In Black & White

Strategies for getting Council to understand and support your budget

Joy Richardson
Budget Book
minute(s)It's budget time, and you're ready! Painstaking detail and effort have gone into making sure that all 300+ pages of the budget book have been checked and rechecked. While this may feel like a job well done, the hard part (communicating) is just beginning. The reality is that a budget without context is just as ineffective as a map without a legend. The presentation of the budget's information is your chance to help Council, the Board, or any other stakeholders map out where your organization is today and its future direction (remember the map)! With lots of information to share in a limited time, effective communication is essential. Therefore, when developing your strategy, you should consider the objectives of: Informing, and Engaging. Informing is the starting point for communication and is based on the following: Information flow is in one direction Reading a budget book is an example of the one-way flow of information. The reader receives the information. However, without any accompanying conversation, they do not have the opportunity to ask questions or give feedback. Further, just providing the information is not enough. Communicating with the goal to enable understanding helps Council focus on and interpret the data so that the intended messages are received. Simple strategies for improving comprehension include using: Progressive disclosure to keep things focused Progressive disclosure keeps information at the summary level until the reader asks for or needs more detail. Providing too much information at once is overwhelming, causing that glazed-over-eyes phenomenon we have all seen! Learning efficiency benefits greatly from the use of progressive disclosure. Information presented to a person who is not interested or ready to process it is effectively noise. Information that is gradually or progressively disclosed to a learner as they need or request it is better processed and perceived as more relevant. Universal Principles of Design, Lidwell, Holden, Butler Using a drill-down approach provides additional information as necessary when the readers are ready to make sense of it. Style for understanding When it comes to style, remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, the focus should not be on what looks pretty but on understandability. To convey the message, consideration should be given to using the right combination of text, tables, and graphs. Find more information on this topic in our 3 questions to answer before report design blog. Engaging provides Council with the opportunity to receive information as well as respond with questions. The benefits of this multi-directional approach become apparent as heads begin nodding with understanding instead of the usual nodding off. While the Council presentation and budget deliberations themselves are forms of engagement, tools such as real time-modeling can make things even more dynamic. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a simulation is worth at least a million. Simulations can help demonstrate individual budget components, their relationship with other areas, and the impacts of making changes that are often hard to articulate. Specifically, a simulation can: Demonstrate the inherent trade-offs that come with competing resources and desires Highlight the differences between discretionary and non-discretionary items and how they impact the budget Show both the short- and long-term impacts of budgetary changes Shifting your Role: It is no secret that finance and budget departments' resources are limited, and much of those resources are already allocated to just preparing the budget. This begs the question of how to implement these strategies? If you are familiar with our work, you may have already guessed the answer: Best Practices paired with the appropriate Technologies. There are various software solutions that can free up staff resources by: Soliciting community engagement and integrating it into the budget Automating the preparation of the budget publication Assisting with a real-time, interactive presentation Budget simulators are one such tool you can consider. Read more on their utilization for engaging stakeholders. Using technology to reduce the more manual and mechanical processes, you can shift staff resources to focus on better communication and engagement. This allows finance departments to add value as not just number crunchers but as trusted advisors.

Go beyond just submitting and presenting your budget book to Council. Use these strategies for stakeholder buy-in and informed feedback.

