With 2,446 supplier invoices per year (about 204 per month), 60 customer invoices per month, 25 employees, and a procurement team raising most purchase orders, your finance workload is moderate rather than high.
A reasonable staffing model would be:
Total recommended: 2.0–2.5 FTE
Why this is sufficient
The transaction volumes are manageable:
- Supplier invoices: ~204/month (about 10 per working day).
- Customer invoices: ~60/month (about 3 per working day).
- Employees: 25, so payroll is not especially large.
- Procurement raises purchase orders, reducing the workload in finance because accounts is primarily matching invoices to approved POs rather than initiating purchases.
The more time-consuming tasks for finance are likely to be:
- Three-way matching (PO, goods receipt, invoice).
- Payment runs.
- Customer collections.
- Month-end reconciliations.
- Project cost reporting.
- BAS, superannuation, payroll tax, and year-end compliance.
Benchmark
For an Australian project-based business of this size:
- 1 person would likely be stretched, particularly around month-end and staff leave.
- 2 people is a common lean structure.
- 2.5–3 people is appropriate if management expects detailed project reporting, cash-flow forecasting, and financial analysis in addition to routine processing.
Based on the information you've provided, having more than 3 full-time finance staff would generally be difficult to justify on transaction volume alone, unless there are additional responsibilities such as inventory management, extensive manual data entry, multiple legal entities, overseas operations, or unusually complex reporting requirements.
If you're assessing whether your current accounts department is appropriately staffed, a team of 2 to 2.5 FTE would be a typical benchmark for a business with these characteristics.
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A medium-sized audio-visual integration company with a $17 million annual turnover typically needs 3 to 4 accounting and finance personnel. This team size balances transaction processing, project-based billing demands, and financial oversight. [
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2]
Recommended Team Structure
- 1 Financial Controller / Finance Manager: Oversees the department, handles month-end closes, cash flow forecasting, financial reporting, and job-costing analysis. [1, 2]
- 1 Full-Charge Bookkeeper or Senior Accountant: Manages general ledger entries, bank reconciliations, payroll processing, and tax compliance preparations. [1]
- 1 to 2 Accounts Receivable / Accounts Payable Clerks: Handles day-to-day invoicing, vendor bills, collections, and processing multi-stage AV project milestone billings.
Industry Factors Impacting Staffing
- Project Accounting Complexity: AV integration relies heavily on milestone billing, long-term contracts, and equipment inventory tracking, which can increase transaction volume and push staffing closer to 4 people. [1]
- Automation Level: Using cloud tools (like Xero, QuickBooks, or specialized ERP systems) for automated invoicing and expense tracking can keep the team lean at 3 people. [1]
- Outsourcing Support: Many companies at this revenue level keep 2 or 3 core internal staff and outsource high-level tax filing or annual reviews to an external CPA firm
Benchmark
For a business like yours, I'd expect:
2–3 finance staff if processes are efficient and management is comfortable with a lean team.
3–4 finance staff if the finance team is also handling procurement, contract administration, project administration, or extensive reporting.
At AUD 17 million turnover with 25 employees, a finance department of 3 full-time people is generally a reasonable benchmark. If you currently have substantially more than that, it may be worth reviewing whether tasks could be streamlined or automated. Conversely, if you have only one or two finance staff and they're regularly struggling to keep up with month-end reporting, collections, or project costing, adding capacity could be justified.
