Minborg

Finance consultancy · Bengaluru

You should be able to see where the money goes.

For a business, that means books reconciled, an ERP configured the way Indian tax law actually requires, and a finance team trained to keep it that way after I leave. For a person, it means the decision worked out in numbers before you make it — not explained to you after.

Discuss your books How an engagement runs

Here about your own tax return, a property sale or a retirement number? Start here.

Benwin Xavier Thattil
Benwin Xavier Thattil · Bengaluru

Where most books startEntries scattered across systems, spreadsheets and memory.

The workEvery entry traced, matched and put where it belongs.

Where they finishReconciled, structured, and ready before you ask.

Who this is for

The books are being kept. Nobody owns the numbers.

Most growing businesses reach a point where the accounting is technically happening — entries are made, returns are filed — and yet nobody can say with confidence what the inventory is worth, why the bank does not tie out, or whether the ERP is recording tax correctly.

That is not usually a staffing problem. It is a structure problem: a chart of accounts that grew by accident, an ERP configured by someone who did not know Indian localisation, and reconciliations that were never made anyone’s job.

That is the work I am engaged to do: fix the structure, then leave it running without me.

Services

What an engagement covers

Books cleanup & reconciliation

Bank statements, vendor ledgers, customer accounts and inventory records reviewed, reconciled and brought current — so the ERP reflects what actually happened.

Odoo & ERP configuration review

Chart of accounts, GST and TDS setup, and Indian localisation settings assessed and corrected. The difference between an ERP that reports and one that merely stores.

Inventory & accounting integrity

Verifying that stock movement and accounting entries agree — the reconciliation most often skipped, and the one that quietly distorts margins.

Process review & integration points

Process flows across functions examined for gaps and duplication, with specific recommendations on where the ERP should be doing the work instead of a person.

Finance team training

Hands-on guidance for your own staff on daily entries, month-end reconciliation and year-end closure — so capability stays in the building.

Documentation & SOPs

Written routines for the work that was previously carried in one person’s head, so the process survives a resignation.

Approach

How an engagement runs

Fixed scope, a known end date, and a defined day rate. You should be able to see the shape of the whole engagement before you commit to it.

  1. Read the books as they are

    I establish the current position before I change anything — what reconciles, what does not, and what the ERP is actually configured to do.

  2. Reconcile and correct

    I bring bank, vendor, customer and inventory into agreement, and I leave every correction traceable rather than plugged.

  3. Configure the system properly

    I restructure the chart of accounts where it needs it, fix the tax and localisation settings, and identify where the ERP should be picking up work from other functions.

  4. Train the team and hand over

    I teach your staff the routine and give it to them in writing. The engagement is designed to end.

Typical terms
Onsite attendance Two continuous days per week at your premises
Remote support Included, for continuity between onsite days
Duration Scoped and capped up front, typically twelve weeks
Fees Charged per onsite day against a capped engagement value, both agreed in writing before work begins
Not included Legal and litigious matters, bulk data entry of physical vouchers, and direct filing of past-due statutory returns unless separately agreed

What I usually find

The same five things, in almost every set of books

Not a criticism of anyone’s staff. These are what happens when a business grows faster than the systems written to serve it.

  1. The bank reconciles. The sub-ledgers do not.

    Cash ties out, because somebody checks it. Vendor and customer ledgers carry aged entries nobody has owned for months, and no one can say which are real.

  2. The chart of accounts grew by accretion

    Accounts created one at a time, whenever a transaction did not fit. The same cost sits in three places, so no report built on it can be trusted.

  3. Inventory and the ledger tell different stories

    Stock movements get recorded operationally and never tied back to accounting. Margins are quietly wrong, and usually wrong in the flattering direction.

  4. The ERP was configured by someone who did not know Indian tax

    GST and TDS set up well enough to pass an entry, not well enough to produce a return. Every month ends in manual correction that nobody has time to question.

  5. Month-end is a person, not a process

    It works because one person remembers the order of it. Nothing is written down, so the routine resigns when they do.