Chicago Public Schools

Rachel Raymond
Success Stories
minute(s)Chicago Public Schools saved hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in ACFR preparation costs The Challenge Project: ACFR Automation Organization: Chicago Public Schools Population: 636 Schools with 340,658 Students Solutions: Workiva Wdesk & Wdata ACFR: 2021 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report The dedicated team at Chicago Public Schools (CPS) was fighting a losing battle. A combined one thousand hours of overtime was not enough to prevent missed deadlines, extension requests, and reporting errors. The problem was clear, manually generating the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) with generic tools was extremely inefficient. "We could not provide the report on time, we tried, and we couldn’t turn it around quick enough to meet our board meeting timeline." Dongmei Li Assistant Controller-Corporate Accounting at Chicago Public Schools Manual Overload Using Word and Excel to prepare the ACFR's contents and then compiling it into a PDF meant that nearly every word, number, graph, and chart in the organization's 214-page report had to be manually keyed in. In addition, any time a modification was made, it was down to the finance team to ensure that all associated information was updated in all applicable locations. Not only was this process time-consuming, it left lots of room for errors to creep into the report. Formatting to exhaustion Formatting the ACFR is not something often thought about outside the finance department, but those who generate it know it's a monumental task of great importance. A poorly formatted report is challenging to follow, invokes doubt, invites misinterpretation, and often results in poor planning/decision making. For finance departments formatting reports with inadequate tools this represents a relative black-hole of lost time. Typically, financial reports are not simply formatted once. Every seemingly insignificant change results in another round of review, spacing, page number changes, table of content updates, chart and graph modifications; the list goes on and on. "We had a hard time dealing with formatting issues for our report. It took soo long! That's time I should have spent on other areas, but instead, we have to figure out how to correct formatting issues in the PDF...If we wanted to have a 3rd party compile the report, it cost more than $30,000." One review, two review, three review, more. The highly manual nature of the organization's ACFR preparation meant that the report had to be constantly reviewed and validated. Updating a balance or text didn't just mean modifying a cell in most cases; it could mean updating several cells, charts, graphs, and the MD&A to assure that all the data was correct and flowed the way it should. Then, checking over the formatting again, how did the change affect margins, page numbers, images, etc. The worst part - the lingering doubt that accompanies the process, "what if I missed something?". Staff shortages "A main problem right now for the whole country, not only for school districts or state and local government, is a shortage of staff. It’s harder to maintain staff, and one of my solutions is to use a lot of automation. That way, we can reduce a lot of unnecessary work, and we don’t have to rely on so many staff." The Solution After reviewing several competitive solutions, including Gravity, CaseWare, and OneStream, as well as some offerings from smaller companies, CPS opted for Workiva's Wdesk and Wdata platforms. Wdesk serves as the organization's report writer, while Wdata is the database on the back-end driving automation. When asked what tilted the scales in Workiva's favor, Dongmei advised: "While some of the other solutions could accommodate our requirements for automating content and linkages. Workiva can also provide a very nice presentation, which is critical for us." The benefits didn't stop there. Dongmei continued to discuss the advantages of automation, fiscal and time savings, and improved collaboration with the Auditor. Automation "I just need to set up one master worksheet and all the information flows to all the different worksheets; it’s done, it’s like a miracle happened. We saved soo much time and headaches." "We don’t see a lot of errors now. Before, we would have errors because of technical issues. If we change something in one place, it's not automatically reflected in other areas; those types of errors happened all the time. This year because we are using this wonderful automation tool, we didn’t have this problem at all. It was a high-quality report. We were so happy about it". Fiscal and Time Savings "This software really saved us a lot of cost on the reporting piece, $30,000 at least...For a lot of other solutions, any time we need to change anything, we need to contact the vendor for support, and it becomes very costly." "We saved at least 500 hours; that’s minimum... I remember in 2020, I needed to work on the report to meet the timeline for the board meeting. I worked 30 hours straight to get the report done." The Audit "Communicating with the auditor was very easy. We could send them a single package with all of the supporting documentation. We didn’t need to send excel documents back and forth…the Auditor was really happy with the solution as well." The Implementation It's not the first time that Chicago Public Schools has attempted to implement a solution to automate its ACFR. An attempt was made in 2015, and the project never really got off the ground. The team at CPS credits the consultants and best practices of F.H. Black & Company Incorporated for the success of the implementation. "I have been involved with this kind of software implementation system upgrade for many many years...When I started to go through the procurement process, I could never imagine it would have gone so smoothly, with this level of success." In conversation, Dongmei's Auditor discussed another client who works with Workiva but had self-implemented. While Workiva was working for them, they were still working out the kinks and did not implement as many efficiencies as Chicago Public Schools had with FHB. "I feel like I am the lucky one. Thanks to F.H. Black, we did not have any issues, we met all our deadlines, and we are really confident in our solution. F.H. Black has the best consultants I have seen in my whole career. Not only are they IT experts, but they know the accounting side. ..I am a CPA and also a Certified Public Financial Officer, but I think our consultant is a level above me." The Result "This project was really successful, but it's way bigger than that. If we failed, if we couldn't meet our deadline, or there were issues, or the auditor complained, I don't know how I could convince senior management to make other improvements that our team, that the whole organization needs. This project proved that we could successfully implement technology, and it's just the beginning. Now we have the confidence to work with F.H. Black to improve the whole finance department."

