CFO Shenanigans 

Picture this: You just got the email. The auditors are scheduled to arrive in six weeks, and you're suddenly wide awake at 2 AM wondering if your chart of accounts is even reconciled. Did we document that policy change? Where did we put those board minutes from March? Here's the thing, audit season doesn't have to feel like cramming for a final exam you forgot about. For mission-driven organizations, public housing authorities, and nonprofits doing critical work in their comm

If you want a quick read on a company’s financial IQ, don’t start with the dashboard. Start with the close. I have seen teams with beautiful FP&A models that still struggled to answer basic questions because the close was late, messy, or negotiable. A disciplined monthly close is not accounting theater. It is the operating system that turns transactions into decisions. When the close is consistent, leaders stop arguing about whose numbers are “right” and start discussing what

From the CFO chair, “lack of collaboration with industry partners” rarely shows up as a line item, but it absolutely shows up in the numbers. It shows up as longer cycle times, higher vendor risk, fewer competitive bids, and a sales pipeline that feels like it is always starting from scratch. And the part that stings is that it is usually not caused by a bad strategy. It is caused by busy people staying inside their own swim lanes until the outside world quietly moves on with

When I first stepped into a Controller seat, the job felt pretty clear: close the books, keep the ledger clean, stay audit-ready, and make sure nothing embarrassing showed up in the financials. That foundation still matters, maybe more than ever. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners has consistently estimated that organizations lose about 5% of revenue to fraud each year, which is a blunt reminder that controls and disciplined accounting are not “extra admin” work, th

If you are staring at a forecast that refuses to cooperate, you are not alone. Slow market adoption and insufficient customer outreach usually travel together, and from a CFO perspective they are not “sales problems” in isolation. They are capital efficiency problems that show up as delayed payback, volatile forecasts, and a growing dependence on a small number of deals. When your outreach consistently reaches the right people with a crisp promise and your onboarding consiste

In a lot of companies, especially the ones growing faster than their processes, the Controller and the CFO can feel like two titles for the same person with two different calendars. I have lived that movie. One day you are debating revenue recognition and the next you are pitching the board on cash runway like your life depends on it, because it kind of does. The healthy way to think about it is this: the Controller owns the integrity of the numbers, and the CFO owns what the