Controller Role Interview: Discussing Process, Transition, and Fit

Hello, Maria. How are you doing?

Hello, how are you?

Nice to meet you. I'm very, very sorry for earlier today. I, um, our CEO put a call on my calendar, uh, this morning and I knew it was going to run over and he said it wouldn't and we were on the phone for like 2 hours. Um, so it didn't happen.

Yeah, it didn't happen.

Yeah, I'm very sorry. I don't, I don't mean to waste your time or anything like that.

No, no, no.

So thank you for the time today. How much background information did Nicole or whoever you were with—

I received, of course, the job description, and I received today the link to the webpage. So I just didn't have enough time to research, but I have the webpage. So she said last week it was a rental, equipment rental.

Yes.

So now I see it's more cars and trucks and similar to something that I'm doing right now.

Oh, okay, great. Um, I'd love to hear more about that. I want to give— why don't I give you kind of a background on what is going on with us so you can help understand it more?

Yeah.

So me and my partner, um, we entered this— we bought this company in 2022. It's called Avon Rentals. Um, they provide trucks and trailers to the studio industry. So all of the big shows that you would typically see on Netflix, Amazon, all the, um, the regular cable providers. We usually have some equipment on those kind of shows. Um, since we acquired the company, we've also rolled in a couple other companies in the space. So now we don't just supply trucks and trailers, but we also supply production supplies, um, and generators and AC and walkie-talkies and all the kinds of things required, um, to kind of put a production together. As well as we have another company that does commercial-specific shoots. So not big productions, but more commercials. You see on television.

Yes, I know what you mean.

Yeah. So we have currently 3 companies that we kind of consolidate into one reporting package. Across that, there's 6 different entities because there's some asset companies or some operating companies that kind of roll up. And we have a pretty good handle. We've taken our lumps on getting the accounting and all the structure right now. It's just about having someone who has a lot of experience, who understands the space, um, or understands the companies and is able to kind of take what we've built and make sure that the process runs smoothly. Um, and I was— I saw your resume and I was interested in interviewing you because it looks like you have a lot of relevant experience and a lot of just history working in these kind of things. Um, so I think I think it's a good time to open it up to you and kind of get to know more about you and your experience, if you don't mind.

Okay. Okay. Uh, well, as you saw in my resume, I'm CPA. I'm here in Argentina and I've started my career path as a KPMG auditor and then move, um, I have a progressive experience in corporations, mostly in shared service centers. So I'm very process-oriented. I was a general manager for a shared service center for the whole Americas. So I'm my, my root is accounting. So after certain time that, that first phase of my career ended and I started a second phase whereby I put all that experience in corporate functions into small, medium-sized companies, especially startups, and in the SaaS industry. By the way, I worked in, um, Lab TV and in Fox Labs Limited American Channel. So I have experience in the industry, and in, in recent years I have been serving as either head of finance or controller for U.S. companies. In the last 5 years, I'm currently serving as a controller for a construction company which is heavy providing services for the construction, uh, industry. Okay. Uh, concrete shipping, so they are heavy in trucks vehicles. They have two companies within the group, and one is Turfresh, um, it's called Turfresh, which is cleaning turfers. So they also heavy in vans and trucks, and the other is express shipping. So that's the story, and ask me any question.

Yeah, um, so the, the company you work for now, they do heavy construction equipment. Is there a lot of acquisition and disposition, or they have kind of a stable fleet?

Yes and no. The owner buys and sells the vans and the trucks depending on the usage, the mileage, because they— it's not like they are in construction. They are used to go and they have compressors, pressure machines, pressure washers, and this and that. For, um, concrete shipping. So they go into the construction and they, they wash the trucks full of concrete, etc. This is how I understand it.

Okay. Um, and what does your team currently look like? Who do you report to and who reports to you currently?

I report, I report to the CFO. I have two accountants, one in Philippines and one in U.S., who was the— who is the bookkeeper, but she's kind of moving into accounting. So I'm explaining accounting because she's kind of a junior. She was hired as a bookkeeper. And I have 3, 3 more persons in Philippines as well as in the payroll, but they are doing kind of the control of the hours of the crews, etc., etc. It's more to be moved into HR.

Got it.

