Secrets of specialisation: Football clubs<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Ben Rendle has been busy. Alongside his full-time role as Plymouth Argyle\u2019s financial controller, he has set up BR Accounting<\/a>, a virtual FD firm. \u201cI\u2019ve been at the club for coming up to ten years, but I\u2019ve always wanted to be my own boss.\u201d<\/p>\n Rendle’s path in accountancy is a winding one. Having dropped out of A-levels aged 17, he completed his apprenticeship with the help of the AAT and quickly rose to a senior accounting role at an auto dealership later\u00a0owned by the retailer Pendragon.<\/p>\n But then came the financial crisis and nine months of unemployment. While looking for a job, Rendle came across a two-week temp role at Plymouth Argyle. Nearly a decade later, he remains at the club.<\/p>\n Now he\u2019s plotting his next step,\u00a0growing BR Accounting\u00a0with Plymouth Argyle\u2019s blessing\u00a0and hopes to move to BR full time at some point in the future. For now, though, it is a side hustle and Rendle remains immersed in the fascinating world of football finance.<\/p>\n So for this edition of \u2018Secrets of specialisation\u2019, AccountingWEB asked Rendle about the ins-and-outs of building a financially sustainable club and the challenges they face.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n What\u2019s the state of football finance as you see it? <\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve seen the dark side of football finance. [Plymouth Argyle] went into administration in 2011 and the club has worked since exiting to make itself more sustainable. As an industry, football has seen a lot of insolvencies. While we\u2019re trying to address sustainability through financial fair play regulations, we\u2019ve got a long way to go.<\/p>\n What are some of the familiar challenges facing football clubs?<\/strong><\/p>\n The main issue of any football club is cash flow. You\u2019ve got a high fixed-cost base and you\u2019ve got to be able to use your stadium asset for more than 23 days a year. It\u2019s always a challenge balancing everything in that regard. Many clubs are investing in their stadium to generate non-matchday revenues.<\/p>\n What KPIs and metrics do you monitor?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m looking at it almost removed from football. The whole point of us operating sustainably is operating it as a business without the emotional connection being a supporter of the club will bring. We\u2019re looking revenues, gross profits and levels of expense.<\/p>\n In terms of KPIs, our average attendance is up there with our wages-to-turnover ratio. Essentially, we\u2019ve got 23 to 27 games a season and that\u2019s where the majority of our revenue comes from. If we\u2019ve budgeted for 15,000 average attendance but you\u2019re only achieving 12,000, you\u2019re going to be way off your profitability.<\/p>\n How do you get your hands on this data?<\/strong><\/p>\n We operate with a variety of systems. We\u2019ve got retail PoS systems, we\u2019ve got ticketing systems and we\u2019re currently going through the whole Making Tax Digital (MTD) thing to link it to our accounting software.<\/p>\n At the moment, I\u2019m trying to get it fed into an analysis software individually so we can pull the whole picture into the software. We\u2019ve shifted from desktop to cloud to make this easier as well.<\/p>\n What about bridging software for MTD?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m hoping to avoid using bridging software, to be honest. The more steps you\u2019ve got, the more opportunities for things to go wrong. If it all goes wrong, you\u2019ve got potentially your accounting software provider, bridging software supplier and your EPoS provider trying to shift blame elsewhere. You\u2019ll be going round in circles trying to resolve it. Whereas if you cut it out, you\u2019ve only got two parties and they\u2019ll be on development terms with each other to sort it out. <\/p>\n More generally, how has the finance function helped Plymouth Argyle move towards sustainability?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s been baby steps rather than any one thing. It\u2019s been a system of continual improvements across the business. People know what their targets are and actually achieve them.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot of raw emotion around football. At the club we\u2019ve seen the good side of that: the fans really pulled together when we were in trouble and helped us. The emotion has its place but it\u2019s a business and needs to pay its way, too. <\/p>\n Part of a finance team that deserves recognition? Or have you undergone a digital transformation akin to Plymouth Argyle? The Accounting Excellence Awards are now open for entries, with categories including Finance Team of the Year and Digital Transformation Project of the Year. To enter or for more information click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Secrets of specialisation: Football clubs Secrets of Specialisation is a new content series focusing on specific industries. Each week, we\u2019ll interview an accountant working with clients across a specific sector to understand the challenges, opportunities and trends affecting those businesses. Ben Rendle has been busy. Alongside his full-time role as Plymouth Argyle\u2019s financial controller, he has set up BR Accounting, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}