Chicago Public Schools saved hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in their Annual Comprehensive Financial Report preparation costs. We interviewed them to learn more.

What a difference a year made for the City of Fort Wayne

Rachel Raymond
Success Stories
minute(s)The City of Fort Wayne cuts budget book preparation time by 75%. That's 300 hours! Project: Budget Book Automation Project Scope: Automate balances and narrative GFOA Budget Book Award compliance Replicate appearance of existing book Organization: City of Fort Wayne, IN Population: 265,752 (2019) Solutions: Workiva Wdesk & Wdata Budget Book: Operating Budget Book The Challenge The City of Fort Wayne was using multiple disjointed systems to prepare the budget book. The budget department would bring balances from Excel into Munis, their ERP system. Any required changes would be manually keyed into the ERP system. The team would then run "really clunky" Crystal Reports and open them in Excel. They then pivoted the data by inputting appropriate parameters by fund and department. If a department like Police, had sub-departments (police admin, radio shop, and records) any changes to a sub-department would require a report to be run at the sub-department level before being rolled up for a department level report. They then needed to review for accuracy before going back to Excel for any updates. "Every time we made one little number change, it caused at least another 30-45 minutes worth of work" Kathleen Smith Finance Manager at the City of Fort Wayne The Solution Having had great success with the reporting automation solution used to prepare the city's ACFR, the team opted for more of the same: Workiva's Wdata & Wdesk, customized and implemented with F.H. Black & Company Incorporated. What does the process look like now? Data is pulled from the City's ERP system and imported into Workiva. The budget book is then automatically populated with balances. All participants have the ability to access the system and provide their contributions. Any required changes are updated in a single location in Workiva, and the book and all other applicable materials are automatically updated. Reports that would have taken hours to prepare before now take moments, and data can be pivoted in an instant. "I just can't say enough about how much efficiency and accuracy improved" The Implementation After carefully considering the implementation service levels offered, the city contracted FHB to automate the budget book on a "guided-self" basis with onboarding support. This meant that while costs were kept low, Kathleen and her team would do the majority of the work under the guidance of FHB's experts once they had completed the initial setup and customization. FHB assigned a team to work on the city's project and the work began. As with all FHB led implementations, the initial kick-off meeting defined scope, assigned tasks/deadlines, and trained the city's team on using their project management tool. Next, FHB implemented a pre-built data model designed for public sector organizations, and built a connection from the city's ERP system, Munis. FHB recreated the prior year budget book template in Workiva, set up basic sections and ten pages of linking to train the city's team. We then assisted the city with the tasks assigned to their team, which included loading, tagging, and grouping imported data by object and function, building and linking schedules, notes, and statements, before reconciling, reviewing, and testing. "We had the budget book done probably a week earlier than we normally do and that was while learning and implementing a whole new system" The Result The city achieved a 75% time savings while improving its budget book preparation process. Kathleen and her team now have robust, documented, and repeatable processes making onboarding new team members a breeze. Having automated the ACFR and the expenditure budgets, the city is planning another project to automate the revenue side. "I was here a lot of evenings making sure everything looked right and tied together correctly. We didn't have that this year, I didn't find myself working any evenings or weekends."

