It might show up in month-end, reporting, data, the ERP, planning, automation or the team's ability to support the business.

It might sit across several of those at once, which is often why it's still there.

I work with CFOs and finance leaders to understand what's causing the problem, build the solution and implement it with the people who have to use it.

Why these problems stay on the list

It’s rarely because nobody noticed.

The team knows month-end takes too long. They know the reporting is too manual, the data needs work, or the system isn’t delivering what was promised. They may even know roughly how to fix it.

What they don’t have is spare capacity, or one person with the finance, systems, data and change experience to own the whole problem while the function keeps running.

So the team builds another workaround, gets through another month and promises to come back to it next quarter.

That’s the cycle I help break

*Solve the problem underneath the workaround

I start by understanding how the problem shows up, what it's costing and why previous attempts didn't hold.

Depending on what I find, the work might involve:

• Month-end and finance process redesign

• Management reporting

• Data integrity and remediation

• ERP migration or optimisation

• Power BI reporting and dashboards

• Financial and commercial models

• Planning and forecasting

• Workflow automation

• AI workflows or agents

• Controls, documentation and handover

The answer isn't automatically another platform. Sometimes the system you already own can do the job. Sometimes the process needs fixing before it's worth automating. Sometimes AI is the right tool.

I work that out before anyone spends more money.

*Build the capability around the solution

Removing manual work creates capacity. It doesn't decide what the team does with it.

If finance uses that time to produce more of the same reporting, you've made the function faster without making it more valuable. The difference is a team that understands the drivers, connects the numbers to the decision sitting in front of the business, and is willing to form a view rather than hand over twelve pages of variance commentary and hope the answer is somewhere inside it.

I help teams build that capability around the new process or information by redesigning the work, coaching the people doing it, or both.

The aim is a finance function with more capacity and a clear idea of what to do with it.

*What this looked like during an ERP migration

An ASX-listed business was preparing for a major ERP migration with finance data integrity below 80 percent, a management reporting process that took two days and far too much manual work across the function.

What looked like a data and migration problem reached into journal controls, accounts payable, month-end ownership, reporting, documentation and system decisions.

During the engagement, I:

• Remediated the finance data and the processes causing the problems

• Removed more than 25 hours of manual work each month

• Cut two days from month-end close

• Reduced management reporting from two days to under an hour

• Preserved six years of financial history through the migration

• Identified approximately $35,000 in redundant annual software costs

• Rebuilt executive reporting for board and investor conversations

• Led workshops to help the team adopt the new processes and system

The business was also considering an accounts payable automation product. I went through it with them and recommended against it: the workload would have shifted rather than disappeared, leaving the team with another system and another annual licence but no reduction in the work.

The value came from treating it as one connected finance problem rather than separating the data, process, reporting, technology and people into different projects.

*What an engagement looks like

Most work starts with a defined problem and an agreed first scope.

Sometimes that first scope resolves it. Sometimes the diagnosis turns up connected work that needs a second decision, and when that happens I bring it to you separately rather than quietly allowing the original engagement to expand.

If the scope needs to grow, you should be choosing to spend more, not discovering that you already have.

Depending on the problem, we might work through:

• A defined diagnosis and delivery engagement

• Implementation support

• Ongoing fractional support

• Commercial finance redesign, coaching and team development

The structure should match the value and complexity of the problem rather than pushing every client through the same package.

*Is this the right kind of work?

I take on substantial finance problems where the time, cost, risk or capacity being lost justifies bringing in senior external capability.

What has your finance team been promising to fix next quarter?

Tell me what's happening, what's already been tried and what it's stopping the team or the business from doing.