Cashflow Confidence: The Surprising Opportunity For Finance
- Jamie Black
- Automating Financial Reporting
- minute(s)Cashflow Confidence: The Surprising Opportunity For Finance In an era of considerable challenge (seemingly un-fundable infrastructure deficits, an aging population which will require more services, and a turbulent global environment), many Canadian public sector organizations struggle to cope. The obvious options of raising rates, property taxes, tuition, etc., to generate revenue, or reducing services to control costs, or a combination of the two to address these challenges, are so unpalatable amongst constituents that they are usually non-starters. Too frequently, we overlook a key asset: cash reserves and investment portfolios. By refining cash management practices, finance teams can significantly boost returns on investments, turning idle funds into a powerful revenue source. This article explores a surprisingly overlooked way to boost investment returns while reducing risk —helping tackle big challenges without having to raise fees or cut services. Balancing Two Risks Capital Risk Investing in volatile assets exposes an organization to an increased likelihood that the initial investment may be lost, in whole or in part. To minimize this risk, public sector entities default to low-risk, low-yield options like short-term deposits. They trade higher returns for greater certainty. This strategy is codified in provincial regulations that limit diversification and emphasize capital preservation. These conservative strategies are mandated by various provincial frameworks: Ontario's O. Reg. 438/97, which restricts municipal investments to eligible assets like bonds, debentures, or promissory notes issued or guaranteed by Canada or its provinces. The regulation also enforces a prudent investment standard (Part III), requiring municipalities to adopt written policies that address diversification, liquidity, and risk management, while prohibiting investments in low-rated securities (e.g., below A-low for long-term debt). In British Columbia, the Municipal Finance Authority Act enables pooled investments through the Municipal Finance Authority (MFA), providing access to diversified, secure options for local governments. In Alberta, the Municipal Investment Regulation (Alta Reg 149/2022) offers additional investment opportunities, with specific provisions for major cities like Calgary and Edmonton, while still prioritizing prudent standards under the Municipal Government Act. Inflationary Risk Keeping too much cash in low-yield accounts exposes organizations to inflation risk. A simple example: a capital project budgeted to cost $100,000,000 in 2020 would require $120,000,000 in 2025, even if you only consider Consumer Price Inflation (Inflation Calculator - Bank of Canada). Thus, we “lost” $20 million in purchasing power in 5 years. Now that example assumes the return on our investment is zero. Erosion of purchasing power occurs if the rate of return is anything below the rate of inflation. In today's environment—with Canada's CPI hovering around 2% as of October 2025—a 1.5% yield on cash feels safe but delivers negative real returns. Thus, to effectively protect public funds, we need to mitigate both risks. Balancing Risks and Improving Returns Daily cash flow forecasting stands out as a foundational tool, shifting teams from reactive to predictive management. By anticipating cash needs more accurately, organizations can extend investment horizons and capture higher rates within regulated categories like fixed-income securities issued by Canadian governments. This directly supports the liquidity considerations required under O. Reg. 438/97, s. 7(2), ensuring investments align with an entity's written investment policy (s. 7(1)). Below, we outline two key strategies enabled by this practice, tailored to the realities of public sector teams: 1) Invest for Longer Terms Finance teams that do not dedicate time to daily cash flow analysis often default to short-term investments, as uncertainty about future cash needs makes longer commitments risky. However, with precise forecasting, entities can confidently allocate funds to longer-term eligible investments, which typically offer higher yields. This approach aligns with provincial regulations that permit such instruments while prioritizing capital preservation, allowing for improved returns without added risk. 2) Minimize Your Cash Buffer Without robust cash flow analysis, teams tend to maintain overly large buffers in low-yield bank accounts to hedge against unanticipated outflows or delayed inflows. Daily forecasting provides clarity, frequently enabling a reduction in these buffers while still ensuring liquidity. The excess cash can then be moved into even short-term regulated investments, yielding better returns. A Potential Hurdle - Banking Agreements Public sector organizations are often bound by banking covenants requiring significant amounts to be held in low-interest accounts to secure favorable loan terms or services. Daily cash flow forecasting provides the data needed to demonstrate stable liquidity, empowering teams to renegotiate these agreements for more flexibility. This could involve reducing minimum balance requirements or shifting funds to higher-yield options within regulatory limits, further enhancing returns. Real-World Benefits and Examples The improved return on investment delivered by these strategies can be substantial. Better returns have the potential to add millions to annual income, as demonstrated by entities that improved yields through enhanced forecasting, even under restrictive rules. Seizing the Opportunity Improved returns represent a "hidden" lever for fiscal health in Canadian public sector organizations, achievable within regulatory frameworks that prioritize safety and compliance. We urge finance professionals in municipalities, school districts, and higher education to assess their current practices and consider incremental improvements. By implementing strategic initiatives such as daily cash flow forecasting—reducing buffers, investing excess cash sooner, for longer enhance yields while balancing capital and inflationary risk mitigation—teams can generate additional revenue to assist in addressing pressing challenges like infrastructure deficits and an aging population. The challenge for most is how to find the time to do this daily work. As you heard Joe Sass from the City of Kelowna say, “what enabled all of this for us was having the people we could put to do this work on a full-time basis.” Often finance is trapped dealing with compliance work and can not prioritize this strategic work.
Public sector finance teams can unlock significant investment returns by refining cash management. Learn how daily cash flow forecasting helps reduce idle cash, extend investment horizons, and generate more income—without raising taxes or cutting services.
