How one accounting assessment became a full finance rebuild. What began as an accounting assessment at a large zoo turned into the most complete example of our work we’ve had.
Most engagements start with a specific question. This one started with a feeling.
We were referred to a large zoo whose leadership wanted an accounting assessment – a structured review of the accounting department’s people, processes, and systems that produces a prioritized list of findings, recommendations, and a roadmap to act on them. It’s one of our most requested services, and the request usually arrives the same way it did here: not because someone found a specific error, but because the board had stopped trusting what it was being told.
Questions about the numbers were going unanswered. Board members were asking reasonable things and not getting reasonable answers. Confidence in the CFO had eroded to the point where the board needed an outside read on what was actually happening in the department.
That’s a more common starting point than people expect. Accounting assessments are frequently requested when leadership or board members have concerns about senior accounting staff, or after recent turnover has left a department in an unclear state. The assessment gives everyone a shared, objective picture — which is very hard to build from the inside once trust has broken down.
THE SITUATION CHANGED QUICKLY
Within a week of our arrival, the CFO resigned.
That left the organization without financial leadership in the middle of a review. We stepped into a fractional CFO role to keep things moving – another standalone service we offer, and in this case an immediate necessity rather than a planned engagement phase.
What we found underneath was substantial.
THE ACCOUNTS PAYABLE BACKLOG
There was a significant backlog in accounts payable. Not a few weeks of catching up – a backlog large enough that it distorted the organization’s view of its own financial position. If you don’t know what you owe, you don’t really know where you stand, and no amount of reporting on top of that foundation will restore a board’s confidence.
It had also stopped being an internal problem. Vendors were calling. Services had been cancelled for nonpayment. Employee benefits were at risk. An A/P backlog is easy to think of as a bookkeeping issue right up until the moment it becomes a reputational one – and for an organization that depends on community trust, vendor relationships, and its staff, that’s a serious place to be.
We brought in a team to work through it. This was complex, painstaking work with no shortcut version. But it did something beyond clearing the queue: working invoice by invoice through a real backlog is one of the most honest diagnostics there is. You see exactly where approvals stall, which workarounds people have invented, and what the system is failing to do.
THE SYSTEM WAS NEVER FULLY IMPLEMENTED
Between the A/P cleanup and the discovery portion of the assessment, a clear pattern emerged. The organization’s NetSuite system had not been correctly or completely implemented.
Routing and approvals were a persistent struggle. Staff had built manual workarounds to get around gaps in the configuration – the kind of workarounds that feel like resourcefulness in the moment and become invisible risk over time. Every manual step is a place where something can be missed, delayed, or unrecorded.
So we stepped in to help optimize their NetSuite environment. Also a standalone One Abacus service. Also, in this case, unavoidable – you cannot fix a process problem by working harder inside a system that isn’t set up to support the process.
THE PART THAT ISN’T ON ANY ROADMAP
Here’s what a findings list doesn’t capture: after the CFO’s departure, the accounting department was frustrated, scared, and fragmented. People didn’t know whether their jobs were safe, who they reported to, or what standard they were being held to.
The decision was made to remove the Controller as well. We stepped into that role too.
At the peak of the engagement, we had six staff members supporting the organization across these workstreams — fractional CFO, Controller, A/P remediation, systems optimization, and the assessment itself. That’s not a typical engagement shape for us, and we didn’t propose it on day one. It grew because each thing we uncovered pointed to the next one.
We also assisted with recruiting and vetting new CFO candidates and were closely involved in the selection.
WHERE IT LANDED
By the time the new CFO started, the picture looked different. The A/P backlog was caught up. Monthly reporting was current. New dashboards were in place giving the board visibility it hadn’t had. And the department the new CFO inherited was a functioning one rather than a crisis to be triaged.
The new CFO has continued the NetSuite optimization work and retains a One Abacus consultant to support it.
We’ve received kudos and testimonials from the CEO and the new CFO. Board members reached out to offer testimonials as well – which we didn’t ask for and value enormously. One of those board members referred us to a new large client we’ve since signed.
WHY WE’RE SHARING THIS ONE
Every piece of this engagement – the accounting assessment, fractional CFO support, Controller support, A/P remediation, NetSuite optimization, executive search assistance – is something we offer on its own. Most clients need one or two. This organization needed them in sequence, and it turned into the clearest illustration we have of how the pieces fit together.
If you’re a board member or executive, a few signals from this story are worth noting:
FOUR SIGNALS WORTH NOTING
Unanswered questions are a finding in themselves. When leadership can’t get clear answers about the numbers, the problem is rarely that the questions are too hard. It’s usually a capability, process, or system gap that the department can’t surface on its own.
Manual workarounds are a symptom, not a solution. If your team has built parallel processes around your ERP, the ERP isn’t doing its job — and the workarounds are carrying risk nobody has priced.
Departures don’t fix departments. Removing a CFO resolves an immediate problem and creates several new ones. The backlog, the systems gaps, and the frightened staff are all still there the next morning. Planning for that gap is what makes the transition survivable.
An assessment is a low-commitment way to find out where you stand. It’s a defined engagement with a defined deliverable. What you do with the roadmap is entirely your call.
We’re proud of this one. Helping an organization like this get back on solid ground – and being trusted by its board afterward – is the whole reason we do this work. One Abacus Advisory provides accounting assessments, fractional CFO and Controller support, accounting operations remediation, and NetSuite optimization. If any of the above sounds familiar, we’d welcome a conversation.
Lorin Port, Founder & Nonprofit Business Strategist | (760) 845-3808 | lorin@oneabacusadvisory.com