The city of Fort Wayne reduced their budget book preparation time by 300 hours, that's 75%! This is how they did it.

Frederick County, MD Unifies and Automates the Budget Book

Rachel Raymond
Success Stories
minute(s)Frederick County Unifies All The Pieces Of The Budget Book Under A Comprehensive Solution Project: Budget Book Automation Organization: Frederick County, MD Population: 271,717 (2020 Census) Total Budgeted Revenues: $905 million Solution: Questica Budget Book powered by CaseWare Budget Book: Adopted Operating & Capital Budgets Success Story: Frederick County The Challenge Frederick County's, Budget Department faced a challenge common to Public Sector organizations when preparing the Budget Book. They spent countless hours gathering and reconciling pieces of their Budget Book across multiple applications. They had pieces in Questica Budget, pieces in Excel, pieces in Word, and they presented it in Adobe. To ensure confidence in the data, every change or update would require a time-consuming review. "Budget Book pieces were coming from every direction, that's what we had to solve" Tanya Kauffman, Budget Analyst III at Frederick County Government The Solution Replace Microsoft & Adobe with CaseWare and integrate it with Questica Budget. CaseWare hosts the Budget Book template and pulls balances and narratives directly from Questica. Any changes applied to the budget are made in Questica and flow straight through to all applicable locations in the book, facilitating greater confidence in the data and reducing the requirement for constant review and reconciliation. In addition, CaseWare's document management functionality allowed contributions from all parties to be stored and managed in a single location. The Project F.H. Black & Company Inc. assisted the team at Frederick County to implement the solution with the FHB method. Discovery - What are the County's wants and needs. Scope - Defining the parameters of the project. Planning - Working backward from the project goal to define a timeline and assign tasks. Configuration - Configure the selected solution to meet the County's needs. Training - Provide training to the County's budget team in the use of their new tools. Management - Weekly meetings and communication to ensure the project stays on track. Completion - Mutual agreement that the scope of the project has been completed. Ongoing Support - FHB continues to support and work with the County to improve and refine their processes. The Result The County has unified its piecemeal budget book under a single comprehensive solution resulting in increased confidence in the data and an estimated 25% reduction in the time it takes to complete budget book preparation processes. We asked Tanya if she has anything to add about the project. Here's what she had to say... For more on this project, read the full story.

Frederick County unifies and automates the budget book with a comprehensive solution for outstanding results.

City of Garland Modernizes its Budget Processes

Rachel Raymond
Success Stories
minute(s)The Forward-Thinking City of Garland Overcomes 3 Budget Challenges With 1 Project Project: Budget & Budget Book Preparation Organization: City of Garland, Texas Population: 239,928 (2019 Census) Annual Budget: $1.1 billion (Operating + CIP) Solution: CaseWare Operating & CIP Budget Books Budget Book: Annual Operating Budget CIP: Capital Improvement Program Success Story: City of Garland The Challenge The city of Garland's Budget Department faced a trio of challenges that shared the same root cause: antiquated software solutions, and the business processes required to make them work. The city relied on legacy budget software to prepare the budget and a combination of Word, Excel, and Adobe to prepare the Capital & Operating Budget Books. The processes were slow, disjointed, and error-prone. The Solution After extensive research, the city's Budget Director, Allyson Bell Steadman decided on Questica Budget to prepare the budget, CaseWare to prepare the budget book, and F.H. Black & Company Inc. to integrate the two and ensure the budget book solution was optimally implemented to maximize their benefits and guarantee project success. The Project The implementation process was managed and guided by consultants from FHB. It started with a planning meeting, introduction to FHB's online project management tool, allocation of deliverables, and scheduling of software training. Once trained in the use of their new tools, the FHB team built the Capital Improvement Program budget book template based on the City's specifications. Once complete, a similar process was carried out for the Operating Budget Book. The Result By the end of the sixteen week implementation, the City was able to produce and publish both the proposed and adopted 2020-21 CIP & Operating Budget Books. The City now has a robust, documented, repeatable, and largely automated process for preparing their budget book. "The Budget & Research Department is in a much better position to produce and distribute budget documents. Our most recent success was having our 2021 Adopted CIP document finalized for publication on the City’s website and distribution to City Council two weeks after adoption". For more on this project, read the full success story here.