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The Financial Process Maturity Model
- Jamie Black
- Automating Financial Reporting
- minute(s)The Financial Process Maturity Model A Practical Framework for Assessing and Improving Finance Operations Before choosing technology, assess the maturity of the financial process you want to improve. Should we automate reconciliations? Should we modernize reporting? Should we implement workflow? Should we replace spreadsheets? These questions are understandable. They are also often premature. Before deciding how to improve a process, organizations should first understand the maturity of the process they already have. Assessing process maturity helps organizations identify what needs to change first—and direct improvement efforts most effectively: automating before defining the work can leave required steps out of the workflow, extensively documenting and cross-training a manual process just before redesigning it can mean doing that work twice Assessment helps avoid omissions and rework—not simply choose software. Importantly, this model is not intended to measure technology maturity. It measures process maturity. A process can have modern software and still be immature. Likewise, a process may rely on legacy systems and still operate at a relatively mature level. The ultimate question is not what tools are being used. The question is whether the process is predictable, efficient, visible, resilient, and sustainable. Figure 1. A common six-stage model for assessing the management capability surrounding a financial process. Stage 1: Uncontrolled Objective: Existence Is the process occurring at all? At this stage, ownership is unclear, execution is inconsistent, and management has limited confidence that the process is being performed consistently. Typical symptoms Responsibilities are poorly defined Deliverables are frequently missed Work occurs inconsistently Knowledge resides with a small number of people Management lacks visibility into status Common statement: “I think somebody takes care of that.” Next objective: Establish ownership and ensure the process consistently occurs. Stage 2: Reactive Objective: Survival Are we constantly scrambling? Reactive organizations are capable of producing results, but success depends heavily on heroic effort. Deadlines are met through determination rather than design. Typical symptoms Recurring overtime Frequent fire drills Staff burnout during major cycles Continuous deadline pressure Heavy dependence on a few key individuals The critical distinction A single difficult year does not necessarily indicate a Reactive process. A new accounting pronouncement, ERP conversion, major reorganization, or unexpected vacancy may temporarily increase workload. The real test is whether extraordinary effort is the exception or the expectation. If overtime occurs every year, the process is likely Reactive. If overtime occurred because of a unique event, the organization may be Planned but temporarily disrupted. Figure 2. Recurring operating patterns are more diagnostic than one unusually difficult cycle. Common statement: “We always get it done somehow.” Next objective: Move from recurring fire-fighting to predictable execution. Stage 3: Planned Objective: Predictability Can we reliably execute the process? At this stage, organizations have moved beyond survival. Work is scheduled. Responsibilities are assigned. Procedures are documented. Reviews occur consistently. Success is repeatable. Typical symptoms Defined ownership Established schedules Documented procedures Consistent reviews Reasonable predictability Warning signs Even Planned organizations experience new regulations, major technology changes, unplanned staff departures, and significant organizational change. The difference is that these issues are disruptions, not normal operating conditions. Common statement: “We know what needs to happen and when.” Next objective: Reduce effort while maintaining consistency. Stage 4: Automated Objective: Efficiency Have we eliminated low-value manual work? Automation is not the objective. Efficiency is. Organizations at this stage deliberately reduce repetitive activities so staff can focus on analysis, review, decision-making, and risk management. Typical symptoms Reduced manual entry Less copying and pasting Data integration Workflow automation Reduced spreadsheet maintenance More time spent analyzing than assembling Warning sign Replacing ten spreadsheets with one enormous spreadsheet is not automation. If effort has not materially decreased, the process is probably not Automated. Common statement: “The team spends more time reviewing than preparing.” Next objective: Create operational visibility. Stage 5: Transparent Objective: Visibility Can leadership see what requires attention? The defining characteristic of this stage is visibility. Management can identify risks before they become problems and intervene before they become crises. That visibility also supports productivity: less effort is required to establish status, locate bottlenecks, and determine where to intervene. Typical symptoms Status dashboards Progress tracking Exception management Escalation procedures Early risk identification Bottleneck visibility Practical test Can leadership quickly answer the following questions? What is complete? What is overdue? What is blocked? What is at risk? Where should management intervene? If answering these questions requires several emails, meetings, or phone calls, the process is probably not yet Transparent. Common statement: “We know where the issues are before deadlines are affected.” Next objective: Create long-term organizational sustainability. Stage 6: Governed Objective: Sustainability Can the organization sustain and continuously improve the process? At the Governed stage, the focus expands from executing the process to sustaining and continuously improving it through personnel changes, technology changes, organizational restructuring, and future growth. Process governance Formal process documentation exists Procedures are maintained and version controlled Ownership and accountability are clearly defined Documentation reviews occur regularly Organizational resilience Cross-training programs exist Succession planning has occurred Knowledge transfer is intentional The process is not dependent on one individual Technology governance Approved and supported tools are used Security controls and access rights are reviewed Disaster recovery plans exist Business continuity considerations are documented Continuous improvement Post-cycle reviews occur Lessons learned are documented Successes and failures are evaluated Root causes are identified Processes and documentation are revised accordingly Practical test A Governed organization can answer “yes” to two questions: If our most experienced employee left tomorrow, would this process still operate effectively next year? Did we learn something from this year’s cycle that will measurably improve next year’s? Common statement: “The process is bigger than any individual employee.” Next objective: Sustain the process while learning, adapting, and improving. How To Use The Model The goal of this model is to identify the next practical step forward. Very few organizations operate entirely at one maturity level: Financial reporting may be Planned. Reconciliations may be Reactive. Cash flow forecasting may be Automated. Grants management may be Transparent. The model creates a common language for discussing operational maturity across finance functions. It also helps organizations avoid a common mistake: trying to automate a process that first needs to be planned. Automation rarely fixes an immature process. More often, it makes an immature process operate faster. Final Thought Technology projects often begin with discussions about software. Successful transformations usually begin with discussions about process maturity. Organizations improve by building capabilities that reinforce one another: planning makes execution predictable; automation reduces repetitive effort; transparency makes status and bottlenecks visible; and governance helps sustain and improve performance over time. Ultimately, maturity is not about technology. It is about creating financial operations that are predictable, efficient, visible, resilient, and continuously improving. That is the foundation upon which lasting transformation is built.