What I’ve built

Built where the work needed it

None of this was built for its own sake. Each one exists because the work could not be done to a proper standard without it, and the alternative was bending the process to fit a tool that nearly worked.

Minborg Invoice

GST-aware tax handling, a financial year that runs April to March, client and receipt tracking, PDF invoices. Generic invoicing tools quietly assume a January year, and somebody ends up correcting every document by hand.

Payroll and attendance in one record

Payroll cannot be evidenced properly when attendance sits in one system and the ledger in another. Putting them in one place was the only way to make the month reconcile without someone retyping it.

A written SOP library for finance

Seventeen numbered procedures covering the finance function end to end. Written down so the routine belongs to the business rather than to whoever currently remembers it.

ERP configuration in Odoo

Chart of accounts, GST and TDS settings, Indian localisation and the integration points with other functions — configured to report, not merely to store.

Reporting that does not need chasing

Dashboards and small pieces of tooling that pull the numbers out on their own. Reporting that depends on someone remembering to produce it is reporting that stops the month it gets busy.

Ask yourself

Ten questions about your own books

No sign-up, no download. Read them and see how many you can answer without asking somebody.

  1. Can you see today’s cash position without asking anyone?
  2. When did someone last reconcile the vendor ledger against supplier statements?
  3. Does the stock value in your accounts match the stock in your warehouse?
  4. Can you produce last month’s profit and loss within ten working days of month-end?
  5. Does your ERP produce your GST return, or does someone rebuild it in Excel?
  6. If your accountant resigned tomorrow, is the month-end routine written down anywhere?
  7. Do you know your gross margin by product, or only overall?
  8. Is TDS deducted by the system, or remembered by a person?
  9. Has anyone reviewed the chart of accounts since the ERP went in?
  10. Can you explain the gap between your bank balance and your books, line by line?

Three or more that gave you pause is not unusual, and not a crisis. It is the conversation worth having.

Talk it through

For individuals

The same question, asked about your own money

Most people who call me are not confused about tax. They cannot see where the money goes or comes in, and they want the decision worked out in numbers before they make it. Businesses are the larger half of my practice; this is the other half, and it runs every year.

Income tax returns, including the awkward ones

Straightforward returns are quick. The ones worth bringing to me have capital gains, more than one employer in the year, property in them, or a question nobody has been able to answer plainly.

Old regime or new, for your actual numbers

Not the general answer — yours. The comparison takes your salary structure, deductions and investments and shows both outcomes side by side, so the choice stops being a guess.

Capital gains, before you commit

On property and on investments: what is payable, which reliefs genuinely apply to you, and where the date of a transaction changes the answer. Worth knowing before you sign, not after.

Property transfers and the money around them

Transfers between family, sale proceeds, the paperwork trail that has to support the money movement. The tax question and the banking question are usually the same question.

Insurance and investments, compared on numbers

Brochures compare features. I compare outcomes: what you put in, what comes back, and what it is actually worth after inflation and after tax — which is the only comparison that decides anything. A fixed deposit against a mutual fund, on your numbers rather than in the abstract.

“How much do I need to retire?”

Modelled rather than guessed, with the assumptions written down where you can argue with them. A number you did not choose the inputs for is not worth having.

A worked example

A salaried client asks how to pay less tax without earning less. One answer: raise your provident fund contribution to 12% of basic. Your employer matches it, inside the same CTC.

Your take-home falls slightly. In exchange, the employer’s matching share is tax-free, the balance compounds at a rate most market instruments do not beat, and that growth is tax-free too. You have moved money out of taxed income and into a tax-free asset without asking anyone for a raise.

Whether it suits you depends on your bracket, how much liquidity you need, and how long the money can stay put. That is rather the point: it should be worked out, not assumed. Rules change, and nothing here is advice for your circumstances until we have looked at your numbers together.

Also regularly asked: GST questions from proprietors and small businesses, and how to structure a salary so it does more for the person earning it.

