Sutker Moran stepped in, first, to clean up the financial statements, ensure payroll taxes were brought into good standing, and, overall, provided a level of comfort to the Company’s lender regarding its financial position. Once stabilized, Sutker Moran established a consistent monthly close process, recommended a highly regarded CPA firm, developed budget-to-actual analysis and gave management the tools they needed to successfully operate their business. Sutker Moran continues to be the Company’s Controller/CFO at a significantly lower cost than the prior controller.

The CFO of a home décor company left soon after the Company’s controller retired, leaving a large void in the financial/accounting department. Sutker Moran took on a leadership role, quickly assessing and understanding the Company’s financial systems and operations. As a result, the accounting department continued without disruption. Sutker Moran generated timely and accurate financial statements and identified areas for profit enhancement. Showing its value, Sutker became the Company’s permanent CFO/Controller.

A high-net-worth individual started a turnkey cell phone wholesale and distribution company with three interconnecting companies. He self-funded the rapidly growing company with $10 million as the Company reached $40 million in annual revenue.

Confident about the upward trajectory of his business, the owner reached out to a Chicago-based bank to provide a working capital loan to fund the growth. However, to this point, the accounting was done “out of a shoebox” and there was no financial information supporting his working capital line request.

With a complicated turnkey business model that has thin margins, the Bank needed to gain comfort with the business and what the true capital need was.

The lender referred us to their prospect. We assessed the business and developed a financing memorandum that thoroughly explained the model and provided financial projections that mapped out the initial working capital need.

With a satisfactory comfort level, the Bank approved a less than maximum working capital line with the understanding of a six-month revisit to determine if additional capital was needed.

Sutker, then, developed processes and procedures to provide timely and accurate financial information to the owner and lender which led to formally becoming the Company’s Outside CFO and key member of the management team.

Now, a year-and-a-half since the start of our engagement, the Company’s current run rate is $120 million with a projected $2 million in net income with additional working capital support from its Lender.

Sutker Moran quickly stepped in and immediately identified various issues including unreported financials for six months, significant IRS problems, a deteriorating banking relationship, as well as gross accounting department inefficiencies.

Sutker Moran painstakingly went through the process of remedying each of these issues culminating in preparing timely and accurate monthly financials, restoring the banking relationship, restructuring the accounting department personnel, and completing a successful CPA review of the year-end financial statements.

Having earned the CEO’s confidence, the Company hired Sutker Moran to be the permanent CFO and play an integral role as the Company seeks to execute its growth-oriented business plan.

Referred in by a friendly competitor of the Company, Sutker Moran took over the CFO/Controller role providing full-coverage CFO/Controller services at significantly less cost than a W2 employee. Sutker simultaneously reconciled every balance sheet account while developing and implementing a formal monthly close process. Sutker then focused on the Company’s convoluted WIP projection process. Sutker Moran, first, gained a thorough understanding of the existing process. Then, teamed with the Senior Management Team to reimagine a new formal process tailor-made for the Company’s operations. Armed with meaningful information, Sutker Advisors, as the Company’s CFO/Controller, challenges project managers with cost issues and helps identify operational under-performance.

The Company Owner was told of Sutker Morans’ services by his lender. The owner was very skeptical of Sutker’s reported ability to provide full-coverage, high-level CFO/Controller services for significantly less cost of a W2 employee. He took our call as a courtesy to his lender. Intrigued, the owner and we had several follow-up conversations where he eventually hired Sutker over the leading W2 candidate.
Given we were hired during COVID, the entire onboarding process was done remotely. Sutker installed its standard monthly closing process, developed monthly financial analysis, developed monthly financial projections, and instituted a monthly senior management meeting to review financial results and discuss anticipated future operational needs.

The Company recommended us to a $100 million General Contractor they know. We are now also their CFO/Controller.

Sutker Moran was hired as the interim CFO and immediately began to finalize year-end financials where they found insufficient, inaccurate, as well as confusing financial information. Sutker painstakingly refined the closing process and continued to facilitate the annual CPA review. In previous years, this was a huge pain point for everyone involved. The CPA firm was thrilled with the new clarity of the financial information allowing them to work quicker and not push up against tax filing deadlines like they had in the past.  Management was also thrilled because the CPA’s fees were significantly less than in prior years. Sutker then created robust financial projections to track the Company’s monthly financial performance, which has led to in-depth conversations with ownership on how to improve their results.  Given the acquired knowledge of the business and proven quality, Sutker Moran was named to the permanent CFO position, which was not something ownership even considered when first engaged as the interim CFO.