Technology won’t fix an immature process. Before you automate, assess your maturity. Use the six-stage Financial Process Maturity Model to identify your next practical step.
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Where Is Your Organization on the Reconciliation Maturity Curve?
- Jamie Black
- Finance Evolved
- minute(s)Where Is Your Organization on the Reconciliation Maturity Curve? A practical self-assessment for finance teams looking to improve productivity & internal controls. Most finance teams can answer whether reconciliations have ever been performed. Far fewer can say, with confidence, whether the process is timely, complete, visible, and strong enough to detect issues before they become control problems. That distinction matters. A reconciliation process may have been performed while still leaving management with limited visibility into overdue accounts, aging reconciling items, recurring discrepancies, review quality, and control effectiveness. A maturity model helps organizations place themselves on the journey from reactive reconciliation to governed, exception-based oversight. The Six Stages of Reconciliation Maturity Stage Core Question Common Symptoms Would we know if a material error, omission, or unreconciled balance existed? Reconciliations have stopped, ownership is unclear, and management has no dependable visibility into errors, unreconciled balances, or accumulating exceptions. Did we reconcile? Manual spreadsheets, inconsistent timing, limited review, high dependency on individual knowledge. Did we reconcile correctly? Standard templates, clear procedures, defined preparer and reviewer roles, but limited automation. Can we reduce manual matching and automate exception management? Automated data imports, automated matching (rules, faster based), exception identification. Do we know what requires attention? Dashboards, aging views, overdue-account reporting, automated escalation, and management visibility. How healthy is our reconciliation process? Continuous monitoring, trend analysis, risk-based frequency, exception ownership, and audit-ready evidence. Stage 1: Uncontrolled Due to staff turnover, conflicting priorities, or other causes, no reconciliations are occurring currently. The risks abound: Undetected errors: Material errors, omissions, or unreconciled balances may exist without management knowing. Financial reporting risk: Inaccurate balances may flow into internal or external reporting before they are identified. Fraud and misuse risk: Unusual or unauthorized transactions may go unnoticed because no regular control is operating. No clear ownership: No one can reliably confirm which accounts should be reconciled, who is responsible, or when the work last occurred. Loss of institutional knowledge: Staff turnover, undocumented routines, or competing priorities can prevent the process from restarting quickly. Unmanaged exceptions: Reconciling items may accumulate without aging discipline, escalation, or resolution. Audit and control failure: The organization may be unable to demonstrate that a key control exists, operated, and was reviewed. Stage 2: Reactive At the reactive stage, the organization is primarily concerned with whether reconciliations are getting done at all. The process may depend heavily on spreadsheets, email, undocumented routines, and the knowledge of a few experienced employees. The risk that reconciliations are not happening at all is reduced. Most other risks remain because the process is still manual, inconsistent, and dependent on individual effort. Stage 3: Disciplined At the disciplined stage, the organization has standardized templates, clearer procedures, documented review steps, and defined ownership. Reconciliations are more consistent and easier to review. This is an important improvement, but it does not automatically solve the visibility problem. A disciplined manual process can still be slow, fragile, and difficult to monitor across many accounts. We have also mitigated the continuity of operations risk somewhat in that procedures are documented, but transition may still be long and difficult. Stage 4: Automated At the automated stage, the organization begins reducing manual matching effort. Bank and general ledger activity can be imported, matching rules can identify routine activity, and exceptions can be surfaced more quickly. This stage is often where tools such as reconciliation automation and integrations with reporting platforms can create significant value. The objective is not simply to make accountants work faster. It is to focus their attention on exceptions, judgment, resolution and the beginnings of management visibility. Here then at stage 3 we have begun to drive significant productivity improvements, focusing our team on the important items and automating the repetitive. The automation also further mitigates the negative impact of losing key staff as the matching rules are a very explicit, formal documentation of how the reconciliation should be performed. Also, the matching can run daily and while not a complete reconciliation it does mean that the reconciliations waiting for the new hire are at least partially completed. Stage 5: Transparent At the transparent stage, management can see what requires attention. Leaders can view completion status, overdue accounts, aging reconciling items, recurring exceptions, and escalation needs without waiting for informal updates. This is the point where reconciliation begins to connect directly with continuous controls monitoring. The process becomes visible enough for management to monitor whether the control is operating, not merely whether staff believe the work is underway. Stage 6: Governed At the governed stage, reconciliation is treated as a management control, not simply an accounting task. The organization monitors process health, evaluates trends, uses risk to determine frequency, assigns ownership for exceptions, and retains audit-ready evidence. The question changes from “Did we reconcile?” to “How healthy is the reconciliation control, and where is risk increasing?” How to Move Up the Curve Progress does not require a single, enterprise-wide transformation. Many organizations begin by identifying high-risk accounts, standardizing procedures, reducing spreadsheet dependency, automating routine matching, and building dashboards that show completion, aging, exceptions, and review status. The organizations that move furthest up the maturity curve are not simply those that match transactions faster. They are the organizations that give management clear, timely confidence that a critical control is operating. As organizations mature, the focus shifts from completing reconciliations to governing the effectiveness of the process itself. The goal is not automation for its own sake. The goal is a reconciliation process that is faster, more resilient, easier to review, and more visible to management. A Useful Self-Assessment A simple way to start is to ask: Do we know every account that should be reconciled? Do we know which reconciliations are late? Do we know how old unresolved items are? Do we know whether exceptions are increasing or decreasing? Would management know if a reconciliation stopped happening? If these questions are difficult to answer, they are a useful starting point for a deeper conversation. F.H. Black works with public sector finance teams to assess reconciliation maturity, identify control gaps, and define a practical path toward more automated, transparent, and governed reconciliation. Contact us to explore a reconciliation maturity assessment for your organization.
Evaluate your reconciliation process with this six-stage maturity model. Identify gaps, improve visibility, and move toward stronger controls and higher productivity.
