Consumer & Retail

Multi-location retail, fuel and convenience networks, franchise systems, and consumer brands.

In high-volume businesses, small leaks become large losses long before anyone sees them.

Consumer and retail businesses run on thousands of small transactions across many locations, often with cash, franchise partners, and promotions that complicate revenue.

Finance has to see every location clearly, and quickly enough to act. We have rebuilt controls for a high-cash retail network running on very few systems, and we bring the same discipline to leases, revenue, and inventory.

On the agenda

Cash and controls

Cash handling at the edge of the network

Where sites handle a lot of cash with few systems, shortages and unexplained differences start to feel normal. The controls that work are designed for the field: counts at fixed times, dual custody, reconciliation of each shift to sales and to meter or point-of-sale data, and exceptions escalated the same day.

Controls that rely on a head-office review weeks later will find losses. They will not prevent them.

Leases

Store leases under IFRS 16

Revenue-linked rents with minimum guarantees, renewal options, and frequent renegotiation make retail lease portfolios the most error-prone population under IFRS 16 (Ind AS 116). Minimum rents are fixed payments that belong in the lease liability, and store closures and renegotiations are modifications with accounting of their own.

Revenue

Loyalty points, returns, and franchise fees

Under IFRS 15, loyalty programmes create a separate performance obligation and deferred revenue, and expected returns reduce revenue and create a refund liability. Franchise arrangements separate upfront fees, ongoing royalties, and sales of goods to franchisees, and each follows its own pattern of recognition.

Inventory

Shrinkage, expiry, and the cost of running out

Losses found by a periodic count are found too late. Perpetual records reconciled at a frequency matched to risk, daily for fuel and high-value lines, catch shrinkage early and prevent stock-outs that cost more than the stock itself.