06 Close remediation
Taking Over a Close That Is Failing
Taking over a month-end that has stopped working: triage first, then the suspense and reconciliation backlog, a restatement decision, one clean period.
What this covers
05Fractional finance lead
The First 90 Days of a Fractional Finance Lead
You are hiring a function, not booking advice. This is the ninety day plan we run, week by week, and the test we use to decide whether the role has done its job.
A company between ten and seventy five people usually reaches a point where the owner is the finance function and it is no longer working. Numbers arrive too late to act on, cash is managed by looking at the bank balance, nobody owns the close, and the external accountant sees the file once a year. Hiring a full time finance leader at that size is often premature and expensive. A fractional lead is the alternative, and the honest version of the role is operational rather than advisory: we take responsibility for the finance function running, not for producing opinions about it. The ninety day plan below is what that looks like in practice. The role is filled by Khaled Hawari personally, and that is the offer rather than a detail of it. A fractional finance lead who subcontracts the function has not taken it off your desk, he has moved it to a desk you cannot see.
ScopeWhat the engagement covers
01Days 1 to 15: diagnostic, and nothing gets fixed yet
The first two weeks are spent finding out what is actually true, and we deliberately change nothing while we do it, because changing a process you do not yet understand is how information gets destroyed. We walk each cycle end to end with the person who performs it: how an order becomes an invoice, how an invoice becomes cash, how a purchase becomes a payment, how payroll runs, how the month gets closed. We validate the balance sheet account by account and find out which balances have a supporting schedule and which are simply carried forward. We list every system, every bank account, every user with payment authority and every recurring commitment. The output is a written diagnostic memo with a ranked list of what is broken, what it costs, and what it would take to fix, and it goes to the owner before any work starts. The ranking matters more than the list, because everything cannot be first.
02Days 16 to 30: cash and the payment cycle
Cash goes first, always, because it is the only thing that ends companies. In the second fortnight we build the rolling thirteen week forecast, establish a weekly cash discipline, and clean up the payment cycle so that money leaves the company on a schedule instead of whenever an email arrives. That means one payment run cadence rather than ad hoc payments, the receivables ledger worked by age with a named owner and a defined escalation, remittance and payroll dates mapped onto the forecast so nothing statutory is a surprise, and the banking authority schedule documented and tightened. This is also where the two forbidden control combinations get separated, because the payment cycle is being touched anyway and it is far cheaper to fix the design now than to retrofit controls onto a process everyone has just learned.
03Days 31 to 60: a close that holds and a pack that gets read
With cash under control, the second month is the close. We put the calendar in place with named owners and stated dependencies, build the missing reconciliation schedules, define the revenue and accrual policy so the same transaction is treated the same way every month, and produce the first pack. The first close on our calendar usually runs longer than the target and we publish the actual number rather than the intended one. By the end of the second month there is a standing management review meeting in the calendar, a written commentary that gets read before the meeting, and a follow up log. If the ledger turns out to be too damaged to close on a normal calendar, this is where that becomes visible, and the ninety day plan is rewritten around remediation rather than pretending otherwise.
04Days 61 to 90: controls, forecast and the year ahead
The last month turns short term fixes into a function that runs without constant attention. The control matrix is written and agreed, the quarterly walkthrough is scheduled, and the exception log is opened. The thirteen week cash view is extended into an annual operating forecast built on the actual cost base rather than on last year plus a percentage, with the assumptions written down so they can be argued with. The finance calendar for the next twelve months is published in one document: close dates, review meetings, remittance and filing dates, insurance and lease renewals, the audit or review timetable if you have one, and the budget cycle. That calendar is the single most useful artifact of the ninety days, because it converts finance from a series of interruptions into a schedule that other people can plan around.