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Reconciliation Delayed Is Risk Multiplied
- Jamie Black
- Finance Evolved
- minute(s)Reconciliation Delayed Is Risk Multiplied A control-risk perspective for finance leaders, treasurers, controllers, and audit committees. Most organizations know they should reconcile their bank accounts. The more important question is whether they are doing it often enough, completely enough, and with enough visibility. For many finance departments, reconciliations remain a manual process performed by a small number of experienced employees on a periodic basis. When workloads increase, vacancies occur, or key staff retire, reconciliations can quickly fall behind. That situation is more than an operational inconvenience. It is a control risk. Why Timing Matters Reconciliations are far more than merely an essential first step in financial reporting. They help identify fraud, bank errors, internal mistakes, and unexpected activity while giving management an accurate view of cash which is critical for accurate cash flow forecasting & investing. The longer the delay in reconciling, the greater the risk to the organization: Errors accumulate, Recovery opportunities diminish, Institutional knowledge fades, and Fraud related losses accumulate (Figure 1) Thus, the value of reconciliation is not simply confirming that most transactions are correct. It is finding the transaction that is not. That is why timing matters. A reconciliation performed weeks or months after the activity occurred may still identify a problem, but the organization may have already lost its best opportunity to correct, recover, or contain the issue. Turnover Is the Risk Nobody Plans For When finance leaders think about risk, they often focus on cyber threats, fraud schemes, or regulatory compliance. Less attention is paid to risk to operational continuity. In many organizations, only one or two employees truly understand the reconciliation process. If one of those individuals leaves, critical controls can stop almost immediately. Reconciliation is too important to reside in the knowledge of a single employee. If a critical control cannot survive the departure or absence of one person, it is not a resilient control. Reconciliation Modernization Solves an Oversight Problem The most overlooked risk may be management visibility. In an environment of manual, decentralized reconciliations most organizations cannot reliably answer basic governance questions: Which account reconciliations are overdue? How old are the exceptions? Are unresolved items increasing or decreasing? Would management know if a reconciliation stopped happening altogether? In that sense, reconciliation modernization is not only about matching transactions faster. It is about giving management timely evidence that a critical control is operating as intended. That ability creates what every CFO, Treasurer, Controller, and Audit Committee needs: confidence that controls are operating, not simply confidence that controls exist. A Practical Path Forward Organizations do not need to transform every reconciliation process at once. A practical starting point is to: Identify high-risk accounts, Increase reconciliation frequency where the risk warrants it, Standardize documentation and review, and Give management visibility into completion status and unresolved exceptions. For organizations already considering account reconciliation modernization, FHB’s broader resources on balance sheet account reconciliations, continuous controls monitoring, Workiva and Adra integration, and public-sector success stories provide useful companion perspectives. The conclusion is straightforward: reconciliation delayed is not risk postponed. It is risk multiplied.
Delayed reconciliations multiply risk. Discover why timing, staff turnover, and poor visibility create control gaps—and how finance leaders can fix them.
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How Joint CIO–CFO Leadership Transforms Government Reporting
- Jamie Black
- Finance Evolved
- minute(s)Beyond the Report: How Joint CIO–CFO Leadership Can Transform Government Reporting Productivity and Resilience Across state and local government, core financial and regulatory reporting outputs, such as the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR), Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA), GASB disclosures, and recurring interim financial reporting, remain critical to public accountability. However, the greatest operational risk and opportunity for improvement does not reside in the outputs themselves. It resides in the business processes, controls, and operating models required to produce them. CIOs and CFOs increasingly share accountability for these end-to-end processes. Modern government reporting is not a downstream document-assembly task; it is an enterprise workflow that spans data ingestion, governance, validation, review, audit support, and publication. The strength and efficiency of this workflow directly affect transparency, risk exposure, staff sustainability, and public trust. In California, this challenge intersects directly with the priorities of Envision 2026: California’s Technology Future: Goal 5 (Continually Future-Proof the Business of Government) emphasizes modularity, process consolidation, and emerging-tech readiness, while Goal 4 (Align Strategy Execution Across the State) calls for breaking down silos and improving performance excellence. Goal 2 (Secure California’s Technology Investments) further underscores the need for strong data governance, traceability, and cybersecurity in all enterprise workflows — including financial and regulatory reporting. Core Challenge: The End-to-End Reporting Process Most reporting challenges faced by governments are not driven solely by evolving accounting standards or disclosure requirements. The challenges posed by these changing standards are often exacerbated by fragmented, manual, and loosely governed processes used to assemble recurring reporting outputs. These operating models commonly rely on disconnected spreadsheet-centric calculations, informal review practices, late-cycle validation, and institutional knowledge concentrated among a small number of individuals. These fragmented approaches often result in thousands of hours of unnecessary effort, late nights during reporting season, heavy reliance on a few institutional knowledge holders, elevated risk of errors or control weaknesses during audits, and limited capacity for proactive analysis or strategic initiatives. In such environments, reporting outputs become point-in-time results produced through effort and heroics, rather than predictable outcomes generated by controlled and repeatable processes. What Modernization Really Means Modernizing government reporting is not only about changing report formats or accelerating publication timelines. It is about strengthening the end-to-end reporting solution so that compliant reporting outputs are produced reliably through disciplined execution. A modern reporting operating model emphasizes controlled ingestion of source data, governed transformations and calculations, defined review and approval workflows, continuous validation throughout the reporting cycle, and full traceability from source data through final publication. Add to these benefits a dramatic reduction in the manual effort required each cycle. Organizations that have modernized often report 30–50%+ reductions in preparation time for ACFR and interim reports, fewer last-minute adjustments, and greater staff capacity for value-added work such as forecasting, performance analysis, or process innovation. Standards and Governance Alignment A process-centric reporting solution aligns with GAAP and GASB requirements, GFOA best practices, audit expectations related to documentation, version control, and evidence retention, and enterprise IT governance policies governing access control, security, and data integrity. Perspective from F. H. Black & Company The optimal approach is to address government reporting through the lens of end-to-end business process improvement and automation. Having supported hundreds of public sector organizations in this journey, the focus should not be on the report as a document, but the operational system required to produce reporting outputs consistently, from data sourcing and validation through review, audit support, publication, and roll-forward to future periods. Key to the success of these projects is not merely IT expertise. Improving business processes also requires experience in conducting these processes. That is why all FHB engagements are led by Principal Consultants who are CPAs, with extensive experience working in and with public sector finance, budget, treasury & audit teams. This ensures accounting standards, compliance obligations, and audit expectations are embedded directly into process design while remaining aligned with CIO responsibilities for governance, security, and enterprise resilience. Closing Thought For California CIOs and CFOs, the future of government reporting lies in treating it as a strategic enterprise capability rather than a recurring deadline-driven exercise. When supported by disciplined processes, modern platforms, and close collaboration between finance and technology leadership, organizations can achieve substantial productivity gains, lower operational risk, improve staff sustainability and morale, enhance audit readiness, and ultimately strengthen public trust and accountability. Strong reporting outputs are achieved not by working harder at deadlines, but by building processes and systems that perform reliably year after year. To explore how your organization can modernize its end-to-end reporting processes while aligning with Envision 2026 priorities, contact F. H. Black & Company at www.fhblackinc.com or reach out directly to discuss a no-obligation process assessment.