The City of Garland modernizes its Budget, Capital Improvement Program, and Annual Operating Budget Book preparation processes with a single project.

City of Greensboro Budget Book Automation Project

Jamie Black
Success Stories
minute(s)With a population of nearly 300,000 and growing, the City of Greensboro is the third-most populous in North Carolina. The City's 2020-21 adopted budget of $602 million spans 169 pages and was awarded the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. Long-time Questica Budget users, the City is extremely happy with their processes for preparing the budget. The Budget Book however was another story. Like many finance departments, the City used Microsoft Excel, Word, and Publisher to prepare the book. The process was time-consuming, repetitive, resource-heavy, and disjointed; it was time to make a change. The team at Greensboro had heard about F.H. Black & Company Incorporated at a Questica conference and reached out for help to improve their budget book. Once the project was complete, we gave the City a little time to bask in their achievement before interviewing them about their journey. Here are the highlights of that interview with the City's Budget Database Specialist, Leah Price. The Old Way "We used a combination of Microsoft Excel, Word, and Publisher, and it was very time consuming for all staff members. The Budget Analysts had to manually enter all of their departments’ numbers line by line twice: once for the Manager Recommended version and again for the Final Adopted version. The Budget Database Specialist also had to make sure all of the formatting was correct in Publisher, and finally work with our internal print shop to make sure every page had the perfect amount of space between the text and the hole punches. When we heard there was a software that we could use to import the numbers from Questica directly into the budget document, we jumped on it." The Project "We sent our FHB consultants a copy of our former budget document and a copy of our budget data from Questica. The consultants built a template for us that was similar to the old format, and then worked closely with our staff to make sure that the budget data was going to the right places in the document. We have over 25 operating funds and many tricky aspects to our budget rules overall, so assigning the budget numbers and FTEs where they needed to go was the biggest struggle. However, it all came together in the end." The Benefits "The process is more streamlined and controlled. It probably saves the analysts a couple of weeks’ worth of time because they no longer have to do any manual data entry." "The budget analysts are an important resource to our departments, and their new found availability during the budget development process allows them to help out more with current year concerns." The Relationship "Our (FHB) consultants have always helped us meet our deadlines and make sure to work us into their schedule if we have last minute issues." "I have mainly worked with Joy, and I am so grateful to her for all of her help and expertise! I really appreciated that she wanted to make sure that I was learning how to do (almost) everything we needed her help with. It was my first year being responsible for the budget book and I had very little knowledge of CaseWare. I truly could not have done it without her." Considering a reporting automation project? Schedule a meeting with one of our experts to explore your options.

The City of Greensboro implemented an automated budget book solution that pulled data directly from their Questica Budget software resulting in a better book in less time.

