Manufacturing Company
“I could not be more happy with how things are going through the partnership with Tom & his team. In less than three months they have gotten over sixty-five percent of the items I wanted off my plate.”
Situation
Existing manufacturing company had their CFO turn in his notice. The Accounting & Finance department would be left with a part-time bookkeeper and two other team members with little to no financial background (and no leader). Exiting CFO handled tasks but was not providing the strategic advice leadership had been wanting for years. President had been involved in nearly every decision at the company and wanted that to stop so he could shift his focus to helping the company grow.
Approach
Exiting CFO was less than helpful in helping our team understand his month end close process and complex chart of accounts. We knew we were going to have to “roll up our sleeves” and learn quickly. Our team reverse engineered the complex journal entries and had gained clarity needed to close the first month after his departure. We also worked to help the President delegate all of the non-high-value tasks to other team members along with taking on some of that ourselves. We immediately added value in terms of strategic advice on a range of items related to HR, customer applications, AR collection processes, banking efficiencies, etc.
Outcomes and Highlights in Initial Twelve Months
Trained up remaining team members
Took over weekly reports handled by prior CFO and delegated some of these responsibilities to other internal accounting & finance team members
Showed leadership what their monthly overhead was each month … amount of Gross Profit they needed to generate each month to turn a profit (and how to do it)
Prepared a budget for the next Fiscal Year
Worked alongside President & VP of Business Development to get items off President’s plate
Identified holes in Loss of Business Income Insurance coverage
Initiated Positive Pay with bank to provide fraud protection
Initiated Line of Credit Sweep to minimize interest costs
Identified weaknesses in current financial statement construct
Identified weaknesses in current accounting processes
Next Steps
In year two, we have four main focuses:
Redesign chart of accounts and establish accrual accounting to provide clarity on company’s operating performance for leadership
Ensure cumulative job costing tracker matches monthly financial statements
Establish true burden rate for all work centers & roll out new pricing strategy/template
Migrate to PEO to streamline HR functions and reduce benefits costs for employees