Discover how joint CIO-CFO leadership can modernize end-to-end government reporting, reduce risk, cut preparation time by 30-50%+, and advance Envision 2026 goals.
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City of Vernon
- Rachel Raymond
- Success Stories
- minute(s)The Challenge: Drowning in Complex Legacy Systems & Workarounds Project: Consolidated Financial Statement Automation City: Vernon, BC Population: 44, 529 (2021) Platform: ARLO When Elma Hamming, CPA, CMA, joined the City of Vernon, British Columbia as Director of Financial Services in March 2024, she inherited a financial reporting process that was, in her words, a “mishmash due to growth, change, and limited resources.” The city’s previous year-end statements relied on a mix of old legacy solutions and manual Excel workarounds, with comparative data misaligned between systems they were a challenge to audit. A recent transition to a new Workday ERP system in January 2024 further complicated matters, requiring a complete remapping of the general ledger (GL) structure. With a tight timeline, limited budget, staffing shortages, and an audit looming, Elma faced a daunting task: produce accurate, compliant financial statements without overwhelming her team or depending on external auditors to prepare them. Manual processes were time-consuming and increased the risk of error, pulling focus from strategic priorities like council reporting and long-term financial planning. Elma, who had previously worked with F.H. Black & Company Incorporated at other organizations, turned to FHB and their ARLO solution to transform Vernon’s financial reporting to maximize efficiencies and give the city a strong foundation for the future . The Solution: Automating with ARLO for Speed and Simplicity Elma and her team partnered with FHB to implement ARLO, a cloud-based platform designed to streamline financial reporting. Despite a compressed timeline, FHB’s consultants—Christine Gilbert, CPA, Tricia Fraser, CPA and Michael Spurlin —worked closely with Vernon to map the new Workday GL structure to ARLO and automate the production of financial statements.ARLO’s intuitive interface, resembling familiar tools like Word and Excel, allowed Vernon’s team to quickly adapt, even with limited prior exposure. Unlike their prior solution, which Elma found unnecessarily complex and non-intuitive for annual use, ARLO simplified data manipulation and statement adjustments. For example, FHB customized ARLO to handle Vernon’s unique water utility reporting, netting out regional district transactions seamlessly. This flexibility ensured the city could produce polished, compliant financial statements without the steep learning curve of legacy tools while enhancing the quality of data analysis. The Results: Efficiency Gains and a Path to Strategic Focus The implementation delivered immediate efficiencies. By automating GL imports, grouping of accounts, and statement updates based on Vernon's specific rules, ARLO eliminated the need for manual Excel workarounds, saving significant time during the audit process. “It’s definitely easier to manipulate than our previous solution,” Elma said, noting how ARLO’s user-friendly design reduced the complexity of mapping changes and adjustments. The city successfully completed its audit with no major findings, a significant achievement given the year’s challenges.ARLO also positioned Vernon for future efficiencies with capabilities and content that would have been extremely difficult and time consuming to incorporate into their prior solution. ARLO's PSAB content library prepares the city for upcoming reporting requirements, such as PS 1202 compliance in 2027, with pre-built templates and crosswalks. Elma’s team plans to expand ARLO’s use to Local Government Data Entry (LGDE) reporting and potentially quarterly council reports, further reducing manual workloads. “It simplifies the process,” Elma said, especially for onboarding new staff with limited public sector experience—a critical advantage given the public sector's staffing challenges. By automating repetitive tasks, ARLO freed up time for Elma’s team to focus on strategic priorities, such as financial planning and community impact. The city is also exploring ARLO’s benchmarking capabilities to compare performance metrics like reserves and debt against peer municipalities, aligning with Elma’s interest in PSAB’s Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) ratios for long-term financial health. A Trusted Partnership Elma’s long-standing relationship with FHB, spanning her roles with the Town of Smithers, City of Rossland, Town of Oliver, City of Penticton, and now the City of Vernon, underscores the reliability of the partnership. “I knew I was in good hands,” she said, appreciating FHB’s willingness to take on extra workload during the compressed timeline. The team’s support, combined with ARLO’s intuitive design, turned a high-pressure, high-risk project into a sensational success story. The City of Vernon’s journey with ARLO demonstrates how automation can transform municipal finance from a “mishmash” of manual tasks into a streamlined, strategic function—saving time, reducing errors, and empowering teams to deliver greater value to their communities. Ready to streamline your financial reporting? Contact F.H. Black & Company Incorporated to learn how ARLO can transform your processes. © 2025 FH Black Inc. All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced, excerpted, distributed, or transmitted without prior written consent.