Engaging residents to address the impact of COVID-19 on the Budget

Jamie Black
Budget Book
minute(s)Public sector organizations across North America are facing considerable budget pressures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This may necessitate slashing funding to programs and/or increasing tax rates. That is likely to be very unpopular with your stakeholders (council, board, and/or residents). Working through these options will require careful planning, making trade-offs, and effectively communicating new realities to stakeholders to get their buy-in and earn/maintain their trust. If you've read our Style & Substance blog articles before or attended our webinar series on best practices for communicating financial information, you know we have strong opinions on effective communication. In a time of massive budget challenges, your team's ability to communicate your message clearly and effectively is more important than ever. Over and above what we have laid out in our articles and presentations, what can your finance or budget department do to help stakeholders understand the complex issues you are facing? Too Much or Too Little Detail Stakeholder engagement is nothing new. Publication of large budget documents, public meetings to discuss these documents, focus groups, and advisory committees have been utilized for decades to engage with residents to educate them and receive their feedback. These approaches are often challenged by the complexity of the topic and the time investment required to execute them. Who wants to read even a 200+ page budget book? If they do read it, the result may not be what you expect: An implication for government transparency is that transparency initiatives that expect citizens to make sense of technical and abstract information, especially in large amounts, (such as the many line items and millions of dollars described in a typical public budget) probably face a much greater hurdle to increasing trust than their well-meaning originators thought. In fact, at worst, too much information could actually decrease trust. Transparency: A Means to Improving Citizen Trust in Government - Government Finance Officers Association As an alternative, local governments can utilize surveys or online budget tools to broaden the public meeting's reach. A classic example of this approach is the "digital budget book." These tend to be more approachable and, therefore, attractive to a typical stakeholder. This comes at the cost of the depth of detail and nuance necessary to truly educate the audience about the organization's constraints. Further, the act of merely putting a budget book online does not tackle the underlying barrier presented by large volumes of complex technical information noted by the GFOA. What you need then is: the ability to reach as many stakeholders as possible, in a way that encourages their participation, focuses on educating them on the context, constraints, and challenges we face and solicits their feedback. Engage Stakeholders with Budget Simulations This is where simulations come in. As technology has evolved, simulations have proven themselves to be the best of both worlds: broad reach and accessibility to maximize participation combined with the right amount of detail and nuance. Participants are invited to investigate the budget initially at a highly summarized level. This has the advantage of minimizing initial complexity and enabling understanding of the budget's overall state (e.g., surplus, deficit). They can drill down into more and more detail to understand the composition of the budget. Finally and most importantly, stakeholders are asked to increase or decrease budgeted amounts by department, service area, or program based on their own priorities and preferences. You can present them with a series of options to choose between that will impact the budget. Participants attempt to craft the budget they would like to see but will regularly bump into problems. Want to triple the budget on policing? Sure! But that puts us into a major deficit. How will you fund this increase? Participants can add comments explaining their rationale. All this data is collected for the hosting finance/budget department to analyze and leverage in refining the budget. Not having learned it is not as good as having learned it; having learned it is not as good as having seen it carried out; having seen it is not as good as understanding it; understanding it is not as good as doing it. ..He who carries it out, knows it thoroughly. The Works of Hsüntze Bringing your stakeholders into the budget process with simulations will allow them to understand the challenges you are facing and provide the feedback necessary to ensure you are optimally meeting their expectations.

COVID-19 has hit some public sector budgets hard! See why some organizations are choosing to educate and engage residents with budget simulations for stakeholder buy-in.

