Should I build an in-house finance team or outsource it?

Someone in the building who knows the business, picks things up in passing and can be asked a question without an email. That is worth a lot, and it is the honest case for hiring.

What comes with it: recruitment, a salary and employer costs whether the work is there or not, holiday and sickness with nobody covering, and a single point of failure. One person doing bookkeeping, payroll, VAT and management accounts is also one person with nobody checking their work.

A team rather than a person: cover when someone is away, a second pair of eyes by default, and people who have seen the same problem in a dozen other businesses. You pay for the work rather than the seat, and it scales both ways — which matters more in a bad year than a good one.

What you give up: proximity. It only works if the rhythm is deliberate — records kept current, a monthly pack that arrives on time, and a conversation about it.

Count the hours the finance work genuinely takes each month, then be honest about how many of them need someone senior. If the total isn't close to a full role, or the senior hours are only a handful, hiring buys you idle capacity at the wrong grade.

The pattern that works most often: outsource while the business grows and the processes settle, hire in-house for the routine work once the volume justifies it, and keep the senior input external until the business is large enough to need it every week.