The back office of a $44,000-a-month consulting firm, rebuilt.

Turned a failed workers compensation audit into an approved one

The firm's workers compensation premium audit had already failed on a documentation error. We pulled the submitted form and read it line by line against the source figures.

• Found $796,845 in total gross receipts entered on the owner wage line, in addition to the gross receipts line where it belonged. The form reported wages of $849,845 against actual wages of $53,000.
• Workers compensation premiums are calculated on payroll. Left alone, this filing would have priced the policy on 16 times the firm's actual wage base.
• Refiled the corrected paperwork with the correct numbers, and the audit was approved. Total time to find the error and fix it: 1.5 hours.

Handled SBE and DBE re-evaluation under a new federal rule

The federal rules governing disadvantaged business certification changed, and every certified small business faced re-evaluation under the new standard. The firm holds SBE and DBE certifications and filed through Louisiana's unified certification program.

• Completed the unified certification personal narrative, all 45 questions, to the new federal standard, and submitted it through the state portal.
• Prepared a second out-of-state DBE narrative for a new market application, plus four iterations of the personal net worth statement supporting both.
• Caught a factual contradiction between the two narratives before either was submitted. Prepared weeks apart, they told a reviewer two different things about the same fact. One conflict in a sworn certification statement is enough to cost a firm its certification, and with it the contracts the certification unlocks.
• Filed the quarterly lobbyist expenditure report and the end-of-session expenditure report.

Reconciled the entity financials and flagged what could not be supported

• Built a document-level reconciliation across two entities, matching every check, deposit, invoice, and receipt to its counterparty and stated business purpose.
• Flagged $32,000 in outflows carrying no invoice, contract, or stated business purpose, including $30,000 paid to a single individual on one day across two cashier's checks drawn on two different accounts.
• Flagged a $10,000 payment received from a vendor with no goods, services, or agreement documented to explain the direction of the money.

Reconciled three calendar years of deposits against the source record

We pulled 36 months of bank statements, the online transaction export, and every scanned check image. One workbook per year, each deposit matched to a payer and an invoice, everything that did not match isolated and priced.

• Reconciled $838,811.18 across 89 deposits in the first year reviewed, and identified $185,930.07 at risk.
• Identified $120,765 the following year and $79,500 in the current year through July. Three-year total: $386,195.
• Cut unidentified deposits from $223,612.21 to $159,417.57 by pulling and reading check images one at a time. Confirmed 16 of 48 in the first year and 29 of 37 in the second.
• Found $21,000 in retainer payments never received from two clients, then created and issued the replacement invoices.
• Caught a $500-per-payment shortfall running unnoticed on one retainer. The client had been remitting $2,500 against a $3,000 invoice on nearly every check for two years.
• Surfaced payers appearing in the bank account and in no tracking system anywhere, including one relationship worth $51,750.

Analyzed 906 card transactions and found $3,026 a month in reducible cost

• Reconciled $114,189.96 across 906 transactions on two cards and ten statements, every statement tied to the penny against its printed summary.
• Mapped $5,706.39 in monthly recurring charges across 29 subscriptions, and found the firm paying for two accounting platforms at once plus five separate workspace subscriptions totaling $452.37 a month.
• Quantified $693.66 a month in interest on a balance that closed between $30,000 and $34,600 every cycle and never reached zero, at a 28 to 29 percent rate.
• Flagged a $399 charge from an unidentified merchant while the 60-day dispute window was still open, plus 17 delayed charges totaling $1,237.66.
• Flagged $11,611.19 moved to one recipient through a peer-to-peer payment app across three months with no fixed schedule and no invoice or 1099 record, and put the documentation question in writing.
• Identified an annual fee paid on a card showing zero purchases with that airline across five statements.

Built the systems that keep the findings from repeating

Findings do not hold unless the process behind them holds. We built the receivables system, the client records, and the reporting rhythm that keep the books current between engagements.

• Designed the accounts receivable system inside the accounting platform the firm was already paying $302.50 a month for and barely using. Customer records for every billed client, automated reminders from 3 days before due through 30 days past due, a monthly aging review, and a custom outstanding-balance dashboard.
• Wrote the nine-question rollout brief for the incoming finance manager covering access scoping, class separation across the three entities, contractor payment documentation, and payroll consolidation.
• Ran the monthly invoice cycle across the full contract book, onboarded the firm onto a client's required supplier portal, and built the contract register listing amount, due date, billing contact, and submission method for every agreement.
• Built the contact database from scratch. Compiled 208 physical business cards into a 190-record master file with company, title, phone, and address, then migrated it into the CRM.
• Wrote five funding requests: a $485,000 three-year program proposal, a $150,000 multi-donor version of the same program, a $50,000 foundation letter of intent, a $25,000 rapid response application, and a $24,641 commercial services proposal priced against a $25,000 cap.
• Produced capability statements for all three entities and researched the funder landscape behind them, verifying open and closed status for nine funders before the firm spent time applying.
• Delivered weekly written work logs. 140 hours across seven weeks, every hour categorized and tied to a named deliverable.