Finance, made legible.

If your only goal is to stay compliant, then no. A bookkeeper is sufficient. But if you want to know whether your margins are healthy, when you can afford to hire, or how long your cash will last, a bookkeeper cannot answer those questions. That is what management accounts and a CFO lens are for. Most of our clients start thinking they need bookkeeping and realise within the first quarter that the insight layer is what changes how they run the business.

A full-time CFO in Hong Kong can cost HK$1–1.8 million a year. Most growing SMEs need the thinking but not the headcount. A fractional CFO gives you a qualified finance professional embedded in your business, attending board meetings, building financial models and stress-testing decisions, all at a fraction of the cost. You pay for the time and expertise you actually need, not a full-time salary.

That depends on what your current accountant delivers. If they file your annual accounts and tax return but you rarely hear from them in between, the gap is management accounting and forward-looking advisory. That is precisely what Black Ink adds. Many clients come to us having had compliance covered for years but nobody telling them what the numbers actually mean for the business. We can work alongside an existing arrangement or take it over entirely. That conversation happens case by case.

Most accounting services in Hong Kong are built around compliance. Keeping you out of trouble with the IRD and Companies Registry. We do that too. The difference is what happens after the filing. Black Ink combines qualified accounting with fractional CFO advisory in a single, continuous relationship. You get clean books and someone who reads them, explains them, and sits with you when the numbers need to inform a real decision. That combination, at this price point, is rare in the Hong Kong market.

No. We are based in Hong Kong and know the local regime intimately, but we work with SMEs wherever they operate. That includes Hong Kong-registered companies, foreign-owned businesses running through a Hong Kong entity, and firms based overseas. Cross-border complexity, whether that is reporting to an overseas parent, multi-currency accounts or offshore tax claims, is something we handle as a matter of course.

Revenue is less important than complexity and ambition. Our clients range from newly incorporated professional service firms to established SMEs with regional operations. The common thread is that they have outgrown a compliance-only platform and need someone who treats their finances as a management tool, not just a filing obligation.

Once we have had an initial conversation and agreed on the right tier, onboarding typically takes one to two weeks. That covers connecting your Xero organisation, setting up bank feeds, establishing the chart of accounts, and agreeing the reporting cadence. For clients with unreconciled historical books, we handle the clean-up before transitioning to ongoing services.

We ask for an initial three-month engagement across all tiers. This gives enough time to get the books in order, produce the first set of management accounts, and establish a working rhythm. After three months, engagements continue on a rolling monthly basis with 30 days notice either way.

Businesses that are already operating and want to grow more deliberately. That might mean entering a new market, repositioning an existing offering, building a go-to-market plan from scratch, or rethinking how they reach and retain customers. We work across sectors — the common thread is ambition and a willingness to think commercially about how growth actually happens.

Every engagement is scoped individually and priced as a fixed project fee, agreed before work begins. We do not charge open-ended retainers or bill by the hour. The fee reflects the complexity and scale of the project. All pricing is discussed and confirmed at the scoping call — there are no surprises after that.

No. Growth strategy engagements are available to any business regardless of whether they use our accounting or CFO services. That said, existing Black Ink clients receive a 20% reduction on all strategy and marketing project fees, because the two disciplines work better together.

Where it adds genuine value. We use AI to build smarter customer experience frameworks, design personalisation systems and develop decision tools that help businesses understand and respond to their customers more effectively. We do not use AI as a shortcut or a substitute for strategic thinking. It is one tool among many, applied where it makes a measurable difference.