2 full time accounting and finance personnel

With AUD 17 million turnover, 25 employees, 15 customer invoices per month, and inefficient processes, your workload is unusual in one respect: the number of sales invoices is very low for your revenue. That suggests you're working on relatively large, high-value projects, where the complexity lies in project administration, supplier management, and subcontractor payments rather than customer invoicing.

Based on your description, I'd estimate the finance workload like this:

• Accounts Receivable: Low (15 invoices/month)
• Accounts Payable: Potentially moderate to high, depending on subcontractor and supplier invoices.
• Payroll: Low (25 employees).
• Subcontractor management: Moderate, especially if you're verifying timesheets, purchase orders, and project costs.
• Project accounting/WIP: Moderate to high.
• Reporting and cash flow: Moderate.

Recommended staffing

Option 1 – If processes remain as they are (current state):

• 1 × Finance Manager / Financial Controller
• 1 × Accounts Officer

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. [1, 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.