Upload and Pray

Somewhere in your close, there's a fix only one person knows how to do.

Maybe it's a journal entry from an old acquisition that was coded wrong. Someone fixes it in Excel every time instead of in the ERP. If that person leaves, nobody knows why the numbers don't match anymore.

On the latest episode of Making Cents with Charlie, Bill Rausch summed it up:

"I'll fix it, upload it, and pray it never happens again."

I call this upload and pray. Most finance teams have at least one of these fixes. They're small, so nobody makes them a priority. And the only person who knows how to do them is the person who always does them.

Over time, it costs you. Close takes longer. The CFO double checks the numbers before every board meeting. And when the auditors ask where a number came from, only one person can answer.

If you're getting ready for a new planning tool, start with these three things:

• Fix it in the ERP, not in Excel. If you keep making the same adjustment in a spreadsheet, make it in your accounting system instead. That's where your auditors will look anyway.
• Keep one mapping table. Your departments in NetSuite, HiBob and Greenhouse will never match perfectly. Keep one table that shows how they line up, and make sure finance can update it without waiting on IT.
• Keep your chart of accounts short. Don't create a new account for every department. Use the department and class fields in your ERP instead.

A simple place to start: ask your team to write down every fix they make after they pull data out of the ERP. That's your upload and pray list. Each item on it should be fixed in the ERP.

It doesn't have to be perfect. Get it done, get it close, and fix the rest as you go.

Until next week, Charlie