Career Opportunity: Technical Consultant

Elaine Kolenosky
Job Opening
minute(s)We need a TECHNICAL CONSULTANT to join our REMOTE TEAM We are looking for a motivated, creative, highly technically skilled individual with excellent time management skills. The successful candidate will be capable of working as a technical consultant with minimal supervision and must be excited about challenges and working remotely. About Us: For over 25 years, our firm has implemented, integrated, and optimized industry-leading tools and best practices to improve our clients' finance function. Our mission is to enable finance to do more with less, do it better than it was done before, and do it faster. Our clients are governments, universities, corporations, and public practice accounting firms across Canada and the United States. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. About You: Do you: Thrive on challenges? Like to work outside your comfort zone, doing difficult & interesting things? Often find yourself saying, "There has to be a better way of doing this"? Need to be continuously learning and evolving? Achieve great satisfaction in helping others and providing creative solutions to difficult problems? Want to be led, not micro-managed? Value flexibility? Flexibility to live anywhere in the world and the freedom to relocate whenever it suits you? Loath commuting and being stuck in traffic, wasting your time? If you answered yes to all the above, you are an excellent fit for our firm's culture and should read on. Still here? Now, how about your technical attributes? You possess: 3 to 5 years of experience working in public practice accounting, or public sector or corporate finance, A minimum of 3 years of work experience with CaseWare Working Papers, 2+ years experience building custom CaseView documents, A proven ability to learn and master technology, The capacity to solve complex challenges within a defined framework and timeline, Outstanding verbal, written, and presentation skills. You are a regular, clear, concise, and professional communicator, The ability to effectively use the entire MS Office Suite including Outlook, Excel, Word & PowerPoint, A knack for building solid relationships; people want to work with you, Impeccable attention to detail and high standards for quality and creativity, Solid time management skills: we don’t believe in micro-managing our people, Sensitivity to confidential matters. The perfect candidate will also possess: Significant experience with: CaseWare’s Financial & Audit templates, CaseWare Connector, Workiva Wdesk & Wdata Experience programming with Jscript, Experience with HTML & CSS, Familiarity with other finance department tools such as PowerBi, Blackline, Gravity, etc, Bonus Points: Fluency in French – written and oral. Job Duties: As a technical consultant, you will work on a team to improve our clients’ financial reporting. Specifically, you will be responsible for implementation and support for industry-leading tools: Caseware Working Papers, Financials, Connector, Idea, Monitor, and certain add-ons. Development and delivery of standard and customized training. Diverse, ongoing technical consulting services. Benefits: Competitive salary Work remotely - from home or with a laptop and Wi-Fi from wherever you can take a VOIP call! Generous Vacation Policy Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental and vision care coverage Fitness and professional development reimbursement Contact Us Please submit a cover letter stating salary range requirements and resume to: hr@fhblackinc.com

We are looking for a motivated, creative, highly technically skilled individual with excellent time management skills to join our growing team.

Career Opportunity: Principal Consultant

Jamie Black
Job Opening
minute(s)We need another world-class professional to join our team We are looking for a motivated, creative, highly technically-skilled individual with excellent time-management skills capable of working in a principal consultant role with minimal supervision who is excited about a challenge and wants to work remotely. About Us: For over 25 years, our firm has implemented, integrated, and optimized industry-leading tools and best practices to improve our clients' finance function. Our mission is to enable finance to do more with less, do it better than it was done before, and do it faster. Our clients are governments, universities, corporations, and public practice accounting firms across Canada and the United States. About You: Do you: Thrive on challenges? Dislike "the same-old-same-old"? Like to work outside your comfort zone, doing interesting and difficult things? Often find yourself saying, "There has to be a better way of doing this"? Need to be continuously learning and evolving? Achieve great satisfaction in helping others and providing creative solutions to challenging problems? Want to be led, not micro-managed? Value flexibility? Flexibility to live anywhere in the world and the freedom to relocate whenever it suits you? Loath commuting and being stuck in traffic, wasting your time? If you answered yes to all the above, you are a great fit for our firm's culture and should read on. Still here? Now, how about your technical attributes? You possess: A CPA designation, 3 to 5 years of experience working in public sector or corporate finance, A proven ability to learn and master technology, A minimum of 3 years of work experience with one or more of the following: CaseWare Working Papers, Financials & Connector Workiva Wdesk & Wdata IGM Gravity Project management experience, The capacity to solve complex challenges, within a defined framework and timeline, Outstanding verbal, written and presentation skills. You are a regular, clear, concise and professional communicator, The ability to effectively use the entire MS Office Suite including Outlook, Excel, Word & PowerPoint, A knack for building solid relationships; people want to work with you, Impeccable attention to detail and high standards for quality and creativity, Solid time management skills, we don’t believe in micro-managing our people, Sensitivity to confidential matters. The perfect candidate will also possess: Significant experience with one or more of the following: CaseWare Idea, Blackline's Continuous Accounting platform, Balancing Act budget simulations platform, Questica Budget, Accreditation as a Project Management Professional (PMP) Experience programming Job Duties: As a principal consultant, you will work on a team to improve our client's finance and budget office business processes. Specifically, you will be responsible for: Implementation and support respecting industry-leading tools from CaseWare, Workiva, IGM, Blackline & BalancingAct. Development and delivery of standard and customized training Diverse, ongoing consulting services Benefits: Competitive salary Work remotely - from home or with a laptop & WiFi from wherever you can take a VOIP call! Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental and vision care coverage Fitness and professional development reimbursement