05What the role is, and what it is not
The role is the finance lead: the close, the reporting, cash, controls, systems, the relationship with your lender and your external accountant, and the finance input into hiring, pricing and commitment decisions. It is not bookkeeping, although we will do or supervise it where there is nobody else. It is not assurance, and we do not audit or review our own work, which is exactly why your external firm stays independent. It is not personal tax or individual advice for the owner, which belongs with your own tax adviser and stays outside this engagement. And it is not a substitute for an operations leader: we can show that a service line is losing money, but the decision about what to do with it is the owner's, and we say so rather than blurring the line.
06How we work with your existing accountant
Your external accounting firm keeps its role and usually finds ours makes theirs easier. The practical change is that they receive a reconciled file with supporting schedules instead of a box of questions, which moves their work from reconstruction to verification. We prepare the year-end working paper set in a form their software can pick up directly, respond to their queries so your team is not the intermediary, and handle the corporate filing preparation where they prefer we do. Where they have a technical position on a treatment, theirs governs, and we implement it consistently in the monthly close so that the year end does not produce a pile of adjusting entries that make the monthly reporting look wrong in hindsight.
07The exit test
The engagement is working when it needs less of us, not more, and we say so at the ninety day review rather than waiting to be asked. The test is specific: the close lands on its published date without escalation, the pack is issued on the lock date and read before the meeting, the cash forecast is scored against actuals and holds within tolerance, the control matrix has been tested at least once with findings closed, and someone other than us can perform each recurring step from the written procedure. When those hold, the sensible next step is usually a reduced cadence, or hiring a controller in house with us above them, or in some cases stepping out entirely. We would rather tell you that than keep a standing invoice for a function that no longer needs a lead.
OutputWhat you receive
Deliverables
- 01A written diagnostic memo with a ranked defect list, cost and effort against each item
- 02A ninety day plan with dated milestones, agreed with the owner before work starts
- 03A rolling thirteen week cash forecast and a weekly cash discipline
- 04A documented payment cycle, banking authority schedule and approval thresholds
- 05A close calendar with named owners and dependencies, plus the reconciliation schedules behind it
- 06The monthly reporting pack and a standing management review with a follow up log
- 07A control matrix and a scheduled quarterly walkthrough
- 08An annual operating forecast with written assumptions
- 09A twelve month finance calendar covering close, review, filing and renewal dates
- 10A written procedure for every recurring task, so the function survives a change of people
FAQAsked before signing
FAQ: Fractional finance lead
How much time does a fractional lead actually spend with us?
It is heaviest in the first two months and settles into a rhythm built around the close and the review meeting. The right way to size it is against the calendar rather than against a number of days, and we set that with you after the diagnostic rather than guessing before it.
How is this different from hiring a controller?
A controller runs the accounting. A finance lead runs the function, which includes the accounting but also cash, controls, systems, the lender relationship and the finance input into commercial decisions. Many companies at this size eventually want both, and the usual path is a fractional lead first, then a controller hired in house underneath, then the fractional role reduces.
What if the ninety day diagnostic finds something serious?
Then the plan changes and we tell you in the memo rather than at day ninety. A ledger that cannot be closed, a material misstatement in an opening balance, or a control gap that has already caused a loss all move to the front of the queue, and the reporting work waits behind them.
Do you need access to our bank and our systems?
We need read access to bank and card accounts to reconcile, and appropriate roles in the accounting, payroll and AP systems. We deliberately do not take payment release authority, because we reconcile the accounts and those two duties must not sit with the same party.
Does this cover personal tax for the owner?
No. This engagement covers the company's finance function. Personal tax planning and individual filings sit with your own tax adviser, and keeping that separate is intentional.
NextThe other engagements
01 Close operations
The Monthly Close, Run as a Service
We run month-end on a fixed twelve business day calendar, with a named owner and a stated dependency behind every step, ending in a reviewed pack.
What this covers
02 Management reporting
The Reporting Pack We Deliver Every Month
A page by page walk through the management pack we issue each month: P&L by service line, thirteen week cash, variance commentary and a KPI page.
What this covers
Talk about the first 90 days of a fractional finance lead.
Bring the last three periods and whoever currently touches the ledger. An hour is enough to tell you whether this engagement is the right one and what it would take to run it.