We talk to a lot of 📝Rapidly growing companies who think like this:
Given the complexities of our business and our desire to build out the data tools in-house and bring in a full time CFO, we aren't sure that partnering with BrightZen to build out these models makes complete sense.
We are super interested in figuring out some sort of consulting relationship with you and the team should this make sense.
As I write this, I’m traveling to onboard the new CFO for 📝Robin Healthcare. Robin is a great case study for our work: from founding investor to 📝Fractional CFO to onboarding the new CFO.
We have also suggested to both 📝Crowdbotics and 📝Trust & Will that they are ready to bring on an in-house 📝Financial Planning and Analysis person.
Transitioning our 📝CFO System to an in-house team is a mark of our success implementing the system and helping the company grow into the need for a full-time person.
Two kinds of people in the finance department
In our view, accounting and finance departments need two different types of people: one that assembles the data and builds the tools, and another that uses the tools to do the accounting. We call the former the engineers of the accounting department and the latter the operators of the accounting department.
We focus on the engineering of the accounting department, because that’s where all the operational leverage comes from.
As you think about hiring people into the department, we’ve documented what we call the 📝Financial Organization Responsibility Matrix. We’ve also included some thoughts here:
- Be careful of CPAs. People who study accounting are trained in the esoteric aspects of IFRS 15 and SOP 98, which are important when you are a public company but (almost) completely unimportant when you are in your unaudited, rapidly growing phase.
- Operational Accountants don’t typically have CPAs because they really aren’t important on a day-to-day basis. For larger companies (50+ employees) we typically don’t need to take over the 📝Weekly Accounting; we just need the existing team to keep the books updated, so the bank balance matches the QuickBooks balance every week.
- The engineers of the accounting department are usually found in the form of FP&A people. When you have a great FP&A person, partnering with BrightZen provides a “drop of architecture.”
A drop of architecture
From 📝Our Experience, the most important thing we provide is what we call information architecture. It starts with the 📝Systems Diagram, with a focus on the 📝Level 1 Metrics.