01Strategic Finance+
Most people think finance is about reporting the past. Strategic finance is about shaping the next move before the numbers force your hand. I sit where the money meets the decision: which bets to fund, which to kill, what the balance sheet can actually carry. The job is not to say no. It is to tell you the truth early enough that yes is still on the table.
02GAAP Compliance & Revenue Recognition+
Revenue recognition under ASC 606 is where a lot of companies quietly get it wrong, and the hard cases are where I live. I have recognized subscription and sales-as-a-service revenue where timing is the whole game, grant funding for a nonprofit where restricted and conditional dollars each hit the books differently, intercompany arrangements that have to eliminate clean, and healthcare and brokerage revenue where the performance obligation is rarely the invoice. My job is to tell you what you actually earned this period, not what showed up in the bank. Get this right and your board trusts every number you show them. Get it wrong once and they trust none of them.
03Financial Planning & Analysis+
A forecast is not a prediction. It is a question: if we believe these things, what has to be true. Good FP&A does not hand you a number, it hands you the assumptions behind it so you can argue with them. I build models people actually use to decide, not decks that get admired once and forgotten. When reality drifts from the plan, the model should tell you why before you feel it in the bank.
04General Ledger Optimization+
The general ledger is the spine of the whole operation, and most companies let it curve. Messy accounts mean every report downstream is a guess. I rebuild the ledger so the structure matches how the business actually runs, then close the books fast and clean. Boring, invisible, and the reason every other number you see can be trusted.
05Treasury & Investments+
Treasury is where I started. I ran a Lipper #1-ranked fund and managed over $30M in separately managed accounts, so I have watched money behave when the market is generous and when it is not. I have also stood up a corporate treasury from scratch and grown it past $10M. Most companies treat treasury like a checking account. I treat it as the difference between surviving a bad quarter and not: protect the downside first, keep cash where you need it when you need it, and never confuse a return with a risk you did not price.
06Cost Accounting+
Cost accounting is not a separate exercise. It lives in the general ledger and the systems around it. Get the chart of accounts right, put the process and controls in place to track cost at the SKU level, and automate the data capture, and the hard part disappears. Most people think costing is complicated, but it is only complicated when the data is a mess. Track every SKU cleanly at the source and cost, margin, and pricing all fall out of the same truth. Done right, the whole thing aligns on simplicity.
07Accounting & Financial Operations+
Accounting operations is the plumbing. When it works, nobody notices. When it breaks, you find out at the worst possible moment. I have taken a company clean through year-end audit prep and pulled out the systems and vendors that were quietly failing before they cost us a close. I build the machine so it runs without heroics, then staff it so it does not depend on any one person. The goal is a finance function that keeps its promises whether or not I am in the room.
08Business Planning & Development+
I am a business partner before I am a scorekeeper. The best finance seat is not down the hall auditing the plan, it is in the room helping build it. I have helped stand up a production operation and push it to its best month on record, and I have taken a division from zero to eight figures, so I know the difference between a plan that models well and one that survives contact with customers. Numbers should sharpen the strategy, not just grade it.
09Debt / Equity Offerings & Funding+
How you fund the business is a decision you live with for years. Take the wrong money on the wrong terms and you spend the next decade working for your cap table instead of your mission. I have advised on a raise north of twenty-five million and sat on the investment side too, so I read the term sheet the way the other side does. The best raise is the one that still looks smart three years later.
10Cash Flow Optimization+
Profit is an opinion. Cash is a fact. Companies do not die from a bad quarter, they die from running out of cash on a Tuesday. I manage the timing, the working capital, and the runway so the business always has room to make its own decisions. When cash is tight, every choice shrinks. My job is to keep the choices open.
11ERP Implementations+
An ERP project is where good companies go to lose a year. Most fail because they buy software to fix a process nobody agreed on first. I have run implementations, and I fix the process before the system, then choose the tool that fits how you actually work. Done right it disappears into the background and gives you back your close, your reporting, and your sanity.
12Financial Reporting & Management+
A report is only worth the decision it changes. I have watched teams drown in dashboards nobody reads while the one number that mattered sat three tabs deep. I build reporting that tells you the truth fast: what happened, why, and what to do about it. If it takes a meeting to explain the report, the report failed.
13Risk & Insurance+
Insurance is the risk you pay to sleep at night, and most companies quietly overpay for the wrong coverage. I have recovered over $40,000 on a fraud claim the carrier tried to walk away from, and killed a duplicate policy that was costing $15,000 a year for protection the company already had. I have also run a renewal that held our limits steady while the business added new product lines that would have spooked a lazy broker into cutting us back. The job is to know your real exposure better than the underwriter does, so you buy exactly the protection you need and not a dollar more. Cheap coverage that does not pay when you need it is the most expensive mistake on the balance sheet.
