Situation
A high-growth fintech company operating across multiple states needed a close process that could handle multi-state payroll, cash settlement, intercompany activity, and the accounting complexity that came with rapid headcount growth. The team was running close on tribal knowledge and manual checklists that lived in individual inboxes.
The Challenge
The close process was fragile. It worked when the same people ran it every month, but it broke under any variation — new team members, system changes, or organizational disruptions. There were no reusable reconciliation templates, no documented workflows for the high-complexity steps, and no review structure that gave the close manager visibility into where the process stood at any point during the month. When auditors asked for documentation of controls, the answer was largely verbal.
Work Performed
- Built reusable reconciliation templates for all recurring close steps: bank recs, intercompany balances, payroll accruals, fixed assets, and state tax liabilities.
- Documented cash settlement and intercompany workflows in step-by-step format so any qualified team member could run them.
- Designed a close checklist and review structure that gave the close manager real-time visibility into completion status without requiring individual status updates.
- Coached a 3-person accounting team through monthly close routines, reviewer expectations, and exception handling protocols.
- Built the controls documentation package that supported four external audit reviews, covering reconciliation sign-offs, journal entry support, and period-end review procedures.
- Maintained close continuity through two acquisitions — including entity consolidation, chart of accounts alignment, and onboarding of the acquired companies' accounting activity.
What Happened
The fundamental problem was that the close process existed in people's heads, not in documented systems. That works until it doesn't — and in a fast-growing fintech with two acquisitions in eighteen months, it stopped working quickly.
The approach was to systematize what the team already knew how to do. Reconciliation templates did not change the accounting; they made the accounting reproducible. Close checklists did not add oversight; they made the existing oversight visible.
The audit preparation work was the most consequential output. Four external auditors across two audit cycles reviewed the close controls and found the documentation sufficient. That outcome was not accidental — it was the result of building the controls documentation as a core deliverable, not as an afterthought when audit season arrived.
The acquisitions created the hardest test. Each brought a different chart of accounts, different systems, and different accounting practices. The close templates and documented workflows gave the team a framework for absorbing the new entities without losing the operating rhythm that had been built.
Anonymized previous-experience example based on work performed in-role. Names and identifying details have been removed.