Process-oriented. It's not looking good. That is under my responsibility. And I have one more— two more persons, one in AP, uh, doing AP and collections, and recently added one, uh, strong AR accountant for billing and reviewing processes because the billing is kind of difficult, right?

Okay, that's very helpful. Um, this role that I— that we're— that we're hiring for right now effectively would replace an outsourced team that we have now where we're paying what I think is an expensive service and getting lackluster results. Um, I would, I would rather hire someone directly and have a relationship with someone directly who I can trust and I know will get, be able to get the job done. Um, so that's kind of the, the, the reason why we're looking to hire for this role. Additionally, I think that it would be someone like yourself who is more of a senior, like controller or accounting manager, and then maybe a junior person that I would like to partner with you on the hiring process more so that it's not just me making a decision for you. It would be a collaborative decision.

May I ask you if you can elaborate what is the output that you're not receiving, the value that you are expecting? Because I've seen this quite a lot before you in-house that. So to make sure we level up the expectations.

Yeah. Um, our closes don't happen until about 20 to 25 days after the end of the month. Um, there are some structural reasons for that. Some of the revenue doesn't come in for a couple of weeks or we don't actually recognize the revenue. Um, for a couple of weeks after because there's some nuance to how we bill these production companies. But it's also just a timing on their end. They're balancing a lot of different accounts and they're spread pretty thin. So we sometimes get deprioritized, which I don't— I don't like that we don't have consistent financials coming in on a timely basis. And there's also just been some service failures where the person who's responsible for our account is supposed to authorize the the debit blocks that come into our accounts. We have those all set up to positive pays. And we've had 3 that I'm aware of that have caused like 3 days where they just didn't do it. And it's caused cascading effects around our company where payments get returned, payroll doesn't get processed, insurance payments don't go out, sales tax. It's like it literally hits on the worst days and it causes all these cascading effects. Um, and I want someone who is very detail-oriented and just understands what their routine on a day-to-day basis is. Um, it can kind of be built into just the, the, the, the workflow that we've generated. Because I am confident that everything we've set up, all the processes and procedures and, um, like the, the, what do you call it? All of the, the, uh, the team and how they communicate. As long as it's being monitored and done correctly, I think there'll be a lot of success. There's, there's, there's no chance for like fraud or things like that to come into effect. But when, when things fall through the cracks, that's when you start to see issues.

Okay. You have the correct safety net in terms of controls. So everything should be captured for that safety net because I call it that way as an auditor. So you trust on those controls. Let me ask you something. Do you go by cash flow planning? Because I kind of work by that. If I have every Monday my cash flow, I will pay exactly as it has been planned. Okay, no more, no less, except for collection, etc.

Yeah, so I handle the cash. We do a monthly— or sorry, a weekly cash flow report that me and our CEO review. I, right now, do that cash flow report. Um, just because I've been doing it for 2 years, I feel very comfortable when I am in the, seeing everything that comes in and just being able to catch it. Um, also we don't have a ton of excess cash in the bank just floating around. So it's very important that I make sure that we're, everything is going out on a timely basis. Um, the goal would be ultimately to move that to a more automated process, but right now just cash flow constraints make it so that we, I need to be overseeing everything that goes out right now. But in terms of payments that come into the bank, we have an onshore team who does our collections because the collections is, I think it sounds like it's a pretty similar situation where you've got a team that has some specific needs that for the collections and all that, we have a similar thing where the billing can be complicated and it needs to be like there's a team dedicated to it.

So you have it in You said offshore or onshore?

Sorry. No, employees of the company. So they do the quoting and the reservations and then ultimately they do the billing as well. But when we go to process the payments and then reconciling the payments and posting them, we let our, our accounting team do that. Obviously, for just dual control issues, you don't want person running the card applying the payments. Standard operating procedures. So what we would be looking for this role to take over is effectively all of the bank reconciliations, all the payment applications, all the accounts payable recording and potentially payments, although I'm still more comfortable with having final oversight on any payments going out just for cash flow planning purposes. Um, but bringing this person into the mix so that they start to see what we're seeing on a cash flow basis. And ultimately transferring that, that process to someone like you who can take it and run with it on a, on a week-to-week basis. And then maintaining schedules. We have, I think, how many assets? 500 heavy assets between trucks and trailers and then about $10 million in production supplies and all of our right-of-use lease assets. The balance sheet is about $90 million in assets., total. So there's a lot of schedules that just kind of need to be updated and maintained.