A view I bring with me

The finance function owns the numbers

A finance team is not there merely to make payments and reconcile bank statements. It owns the numbers — and it is entitled to expect that the numbers it presents are respected when decisions are made. That is the standard I work to, and the one I will hold your team to while I am there.

The second belief follows from the first. A business is not its owner’s second bank account. Money that leaves it whimsically still has to be explained by somebody, usually at year end, usually by the person least responsible for it. Profit should reach you through decisions that are taken and recorded — dividend, distribution, remuneration — not through ad-hoc withdrawals the books have to be bent around afterwards.

And where a question can be answered from what actually happened, I would rather answer it that way. A client once asked me to run a Monte Carlo simulation across four projects to forecast his cash flow. With four clients and a known monthly requirement, the honest answer was in his own payment history, not in a distribution of imagined outcomes. Modelling earns its place when the future is genuinely unknown. It is not a substitute for looking.

I would rather say all of this at the start than discover we disagree halfway through.

Software, including AI

How your information is handled

Some of my work runs through AI tooling — reconciliations and other mechanical, high-volume matching, where a machine is simply faster than a person doing it by hand. I would rather tell you that plainly than have you wonder. Three commitments come with it.

Nothing of yours goes into a public chatbot. I do not paste client information into consumer AI services. Where AI tooling is used on your data, it runs through a paid business plan on my own machine, with the setting that would allow my data to be used for training models switched off, under the same confidentiality terms as everything else I hold for you.

Your information is never used to sell anything. Not in marketing, not in advertising, not as an example. It is not passed to anyone else except where a law or a government order requires it. My engagement letters name the categories of software and service providers involved in the work, so what you are agreeing to is specific rather than vague.

The judgement stays mine. A tool can be faster hands. It cannot be accountable for a number that goes to your board, your auditor or the department — I am. Nothing reaches you that I have not checked and cannot explain.

Who you would be working with

Benwin Xavier Thattil

I have spent eight years working on books from both sides: internal and external audit, and then the operating side — statutory compliance, GST and TDS, payroll, and the month-end and year-end work that has to happen whether or not the system helps.

Audit teaches you what a weak control looks like from the outside. Running the function teaches you why it got that way, and what it takes to fix it while the business carries on around you. Most people in this work have done one or the other.

The practical benefit is simple: having sat on the audit side, I know what your auditors will ask for and when they will ask for it. It tends to be ready before the request arrives, which is the difference between an audit that passes through your year and one that consumes it.

I started Minborg because the same problem kept appearing: businesses buy capable systems and then run them on habits inherited from spreadsheets. Closing that gap needs someone who understands both the accounting and the software, and who is willing to sit with the team while it is fixed.

Minborg is me. Every engagement is done personally, start to finish — you are not sold by a partner and handed to an associate. It is the one thing a larger firm cannot offer you, and the reason the practice stays deliberately small.

The last business I contracted with offered me a full-time job at the end of it. I mention that because it is the only evidence that matters in this work: the people who have actually worked with me have tried to keep me.

Against a firm: a firm files your return once the year is over. I would rather model the decision before you make it, in numbers, with the assumptions visible. Against hiring someone full-time: I cost a fraction of that, and I have seen many sets of books rather than one — which is the one thing a first finance hire cannot bring you.

Experience
Eight years in finance and administration, on the operating side
Audit
Internal and external
Standards
IGAAP and Ind AS, including conversion and IFRS consolidation work for multinational groups
Statutory
GST, TDS, payroll, month-end and year-end close
Systems
Odoo ERP and Indian localisation, Power BI, Python and Node tooling
Sectors
Manufacturing, including lifesciences
Based
Bengaluru — onsite across Karnataka, remote elsewhere in India

Contact

Start with a conversation about your books

Tell me what the position is and what you would like fixed. If Minborg is not the right fit for it, I will say so.

Based in Bengaluru. Onsite engagements across Bengaluru and Karnataka; remote elsewhere in India.