The City of Vernon simplifies financial reporting with ARLO’s easy-to-use platform, automating tasks, reducing errors, and saving time.
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City of Dubuque
- Rachel Raymond
- Success Stories
- minute(s)Simpler, faster, better budgets: On the right track with the City of Dubuque Project: Budget Book Automation City: Dubuque, Iowa Population: 58,877 (2023) Platform: Workiva The Scene Chief Financial Officer Jenny Larson has been with the City of Dubuque, Iowa, for 18 years. For much of that time, she served as director of the city’s budget department. Recently, she was asked to take over the finance department, which left the budget team short on staff and experience. “The budget staff has been built to accommodate my move,” said Jenny. “Two budget analysts came on board in 2022, and Laura (Laura Bendorf, Budget Manager) came on board in 2023,” she said. By late 2024, Jenny was still devoting part of her time to guiding the newly formed budget team. As she brought the City’s new hires up to speed, Jenny quickly realized that the team needed both a new approach for data storage and an improved process for budget book preparation. FHB conducted a Workiva Health Check for the City, evaluating their use of the Workiva platform and identifying ways to improve or expand it. Up until that point, they had been using the platform for report writing but had not tapped into its functionality as a single source of data. Their existing process involved using Workiva Sync to sync data from different Excel workbooks into their Revenue Consolidator and Expense Coordinator spreadsheets. Data visibility was poor, and their review process disjointed. As a result of the Health Check, the Dubuque team enlisted the help of FHB to meet a series of goals: Make Workiva the central repository for budget report data Replace existing synced sheets with sheets connected to the database Increase automation of budget book production Develop an accessible, repeatable process Prevent breakage of any existing links Use the same data sets to power multiple documents, presentations, and reports, including the ACFR Standardize styles across documents Set up and configure dashboards for data validation and collection The Results As part of the improvement process, FHB used keystones to calculate the numbers in the City’s report, instead of variable, complex formulas. So, when they’re reconciling or reviewing their numbers, it’s easier to identify issues; they can clearly see which segments make up each number. “That is really going to be a time savings,” said Laura. “It’s a lot more intuitive to just see it,” she added. Before the implementation, in the case of a discrepancy, they had to go back to individual departments to investigate its origin. How It Went “The implementation was smooth, it was fast—which was a very good thing. FHB kept me going and kept me on track. In the weekly meetings, there was always something to cover. I appreciated that kind of general check-in. We were always on the same page with FHB,” said Laura. Jenny compared her experience with FHB to a recent ERP implementation, which took four years to complete. The ERP project was initially led by a software consultant with no accounting knowledge. “We had to fire her...and we had to fire a project manager...we went through several implementation consultants and at least two project managers,” she said. In comparison, “working with FHB was hands-down a great experience,” she added. The Dubuque team was quick to praise FHB Principal Consultant Faith Olanipekun, CPA, who led the implementation. “Faith was very responsive. And I really enjoyed the energy and positivity she brought to the meetings. She really kept the project going forward,” said Jenny. Technical Consultant Myra Rogers also stood out as a key FHB team member. “It was helpful that she had a government background, because she understood,” said Jenny. “She was really knowledgeable,” added Laura. The Dubuque team is convinced that the project would not have been as successful without the help of FHB. “I think my five years in finance have taught me that we just don't have the staff capacity required,” said Jenny. “Even if we had the time...FHB's knowledge base made it so much faster,” added Laura What's Next Jenny and team are looking forward to reaping the full benefits of Workiva during their upcoming budget process for fiscal year 2026. "Using Workiva definitely has streamlined the process. I can only imagine it will get better once we're able to use everything that F.H. Black has done,” she said. The City has a few more FHB-led projects in the works, including organizing their documents, relinking the formulas in their spreadsheets, automating department budget forms, and linking their operating form to their all-expense consolidator. Update Six months after FHB spoke with Jenny and Laura about their Workiva database implementation, we checked in for an update on their subsequent initiatives. Jenny found that completing projects incrementally worked well for her team. “Doing progressive projects really helped. As we did each project, there was less and less involvement from our side, until the final project just went so quickly.” “There was a lot of work on the FHB side, but limited interaction from our side, because Faith and the team knew our structure so well and how the files work. It was really impressive. I don’t think we could’ve asked for a better outcome.” –Jenny Larson With FHB leading their projects, the City’s team was able to focus on other essential duties. "We only have three full-time staff, so quite honestly, I don't know when or if we would have gotten to the projects that FHB did. I just don't think it would have been possible. It allowed our staff to focus on budget amendments, annual budget department training, and now we're into the next budget cycle,” said Jenny. Not only were the projects managed adeptly, but they were also finished, “way before” deadline. “FHB just way exceeded our expectations,” said Jenny. “Nothing was overlooked.” © 2025 FH Black Inc. All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced, excerpted, distributed, or transmitted without prior written consent.
With the help of FHB, the City of Dubuque simplified their budget book process, saving their team hours of time per week over several weeks.
