A close held together
by manual handoffs.
Example Co. is a 35-person, owner-operated industrial-supplies distributor in the Carolinas, about $18M in revenue, with a finance team of four and a nine-day close. It’s constructed, so the numbers teach the method; they don’t prove results.
- ILLUSTRATIVE TEAM
- 35 people
- MONTH-END CLOSE
- 9 business days
- MANUAL WORK IDENTIFIED
- 61 hours/month
Some workflows need a design.
Others need a reason to wait.
Three builds, in order: the reporting pack, then reconciliations, then budget-vs-actual drafts. The board & lender packet waits for Phase 2. Contract renewals don’t need software; they need an owner.
The reason beside the recommendation.
Monthly reporting pack
Extracts from the ERP and the BI tool are copied into a spreadsheet chain and formatted by hand every month. The design validates each extraction at source and automates the compilation; the controller reviews the pack before it leaves the building. Nothing writes to the ledger.
22 baseline hours/month × 70% (report-compilation class) = 15.4 modeled recovered hours/month.
15.4 × $75 × 12 = $13,860 modeled annual capacity value.
Account reconciliations & tie-outs
Inventory, intercompany and accrual tie-outs are worked line by line. The design matches exceptions-first and attaches the source rows to every exception. A parallel run and agreed tolerances come before the manual checklist changes.
15 baseline hours/month × 60% (reconciliation class) = 9.0 modeled recovered hours/month.
9.0 × $75 × 12 = $8,100 modeled annual capacity value.
Budget-vs-actual department packs
Variance commentary is drafted from the model; department owners approve their own lines. The draft saves the writing, not the judgment.
10 baseline hours/month × 50% (drafting class) = 5.0 modeled recovered hours/month.
5.0 × $75 × 12 = $4,500 modeled annual capacity value.
Board & lender packet
No benefit is counted in the 90-day model. The packet depends on the reporting pack’s definitions. Building it first would automate a disagreement.
8 baseline hours/month · no benefit modeled.
Contract & subscription renewals
Assign an owner and turn on the existing system’s renewal alerts. Six hours a month doesn’t justify a build; it justifies a name on a calendar. No benefit is modeled.
6 baseline hours/month · no benefit modeled.
Capacity has value.
It is not cash.
29.4 hours × $75 × 12
$26,460
29.4 = 15.4 + 9.0 + 5.0 modeled recovered hours per month from the three recommended builds. The $75 loaded hourly rate is an assumption, anchored to Robert Half’s 2026 Salary Guide medians (staff accountant $73,750, corporate controller $185,000), blended and loaded. This is time available for other work, not a payroll saving or an achieved result.
The cash case, on its own lines.
- Cancel one overlapping reporting subscription (hypothetical; verify the contract and date)
- +$2,400/yr
- New recurring tooling: three business AI seats (≈$900) and an automation platform (≈$960)
- −$1,860/yr
- Net recurring cash change
- +$540/yr
- Implementation, if Unwrapped builds
- $30,000
- Cash payback on tools alone
- None
So the readout asks one question.
With a $30,000 implementation there is no cash payback on tools alone. The case is capacity, which is why the readout asks what the 29 hours are for.
In this sample the controller gets about two close days back, and the planned staff-accountant backfill can be re-evaluated in Q1. That is a decision for the owner, not a promised saving.
Every tool gets a verdict.
Five of the twelve tools the five workflows touch. Tools outside the audit’s scope are listed in the full package as not assessed.
- ERPSystem of record. Extraction is validated at source.
- Keep
- BI tool, two usersBecomes the reporting pack’s single source.
- Augment
- Reporting add-in overlapping the BI tool$2,400/yr. Verify the contract and cancellation date first.
- Retire candidate
- Legacy report-writer$0. Unused; remove it from the stack.
- Retire candidate
- Three free personal AI chat accountsMove to a business tier with an approved-tool list and a review rule.
- Replace
Readiness scored 18 of 30, the Standard band: data 3 · process 3 · tools 3 · team 3 · sponsor 4 · governance 2. The roadmap starts with a light governance step: an approved-tool list and a review rule.
Your evidence. Your decisions.
The engagement applies the same method to your five workflows with your measured numbers: the tool stack audit, the leverage map, the 90-day roadmap, two workflow designs and the Working ROI Model. This excerpt shows the structure; the scoring weights stay in the engagement.
Unwrapped inventories, maps, validates, reconciles and orchestrates. It does not move money, post to the general ledger, contact your customers, build chatbots or act as an ERP implementer. Humans review consequential steps.
THE LETTER · FIELD NOTES BY PAUL MATTSON
One useful finding.
The assumptions included.
Reporting, data and the practical work of making a business run better. Signed, dated and written to be used.