EveryBooks / Industries / Private equity & multi-entity / Finance function assessment
Private equity & multi-entity
Finance function assessment
A structured read on how finance actually runs, what the record can and cannot support, and what to fix in which order. Delivered as a plan your team can execute, with or without us.
Who this is for. A new CFO in the first ninety days, a CEO who suspects finance is fragile, or an investor who has just closed and wants to know what they bought.
The problem today
Leadership knows finance is slow or fragile, but not where to start. The close takes too long, the reports arrive late, and the team is busy, so every candidate explanation sounds plausible.
Without a diagnosis, the money goes to whatever is loudest. A new system gets bought to fix a process problem, or a hire is made to absorb work that should not exist.
What we deliver
A review of how the close actually runs
We walk the close with the people who do it, task by task, and record where time goes, what blocks what, and which steps exist only because of a system limitation that no longer applies.
Controls and segregation reviewed in practice
What the control documentation says, what happens in reality, and where the gap between the two would matter to an auditor or a buyer.
Systems and data flows mapped
Every system that holds financial data, every hand-off between them, and every point where a spreadsheet is load-bearing.
Team, roles and single points of failure
Who knows what, which knowledge exists in exactly one head, and where capacity actually constrains the function.
Agent readiness of the record
Whether your record can support agents today. Specifically: are transactions complete, are definitions stable, is there an audit trail, and can an action be attributed to a person. We tell you plainly if the answer is no.
A prioritized roadmap with the quick wins named
What to do in the first thirty days, the first quarter and the first year, with effort and expected benefit against each item, and a readout you can take straight to the board.
What agents do, and what your team approves
What the agents do
During the assessment, agents analyze your transaction history and close data to measure what is actually happening, rather than relying only on what the team reports.
What they never do
The assessment is a document, not a change. Nothing in your systems is modified. You decide what happens next, including whether we are involved.
Systems we work with
- Any ERP
- NetSuite
- QuickBooks
- Dynamics GP
- SAP
- Excel
From past work
What we have built
We have run finance operations reviews after acquisitions, including cases where the recommendation was to leave the existing system in place and fix the process around it.
Questions we get
How long does the assessment take?
Two to four weeks for most finance functions. The variable is how many entities and systems are in scope and how available your team is for interviews.
What do you need from our team?
A few hours each from the people who run the close, read access to the systems, and your existing close checklist and control documentation if they exist. We work around month-end rather than through it.
Do you implement the plan too?
We can, and we are explicit that the assessment is useful whether or not you hire us for it. The roadmap is written so your own team or another provider can execute it. If we quote for the work, we tell you which parts you could do yourselves more cheaply.
What if the answer is that we are not ready for agents?
Then that is what the report says, along with what would have to change first. Putting agents on a record that cannot support them produces confident wrong answers, which is worse than the manual process you have now.
Related
- Due diligence readinessYour books are ready before the buyer starts asking questions.
- Month-end close automationThe close runs on a schedule instead of on overtime.
- ERP selection and migrationWe help you choose the right platform and move you onto it.
- All Private equity & multi-entity workA platform grows by buying companies.
- How we workRead the books, design for agents, ship them, train your operators, then run and improve.