How ASBK has been Atom Events’ embedded finance team for nearly a decade — running event-by-event P&Ls, supplier payments, payroll and VAT behind multi-million-pound weddings, milestone celebrations and exclusive private events around the world.
| AT A GLANCE Client | Atom Events |
| Sector | Luxury events — high-end weddings, milestone celebrations and private events |
| Territories | UK-headquartered, events delivered worldwide |
| Partnership | Since early 2017 (9+ years and counting) |
| Services | Day-to-day bookkeeping with full event-by-event P&L tagging, robust PO system, end-to-end supplier payments, payroll, VAT returns, real-time visibility of liabilities |
“ASBK aren’t our bookkeepers — they’re our finance team. They’ve grown with us for nearly a decade and they keep the entire back office of Atom running so we can focus on creating extraordinary events.”
— The team at Atom Events
The client
Atom Events is a luxury events company designing the kind of celebrations most people only ever see in magazines. Multi-million-pound weddings. Landmark birthdays. Private events for an internationally renowned client base whose privacy is non-negotiable. We can’t name them — but you can picture the level: when the budget runs into the millions and the brief is “make this absolutely perfect,” every detail has to land, every supplier has to be paid, and every figure has to be right.
From a private estate in the Cotswolds to a vineyard in Tuscany, from a rooftop in Manhattan to a beach in the Caribbean, Atom designs and delivers events all over the world — and behind every one of them is a back office that has to move just as fast and just as flawlessly as the team on site.
The challenge
A high-end event isn’t a single transaction — it’s hundreds of moving parts running in parallel, often months in advance. Venues need deposits. Caterers need progress payments. Florists, planners, performers, marquee crews, lighting specialists, transport, security, photographers, hair and make-up — almost every supplier expects a deposit up front and the balance well before the event itself.
Multiply that across a portfolio of events all running concurrently, each with its own budget, its own supplier list and its own timeline, and the back office becomes the difference between a smooth delivery and a scramble. Atom needed a finance operation that could keep pace with a fast-growing luxury events business — accurate to the penny, responsive enough for a same-day “is this approved?” decision, and disciplined enough that the leadership team always knew exactly what was owed, to whom, and when.
Our approach
We embedded into Atom from day one — not as an outsourced supplier, but as their finance team. We work from an Atom email address, sit inside the team’s and the suppliers’ mental model as part of the company, and run the day-to-day finance function as if we were down the corridor.
What we run for Atom today:
• End-to-end day-to-day bookkeeping — every transaction recorded for the company P&L AND tagged to its specific event, so every wedding, party and private booking has its own live P&L from the very first deposit
• A robust PO system, built and embedded into the way the team works — logging an expense takes seconds, and we can see exactly what’s been committed across every live event
• All supplier payments managed end-to-end — venues, caterers, entertainers, florists, transport, marquees, AV, security and more — with deposits and final balances paid on time, every time
• Real-time visibility of what is owed and when it is due — leadership and the events team always know what’s coming up, so cashflow is never a surprise
• A selection-to-payment workflow — when an item is selected for an event, we’re notified instantly and we pay the supplier so the booking is locked in and nothing slips
• Final invoice support — because every cost is event-tagged from day one, the team can pull a complete event P&L on demand, which makes final client invoicing fast, accurate and easy to evidence
• Payroll — run end-to-end for the Atom team
• VAT returns — prepared, reviewed and filed
• Embedded support — we work from an Atom email address, so suppliers and the team deal with us as part of Atom, not as a third party
Crucially, we don’t operate as an outsourced bookkeeper. We operate as Atom’s finance team — embedded, responsive, and accountable for the outcome.
The results
For nine years and counting, Atom has been able to focus on what they do best — designing extraordinary events around the world — while we run the finance operation that keeps it all moving.
Suppliers get paid on time, every time. The team can pull a live P&L for any event the moment they need it. Leadership has full visibility of cash, commitments and event-level profitability. The PO system makes expense logging effortless. Payroll and VAT happen quietly in the background. Final client invoicing is fast and watertight because the numbers are already tagged, reconciled and ready to go.
What started as a back-office build has become a finance function the agency runs on — and one that has scaled with them, event by event, year on year.
| In their words “ASBK have been with us since the very early days of Atom and they have grown with us into the business we are today. They run the entire back office of our finance function as if they were part of our in-house team — because, in every way that matters, they are. Every transaction is recorded and tagged to the right event, every supplier is paid on time, every PO is logged, every payroll and VAT return runs like clockwork. We can pull a live P&L for any event whenever we need to, and we always know exactly what’s |
