internal finance function beyond the accountant, and Romanian entities that have to report into a foreign parent whose format has nothing in common with Romanian statutory reporting.
Management reporting
The starting point is a short conversation about what actually drives your result, followed by a reporting pack designed once and produced on the same template every month. Consistency is most of the value; a pack that changes shape every period cannot be read as a trend.
A typical pack contains:
- a profit and loss with the comparison that matters — prior year, budget, or both — and the variances explained in words;
- a margin analysis on the dimension that drives the business: product, client, project, site or channel;
- working capital: receivable and payable ageing, stock, and the cash conversion behind them;
- a cash position with a forward view rather than a closing balance;
- a small set of operating indicators that are yours rather than generic;
- one page of commentary on what changed and what it means.
Two rules keep the pack honest. It reconciles to the statutory accounts, so nobody has to choose between two versions of the truth. And it fits on a few pages: a report nobody finishes reading is a report nobody uses.
Budgets and rolling forecasts
A budget is useful when it is built from drivers rather than from last year plus a percentage. We build it bottom-up — volumes, prices, headcount, the cost lines that actually move — so that when reality diverges you can see which assumption broke.
After that, the discipline is the update. A budget fixed in December is out of date by March. A rolling forecast, revised quarterly with the actuals to date, keeps a live view of where the year lands and gives you time to react while reacting is still cheap. Variance analysis is part of the same loop: not a list of differences, but an explanation of which of them are timing, which are permanent, and which are a signal.
For companies choosing between the micro-enterprise regime and corporate tax, the budget is also where the tax comparison becomes concrete — the arithmetic is set out in the guide on the micro-enterprise regime versus corporate tax.
Cash-flow planning
Profitable companies fail on cash, and in Romania the tax calendar is part of the reason: VAT, payroll taxes and corporate tax cluster around the same dates each month, and they do not wait for a customer to pay.
We build the forecast from the actual receivables and payables, not from a percentage of turnover: collections by customer and expected date, supplier payments, payroll and contributions, the tax due dates, loan instalments and any financing movement. The horizon is chosen to match your cycle — thirteen weeks is a common choice for a business with tight working capital, monthly for a longer cycle.
The output is not a number. It is a set of decisions that are still available: what to collect first, what to reschedule, whether a facility needs to be arranged now rather than in six weeks.
Analysis before a decision
Some questions do not belong in a monthly pack. They come once, they need an answer within days, and the answer changes what the company does.
- Pricing. What a discount actually costs at your contribution margin, and how much extra volume would be needed to stand still.
- Make or buy. Internal cost properly loaded against an external quote, including the capacity you free or lose.
- Investment appraisal. Payback, the effect on cash rather than only on profit, and the financing cost.
- Client or product profitability. Which relationships carry the overhead and which are subsidised by them.
- Break-even and capacity. The volume at which the structure pays for itself, and where the next step-cost lands.
- Financing files. A coherent set of figures for a bank or an investor, consistent with the statutory accounts they will also read.
Where a decision has a tax dimension — and most of them do — it is worked together with our tax advisory side rather than in isolation, because a structure that is optimal before tax can be the wrong answer after it.
Reporting into a foreign group
A Romanian subsidiary lives with two reporting frameworks at once. The statutory accounts follow the Romanian regulations, on the Romanian calendar. The group wants its own format, its own chart of accounts and its own close date.
We keep both, with an explicit bridge between them. The reconciling items — revenue timing, provisions, depreciation policies, leases, intra-group transactions — are documented once and maintained per period. The group gets its submission in its own template on its own deadline; the local file stays defensible in front of a Romanian auditor or inspector; and the difference between the two can be explained by anyone who picks up the file. That work sits directly on top of the accounting and the annual financial statements.
How we work
Reporting is only sustainable if producing it is cheap. Most of our management reporting is generated from the accounting data by tools we built ourselves, so the monthly pack is a short review rather than a rebuild — the same approach described under automation and IT. A fixed monthly fee covers the agreed pack and the forecast rhythm; specific analyses are agreed separately, with the scope written down before we start.
We do not provide investment recommendations or advice on financial instruments. This is corporate financial management: reporting, planning, cash, and the analysis behind a business decision. Communication is in English, Italian or Romanian, with the person who prepared the numbers.