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City of Walnut Creek ACFR Project
- Rachel Raymond
- Success Stories
- minute(s)Public sector expertise saves Walnut Creek 1,000+ hours/year & enables ACFR publishing one month earlier than ever Project: ACFR Automation Organization: City of Walnut Creek Population: 69,152 (2023) Platform: Workiva FHB Extensions: Public Sector Data Model The Challenge Before we connected with the finance team at the City of Walnut Creek, California, they were mired in endless manual data entry and reconciliations. All of their statements and documents were housed in Word and Excel. Spreadsheets were riddled with inconsistent formulas and hard-coded numbers devoid of explanation. Hidden rows contained legacy data that affected totals. There were human errors aplenty. The team struggled to maintain consistent formatting throughout the report, ensure rounding uniformity, and catch discrepancies between fund statements and balance sheets. Only one person on the team had access to the Excel workbook that included all of the statements. That person left, leaving the team at a real disadvantage. It was nearly impossible for them to determine where any of the financial statement or notes table data came from. And they had no documentation of any ACFR preparation process steps. The Implementation FHB stepped in to evaluate the City’s challenges and determine the best available solution to help overcome them. Did you know? Out of the box, reporting automation software can boost productivity to some degree, but public sector organizations often fail to reap the full benefits of their technology investments. That’s why FHB leverages deep accounting and technical expertise to develop public-sector extensions on top of existing platforms, and why CPAs with public sector experience lead our implementations—for maximum productivity improvement. The FHB team, led by Principal Consultant Faith Olanipekun, CPA, helped the City automate much of its ACFR preparation process, using leading industry platform Workiva, enhanced by our proprietary public sector data model. “The implementation was both efficient and informative,” said Kirsten LaCasse, Administrative Services Director for the City. Faith and her team eliminated the City’s reliance on multiple, disjointed Word and Excel documents, leveraging Workiva's functionality as a cloud-based, single source of data. FHB ensured that multiple finance team members will share access to and understanding of the City’s new data source, to prevent any future gatekeeping of information. And as an added benefit of the platform, an unlimited number of team members can now collaborate in real time. Faith equipped the team for success with clear, repeatable process steps, making ACFR preparation, and employee training and onboarding, much simpler. The Results With the implementation complete, Kirsten and her team immediately recognized its value. “Before, it took one full-time employee about half of her time throughout the year, and all of her time for part of the year, to prepare the ACFR manually,” said Kirsten. All told, FHB’s implementation of Workiva will save the City’s team roughly, “1,000 staff hours per year, maybe a little bit more,” Kirsten said. “This year, we were able to submit our ACFR one month earlier than in previous years. We got it in before Thanksgiving for the first time ever. Our staff is now able to focus on the actual GL entries and notes without rushing,” she said. What’s more, the team can, “confidently say where every number comes from and how it ties to the trial balance,” said Kirsten. And FHB’s implementation makes proper rounding and identification of discrepancies a breeze. “All of our journals are tracked and easy to provide to auditors. Our presentation of information is more professional and consistent, and our frustrations are dramatically diminished,” she said. “The elimination of simple human errors will inevitably increase the level of confidence our Council and community have in our staff.” Looking ahead, the Walnut Creek team is considering including the SEFA (Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards) as part of the ACFR, rather than creating a separate document. “It could certainly help us, when we’re preparing to bring the ACFR to Council, to have the SEFA somehow incorporated,” said Kirsten. We’re also talking about doing a PAFR (Popular Annual Financial Report), but we haven’t gotten that far yet,” she said. © 2025 FH Black Inc. All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced, excerpted, distributed, or transmitted without prior written consent.
Read how the finance team at the City of Walnut Creek reduced time spent on ACFR preparation by 1,000+ hours per year with the help of FHB.
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Cincinnati Metro Housing Authority
- Rachel Raymond
- Success Stories
- minute(s)Cincinnati Metro Housing Authority chops months of work per year with FHB + Adra Project: Reconciliations Automation Organization: CMHA Platform: Adra by Trintech How It Started In October of 2023, Monica Mitchell joined the Cincinnati Metro Housing Authority (CMHA) as an Account Reconciliation Specialist. The organization had been using Excel to manage monthly financial closing, but they recognized their need for automation and a more standardized, repeatable reconciliation process. First, they created Monica’s role for the purpose of managing that process. Then, they hired FHB to configure and implement a new financial-close-automation software, Adra by Trintech. Shortly thereafter, three key team members transitioned away from the project, and Monica needed assistance in handling the software implementation and monthly reconciliations. Our Approach FHB's objective at the project’s outset was to implement three of CMHA’s largest bank accounts in Adra Matcher and Balancer. Our approach: Understand & document the existing reconciliation processes. Set up the frequency of account preparation, approval, and review. Write custom rules to automatically match as many transactions as possible. Train the CMHA team to use the system and to write their own rules going forward. Test transaction matching through three rounds of rules to maximize the percentage of automatic matches. Provide the team with best practices to simplify and improve matching in the future. How It Went When we spoke with Monica, she had nothing but praise for FHB’s implementation team. “Jill [FHB Principal Consultant Jill Moats, CPA] was awesome,” she said. “She was very patient. It was kind of chaotic over here [amid staffing changes]. But she was very good at getting us to focus and answering our questions. Jill is very, very good at getting to the core of the problem and giving an explanation in plain English,” she said. "I appreciated the fact that Jill is an accountant and that she's done reconciliations.” –Monica Mitchell, Account Reconciliation Specialist, Cincinnati Metro Housing Authority “I have a lot of experience with implementations, and programmers always think it's a great thing to implement new software, but they never think about the end user and whether it makes sense to them. I think that FHB takes that into account, especially during implementation, asking, ‘How will you use this?’ I found that really helpful.” “I am somebody who learns much better by having someone guide me through than by trying to figure it out on my own...what happens with going it alone is that you get so far and then you run into a wall. And then it takes days to get the wall torn down. And you forget what you were doing before you hit the wall. I appreciated having Jill to say, ‘maybe you should look at it this way.'" The Results For Monica, the implementation by FHB couldn’t have come at a better time. "Having the tools to handle [reconciliations] makes it all so much easier,” she said. Now that it’s up and running, the solution saves Monica weeks of work. “I also picked up [responsibility for] what we call the lock box—our Low-Income Public Housing or LIPH program. My former colleague used to struggle with that; you should see those Excel reconciliations. He tried to explain to me how he did it in Excel, and I said, ‘No. I don't even understand what you're saying.' When I took it over, I said, ‘I can’t do that account without Adra.’” Now, only a small percentage of open items remain unmatched, mostly due to timing. “I'm [reconciling] it within 0.5 percent, so, I'm happy with that,” Monica said. “Another of our big accounts is the HAP HCV (Housing Assistance Payments Housing Choice Voucher), which includes 18,000 transactions every month,” she said. The auto-matched transactions for that account are around 98 percent, meaning now, they only need to review around 250 of those 18,000 transactions monthly. What's Next Monica anticipates enlisting the help of FHB for future work. “Now that I've really bought into it, I can start convincing other people that they can buy into it. Some have the attitude, ‘why do we need new tools if we can just do it in Excel?’” © 2025 FH Black Inc. All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced, excerpted, distributed, or transmitted without prior written consent.
