The step-by-step finance checklist that gets your numbers investor-ready — from Xero cleanup to SEIS advance assurance. Start 3 months before you pitch.
Raising a seed round is as much a financial exercise as a commercial one. Investors will diligence your numbers — and the quality of your finance function signals the quality of your operation. A founder who turns up with clean accounts, a solid model, and SEIS advance assurance already in hand is a founder who gets to terms faster.
This guide walks through the eight finance workstreams you need to complete before you start pitching. Most founders leave them too late. Don't be most founders.
Investors won't diligence your pitch deck — they'll diligence your numbers. If your books are messy, everything downstream (management accounts, forecasts, data room) is unreliable.
Investors want to see at least three months (ideally six) of monthly management accounts before they commit. These show you understand your own numbers.
The model is the document investors will spend the most time on. It needs to be credible, testable, and built from real drivers — not top-down guesswork.
This is the single highest-ROI action you can take before a seed round. SEIS gives investors 50% income tax relief. Without advance assurance, many angels won't invest.
If you've been building product, you likely have qualifying R&D expenditure. Filing before the raise does three things: improves your cash position, demonstrates financial sophistication, and reduces the amount you need to raise.
A well-organised data room accelerates due diligence and signals operational maturity. Disorganised finances slow deals and spook investors.
Getting the share structure wrong creates problems that are expensive to fix post-raise. Get legal and financial advice before issuing any shares.
Investors will check Companies House. Late filings, missing confirmation statements, or incorrect officer details signal a founder who doesn't pay attention to detail.
The bottleneck is almost always the SEIS advance assurance — HMRC takes 6–8 weeks. Everything else can be parallelised, but only if you have the right finance partner in place from day one.
HMRC takes 6–8 weeks. If you start the application two weeks before your first investor meeting, you'll be pitching without it — and many angels will wait or walk.
"The market is £10bn, we'll capture 0.1%" convinces nobody. Build bottom-up from real drivers: customers, pricing, conversion rates, churn. Investors will test every assumption.
Turning up with a forecast but no historical management accounts raises a red flag. If you can't report what happened, why should an investor trust your predictions?
Unclear ownership, missing share certificates, or informal verbal agreements. Clean this up before due diligence — not during it.
Filing an R&D claim before the raise improves your cash position and shows investors you're financially astute. Leaving it unfiled is free money left on the table.
A general practice accountant who files your year-end accounts is not the same as a startup-specialist fractional CFO who builds financial models, structures SEIS rounds, and prepares data rooms. Know the difference.
Start the financial preparation now. AccTek handles SEIS, financial modelling, data room prep, and ongoing accounting — from one team.
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