Sutker Moran was hired and immediately created an accurate WIP schedule to provide meaningful job profitability results as well as created KPI and Operational Metrics to report revenues and gross profit by project team and customer. These analyses helped the team improve project management and identify poorly performing projects.

We then focused on creating a formal monthly closing process which provided a fully accurate picture of the company’s financial performance and, as a by-product, reduced their CPA’s year-end review cost since all the books and records were pristine.

With the processes in place, Sutker Moran has transitioned into the CFO/Controller role. With a high level of comfort that their financial department is being managed well, “the plumbers are now focused on the plumbing.”

Sutker reorganized administrative processes, allowing for a clear delineation of duties that resulted in the efficient and accurate processing of transactions. We also developed comprehensive monthly projections, complete with accruals that allowed ownership and management to understand and anticipate its financial circumstances; Standardized the closing process, improving the timeliness and accuracy of the financial statements; Developed a monthly gross margin analysis by customer, product line, and customer order to help understand profitability;  Finally, Sutker provided a monthly detailed analysis of results, including the Company’s performance versus projections.

Through extensive interviews and analysis, Sutker developed a consensual, standard pricing template that was used for all estimates. With the estimates’ standardized, Sutker, working with the Company’s IT Department, developed a labor tracking system that mirrored the estimating template, allowing for relevant actual vs. estimate analysis. Proving its value, Sutker became the Company’s outsourced CFO.

The CEO was referred to Sutker Moran by an existing Sutker Moran client who he knew.

Once hired, Sutker Moran successfully converted the Company from cash-basis accounting to the accrual-basis and tackled the receivables issue. Sutker Moran secured collection of over $200 thousand in unreported receivables from the parent Company which were previously undetected. Weekly and monthly controls were established to ensure consistent tracking and collection of receivables.

While the Company was exponentially growing, Sutker Moran established consistent, timely procedures for monthly close and created a financial projection that guided management in hiring and purchasing decisions. New KPIs were established to arm the CEO with the information he needed when presenting to the Board of Directors providing all stakeholders the confidence in the financial information they were seeking. Once the company reached critical mass, the private equity firm brought in a W2 CFO. Sutker Moran helped transition to this individual.

With absolutely zero transition time, Sutker Moran stepped in right away into the CFO role. Since all Sutker Moran employees are trained to efficiently and effectively onboard financial management positions, Sutker Moran did not “miss a beat” by closing and reporting financial statements within the allowed timeframe in the first month of the engagement.

Once established, Sutker Moran brought the financials to GAAP standard and assisted with year-end forecasting including never-performed balance sheet and cash flow projections. As now their permanent outsourced CFO, Sutker Moran assists with audits, tax studies, and financial reporting, as well as manages the accounting department.

Sutker Moran was hired and immediately took over the position. Sutker instantly plugged itself into the Company’s cash situation to ensure vendors were being paid timely, especially critical given the impending ownership change. Simultaneously, Sutker began to finalize year-end financials which included developing a monthly close process for the accounting team. Sutker took the lead in navigating the due diligence period with the prospective buyer. Finally, Sutker seamlessly transitioned its responsibilities to the CFO of the buyer.

Sutker sought and identified a full-time CFO and transitioned into a more business advisory position.

Sutker began its onboarding process of reconciling every balance sheet account. During this process, Sutker identified a significant overstatement in inventory. The restated financial statements revealed the Company was losing money.

Sutker and management conducted a thorough analysis of the business resulting in $600,000 of profit enhancements that included position eliminations, insurance cost reductions, and reductions in discretionary expenses. Sutker further helped enhance liquidity by facilitating the restructuring of the Company’s bank term loan, saving $50 thousand per month.

The cost-conscious owner hired Sutker Moran as their permanent CFO/Controller as Sutker could provide full-coverage, high-level CFO/Controller acumen for significantly less cost than W2 employees. Sutker, immediately, focused on the monthly WIP report leveraging their experience to create an accurate, meaningful, but simple report that the project managers could understand and use to manage their projects. Most importantly, Sutker developed processes and painstakingly implemented procedures surrounding the accounting/managing of the projects as well as other operational areas, resulting in a positive cultural change within the organization.