Learn how Cincinnati Metro Housing Authority, with the help of FHB, cut months of work per year out of its reconciliation process by implementing Adra.
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Pinellas County Clerk's Office ACFR Automation
- Rachel Raymond
- Success Stories
- minute(s)Out of the Woods with Pinellas County Comptroller's Office Project: ACFR Automation Organization: Pinellas County, Florida Population: 961,739 (2022) Platform: Workiva The Challenge In sunny Pinellas County, Florida, situated on a 280-square-mile peninsula between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, Bill Seiter serves as Assistant Director for the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller’s Finance Division. Back in 2018, Bill and his team engaged the help of FHB to implement the best available tool for improving their Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) preparation process. Since then, everything has changed—the report’s size and complexity, as well as the technology available to automate the process. Although the desktop program FHB implemented in 2018 was a major improvement over their prior solution, by 2024, it could no longer support the team’s growing needs. The old program was complicated and required a great deal of time to set up and maintain each year, ultimately creating additional work for the team. They also found basic actions, like formatting, unnecessarily difficult. By March of 2023, Bill and his team were ready for a better solution. They reached out to FHB, once again, for help selecting and implementing the right tool to further streamline preparation of their annual report, in light of their changing needs. “We were looking forward to something a little more user-friendly,” Bill said. His team also sought to better leverage the native capabilities of a new platform. And finally, they wanted a tool that would allow collaboration, so that multiple team members could work on various sections of the report simultaneously. After considering available options, the Pinellas team elected to implement Workiva, with the support and guidance of Workiva Elite Partner and public sector specialist, FHB. The Implementation Out of the box, Workiva serves as a solid, blank, foundational platform, upon which FHB developed many Public Sector Extensions that enable a faster, more robust implementation; provide enhanced functionality; and maximize automation. FHB’s central extension is a Public Sector Data Model, which includes pre-built tables, queries, chains, and scripts. It can be paired with other extensions to streamline, automate, and simplify workpapers, rounding, adjusting journal entries, data validation, GASB pronouncement automation, Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA) automation, and more. How It Went From the kickoff meeting, to importing the County’s data into Workiva, to replicating their prior year ACFR, the implementation took just 14 weeks. “The project was managed really well,” said Bill. FHB Principal Consultant Joy Richardson, CPA, led the implementation initially, followed by Principal Consultant Faith Olanipekun, CPA. “Faith got up to speed quickly. They both seemed to really know [the old software] as well as Workiva,” he said. The Clerk’s office was impressed by the responsiveness of Joy, Faith, and the entire team. “They were available and responded to questions within a day, usually within a few hours,” said Justin Hansen, Senior Manager–General Accounting & Reporting. “From my perspective, the implementation was fantastic.” –Bill Seiter, Assistant Director How It's Going To get a true sense of project outcomes, we regularly follow up with our clients once they complete their first reporting cycle with Workiva. Like all of our clients, Pinellas was highly satisfied with their results. “The collaboration was there, especially for the first year, when everybody’s getting used to the software. It was easy to use, and we were done about a week earlier than we were last year. Considering we switched both auditors and software, it turned out really well,” Bill said. “Workiva was definitely easier for staff to understand and train on. It's more native to what they know in Word and Excel, and there’s better communication,” he added. “Workiva is awesome. And having a foundation in Excel makes it super easy to use. So, I love it.” –Shpresa Zenku, Senior Finance Accountant “It's very risky to have just one or two people who know how to use software that's so important for your process. Workiva gives our staff the opportunity to get more into the preparation. It's a learning tool, it’s a ‘spread out the work’ tool. So, it's not all concentrated on one person. I'm pretty happy with it from that perspective,” Bill said. “Last year (in the old program), it was just me…making all the updates. This year, we had all our accountants here. And we even got our analysts in there helping as well, with the statistical sections,” Justin added. What does the Pinellas team love about Workiva? Easy to learn and use Saves time Facilitates onboarding Enables self-sufficiency Streamlines steps Promotes collaboration Looking Ahead The Pinellas Clerk’s team expects to see added time savings during future ACFR preparation cycles. “Now that we've been through a year and were able to make tweaks needed after initial setup—we found some input values that we should have linked and automated, so we’ve made those updates—going forward, I think we're really going to see the time savings,” said Justin. They’re also keeping an eye out for other automation opportunities. “We used our reconciliations worksheet created last year as our source for the reconciling document. So, we can automate and continue improving that,” Justin added. Soon after completion of their ACFR automation project, FHB helped the Pinellas Clerk’s team update their implementation to include the groupings needed for its federally mandated SEFA report. Bill and his team are so happy with the level of support and care provided by FHB, they’ve volunteered to spread the word. “If you have prospective clients, I’m happy to be a reference,” he said. © 2025 FH Black Inc. All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced, excerpted, distributed, or transmitted without prior written consent.
FHB helped Pinellas County Clerk’s Office complete its ACFR earlier while implementing new software that enables greater collaboration, more efficiency, and ease of use.
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