To meet increased demand, we are adding another principal consultant to our team to help deliver massive improvements to finance & budget departments.

City of Iqaluit keeps calm and carries on

Jamie Black
Success Stories
minute(s)The City of Iqaluit is the capital of the Canadian Territory of Nunavut and is an ecological wonderland. Famed for an abundance of natural landscapes and wildlife, it attracts visitors from around the globe. The Challenge Located on beautiful Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic with a population of just 7,740 (2016 census), the City's finance department has experienced some difficulty attracting qualified staff due to a remote location, housing shortage, high cost of living, and limited infrastructure to facilitate travel. When the City required urgent Payroll support, CAO Amy Elgersma was certain that employing an experienced, qualified Payroll Administrator could not happen before the next payroll run. Elgersma needed a quick, temporary solution so the organization's 150 employees would continue to be paid on time. With time of the essence, the City turned to F.H. Black & Company Incorporated to fill the gap until a suitable replacement could be on-boarded. She knew of FHB from a presentation they provided at a recent conference, and the work they had done with the Government of Nunavut previously. The Response After a few brief conversations, FHB assigned several members of their team to support the City: Michael Switzer, CPA, CA, was formerly the Town of Collingwood’s Deputy Treasurer with responsibilities including preparation of both the year-end financial statements and the annual Town budget as well as managing the town's receivables, payables, and payroll. Joy Richardson, CPA, was formerly the Chief Financial Officer of Thomasville, Georgia where her primary responsibilities included managing both the budget and year-end financial reporting processes as well as overseeing receivables, payables, payroll and all the other day to day activities of the finance department. Tina Steliga rounded out the team. Utilizing 16 years of experience managing the receivables, payables, and payroll processes for numerous clients of all sizes. Michael, Joy & Tina's decades of experience working in government finance made them an ideal addition to immediately and completely meet the City's needs. Within a week of the request, consultants Michael & Joy were onsite working with the team to transfer responsibilities and document processes. They were followed shortly thereafter by Tina, who assisted in administering payroll onsite before commencing remote support. FHB’s response time was exceptional. Their CPA's had the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to learn, document, and process the payroll system efficiently. They also had excellent interpersonal skills and were able to understand processes quickly. Once FHB was on board and started working with us, we were confident that payroll would be completed by the deadline. Disaster Averted The first step in the project was developing complete process documentation. Extensive interviews with City staff allowed FHB to build extremely detailed process documentation. The decision was made to put the documentation into a project management software to allow for the ongoing assignment of tasks and monitoring of the process by both FHB management and the City. This ensured FHB would not miss any steps and resulted in the proper execution of payroll each and every time. As the City's search for a Payroll Administrator was underway, FHB continued to process the payroll remotely. From mid-October to the end of February. We were able to arrange to have the payroll done via distance, this saved us time and money. The entire process was documented using a project management software tool. Ultimately the City successfully recruited a Payroll Administrator to take on the role. FHB transitioned to provide assistance getting the new Payroll Administrator up to speed and support them through the first few payroll runs. I would absolutely recommend FHB to other finance departments. They were able to process payroll with very little notice and continued via distance. They had a strong knowledge of the payroll and finance systems and could adapt to our processes easily.

The City of Iqaluit required urgent support to keep its payroll on track. They turned to FHB's team of experienced CPAs for assistance.