What do you use to, to do, to maintain those assets? QuickBooks or?

So we use an Excel schedule. No, we use an Excel schedule. I'm actually working on, um, tying, bringing a schedule together so that it can sit on top of QuickBooks. There's kind of like an ERP that exists on top of the QuickBooks outputs, but right now everything is in Excel. Which I don't like because it's very prone to errors.

So you're, you're amortized, uh, sorry, depreciating, uh, the assets straight-line method? Because I saw in the job description you want tax and GAAP to be separated. This is something that I'm doing right now. Oh, it is good.

Yeah, yeah. So we take advantage of all the bonus depreciation available in the first year of the acquisition. So we've pretty much fully depreciated everything on a tax basis, but for our book Basis, we do typically a salvage value of anywhere from 25 to 50% and a useful life of anywhere from 2 to 12 years depending on the vehicle's value. Like a Toyota Corolla or small vehicle will have a smaller depreciation window compared to a large 10-ton truck, which should last us anywhere from 12 to 15 years.

So you are maintaining that in Excel? That's correct. So you're planning to use a software on top of QuickBooks just to make sure that how you're transitioning or you're not expecting to invest in any asset management tool.

So this would— yeah, so think of it as an asset management tool. It will kind of sit— so the way that it's currently envisioned is QuickBooks, we can plug into the QuickBooks general ledger. Accounts and pull them in. And we consolidate the 6 entities into one reporting package so we can see what is the sum total of the trial balance or of the 3 statement models, less any intercompany eliminations. And then for the accounts that require detailed fixed asset schedules or just general schedules, it's prepaid expenses or accrued revenue or anything like that, we would be able to do the automatic depreciation calculations, sell off any assets, capitalize any assets that were acquired in the period. And it would all sit inside of that one ecosystem instead of having a spreadsheet that we need to keep and then make sure that it doesn't break, the formulas don't break, no cross—

So you are currently reviewing potential software or you already have an idea which— because I work with consolidating through Fathom or Saved. Into the reporting, doing the financial statements. But my concern is the detail of the fixed asset, right? If you're going to use this QuickBooks Desktop feature, Asset Manager, or another— I know AssetTiger, or AssetTiger, or AssetTiger, AssetTiger— and Because I'm investigating, I went through the process of investigation recently using another company. But so to understand what type of technology you expect to use in future.

Why don't I, I can give you just a preview right now. So this, I'm actually building this right now. So I'm uploading the information and building it in because I haven't found anything that does exactly what I want it to do. And integrate correctly. Um, so here, let me just—

yeah, yeah. As a tiger, I, I wanted to use it and the guy told me don't use it to amortize, it isn't good.

Oh really? Yeah, see, that's the thing, it's like it's either very difficult and very complex and unwieldy for what we have, or it's too simple and can't do everything we need to do.

Yeah, let me change the screen to see.

So just briefly, what we have right now is we have a QuickBooks Um, all of the entities sync with QuickBooks and we sync by month so that it all comes together into a financial model here where we can look and see, all right, here is our January financials by reporting it or sorry, consolidated, but looking at it on a reporting entity basis so we can see how they all break down. So we have 3 reporting entities, 6 entities that ultimately flow into it. But you can see each level contribution. Um, if we want to look at it versus our budget and our year over year change, we can do that as well. Um, so this has saved me a ton of tedious work that I otherwise had to do where I'd pull down the Excel files every month from QuickBooks, run them through like the automated, uh, I'd have to, what is it? So it's 6 entities, 3 statements. So 18 total. And then I have to copy and paste it all in and then pull everything across and hope nothing breaks. So that has been nice. But then on the, like, um, the single entity level, we can do things like building out schedules. We can do close management to make sure that, um, we make sure we hit everything that needs to be done before we ultimately close the books and make sure it's done. We have debt on the books, so we can build out debt schedules. We have our lease module so we can make sure that we're monitoring all of our leases. So this would just sit on top of QuickBooks to make sure that our schedules reconcile with the trial balance accounts that come in. Okay, that's great. So that would be the goal. So the goal would be for you or someone like yourself to kind of manage this end to end and then make sure that the checks and balances are in place for our team that we have onshore doing the, like, the customer-facing items and then have someone who you— that we hire who is junior to you that reports to you to help you with some of the day-to-day work that needs to be done, some of the tediousness.

And of course, based on your asset volume and dollar amount, you have year-end audits or not.

We have— we don't do audit. We did reviewed financials in 2024. We're doing a, um, a less intensive scope. We're doing a compilation in '25, but we could move back to a review or an audit in '26, just depending on what our debt balance is at the end of the year with our bank. Okay. Um, additionally, just on a tax basis, our tax returns are pretty complicated, um, because we have 6 entities. Most of them are an LLC that rolls up in a, as a partnership, but there's one C-Corp. Where there's some old assets in them. So we have to file that tax return separately. Last couple of years—

But you, that part, that part will not be part of— the person will coordinate, help to coordinate, but will not be responsible for filing tax. That should be part of an outsource.

That is an outsource. Yeah. So we have an accounting team that files taxes, but we would need to prepare everything for them, provide all the schedules and all that.

Not a problem. Okay. Okay. Got it. I think I made all the, the questions you— because I generally request to know whether this is a replacement or someone who was doing it, or as you mentioned, an outsourced firm that you're changing. So want to understand the context of the position.

I would say that right now, the job is being done, but not in a timely manner and not with the level of responsiveness that I would want. And it's expensive. So those three things, it's not that it's not being done and it's that I want it to be done more efficiently, more effectively.

Okay. But you expect some transition between the person, of course, when it's hired, like at the minimum, because I went through the same exact process, right? And it takes really 3 months to do the full handover, like a very thorough handover, right? Right. Okay. And you don't expect this person to do payments, as you mentioned, because somewhere in the job description says who manages RAM and bill.com. So are you— you have everything already implemented, right?

Uh, so yeah, bill.com and Ramp are both being used. Um, they, how it, how the workflow works right now is the accounting team we have now will put the payment in bill.com and queue it up for payment and then I'll ultimately push it, but they'll do all the, the, um, work to get it to that point.

Okay. And you expect that to be taken to upload the bills to review, to push them for, for you to review, approve, et cetera, right? That's the scope of work. Okay. That's correct. Okay. Right, right. Um, I don't know. I've been asking a lot.

No, I appreciate it. It's very proactive. The, um, I'm, I'm glad you're asking about the transition period because I do think that's the most important. Um, we have all of the schedules. Um, there, as with any company, there's some like, uh, what would you call it? Like technical debt where they've learned all of this, like the weird ways to do things to like make the books close. That you'll need to learn, but ultimately is not how we should be doing it. It's just that is how we've come up with how to do it.

That's a fair point because while you were telling me that, what is the room for doing process improvement? Because to do what they are doing, somehow there should be a ramp-up time. And also to review the processes where we can cut inefficiencies and reroute part of the process. And especially what you mentioned about revenue recognition, because if you're following up, maybe you have to work an estimates reverse book, you know.

Yeah, so we do accrue and defer revenue.

Okay, okay. So you have a good schedule for deferred revenue, right?

Sorry, what was the question?

If you have the correct deferred revenue schedule, because it's pretty— yes. Um, okay, a reliable one.

But the— yeah, so the thing is, is that we do the deferral and accrual, but we also do it— we have different rental management systems for the different companies, so they're done in different ways. So one is a like a much more, one just comes out of QuickBooks and it's just the sales out of QuickBooks. It's very simple. Another one is like a PDF output that gets transferred to Excel. That's a report from our car, the, um, the vehicle rental system, which is a little more difficult. Um, we are transitioning that all to be on one platform, which should be a lot easier, but it's almost not worth teaching you how to do the old system because we're going to be on the new system next month. And it's not like you don't need to know that. Um, Okay, okay. Um, you asked like, what is the like scale, like how do we measure—

what is the room or, or the room to change any of those processes you already mentioned? You are going to transition to another system, so I guess some of the, the processes has been or have been assessed and changed.

Yeah, as long as our comparable data and our comparable numbers still hold I'm 100% open to changing the process. What my ultimate goal is, visibility and consistency, if I had to boil it down. So visibility being, I know exactly where to find our deferral revenue schedule for December of 2025. And I can go look and see, and I know exactly where it is. Right now, it's in a Google Drive folder that has a bunch of other data in it. And it's hard for me to like actually parse what we need. Out of it. So visibility and then consistency. I know that on the 5th of every month, we will have all of our payroll accruals and deferrals calculated. And we have an estimated payroll cost that we can base versus our budget. Because right now, sometimes that doesn't come in until the 12th. Sometimes it comes in on the 7th. You know, it's just, it's one of those things where we're not getting consistency of information and a like close schedule that I can watch get checked off every day and be like, all right, I know that will be—

but you have— that's important to know. You have a closing schedule, and what is your time, desirable time to close, realistically speaking, based on what, what is the, uh, process or, or how it is elaborated, the process? What is your realistic time to close?

I would say 10 business days.

I think it's possible within 10 business days, which we all tell me the same, 10 days. Yeah, but you have several multiple companies, and realistically speaking, you have an outsourced who is doing that, and you will have only one person in-house. So how realistic that is, and in what, what is the 60, 90, or 1-year projection? Or is your, okay, now that you are responsible for that, I want 10 days close in 3 months. So I want to put black and white, right? You know what I mean? Just because I went through that in the past, right? And it was not realistic based on the amount of work and the amount of legal entities that I have.

Right. So here's what I will say is that 10, and I should specify it's not 10 days, 10 business days, right?

So if you get 2 weekends, yeah, I get it.

Um, a lot of the work to make that happen has been done and gets done upfront by setting up asset schedules and knowing where the information is coming from to update those asset schedules. So you're not chasing people down. That makes the workflow much faster. And a lot of that headache has already been done. Okay. So for example, if we sell 4 vehicles in the month, is that information being provided to the accounting team to make sure that it's ultimately able to just be— the schedule be changed? For a long time it had to be chased down and it was a lot of back and forth. Now there's a system for that. Our fleet manager loads the vehicle in for sale. When the sale goes through, the payment gets posted and the vehicle moves to sold and you know exactly where to find that and it moves through the process.

Okay. And the person is in charge of Ensuring it's being drawn down from the insurance, right? Get the bill of sale, right? And it's like, okay.

Yep. So it sounds— yeah, I get what you're saying. Like, I 100% understand. Like, it sounds like we are being optimistic. Um, it all comes down to process. Like, if you, if you are responsible for tracking down receipts or needing people to tell you how an expense needs to be categorized, You're never gonna get things closed in time, but if people are proactive in giving you the information you need to update schedules and update categories and, and coding, it becomes a lot easier.

Um, okay.

I like how this interview went because I didn't actually ask you too much about yourself, but I learned a lot about your thought process and everything that you're working on. Um, yeah. Okay. So I have 30 minutes. I don't wanna take up more of your time. Um, But I really appreciate it. I think the next thing that I'd want to do is just a, um, I have an idea of kind of like a technical, like call it like a 1-hour exercise where I kind of understand like what an output looks like from you. So think of something like I give you a list of vehicles or, um, a list of, of the list of vehicles and maybe sales for the year and show me how you would, uh, remove those assets from inventory, add them and calculate depreciation. Um, it would be paid. I would be— you'd be paid for your time. Um, but I kind of would like to see more about your, um, workflow and kind of the work output that you're able to produce, if that is okay with you.

Yeah, I can share. I can share the one that I did already, but it was— that'd be great if you— it was assisted because, uh, to tell you the— in short, the company was using the tax depreciation and push it into QuickBooks. And I thought, well, you need to follow GAAP. That's for tax purposes, and you double declining, you will meet at certain point in time with— so I explained that to my CFO and he agreed. So I recalculated in Excel all the straight-line method for the assets. It was hard because part of it was a mess. Part of the information was lost, so I tried to find a way to calculate the final, um, at 2025, the accumulated depreciation in the asset and pushing a little with the asset inventory stock take because some things were not matching to the accounting. So I created the full waterfall, and of course I was assisted with the AI because it was complex. I have a lot of if, if the date, right, and if the date sold to, to end, um, uh, calculating depreciation. So I had a lot of things there. Okay, I can share. Could you share that with me? Yeah, kind of. Right now I have— I'm using a different— because I separate my users. Yeah, in my desktop. So I can send like an delete some, some of the information and send to you.

After, yeah, I mean, whatever you can share. I think if you send it to, I think it's Nicole, and she can pass it along, that'd be very helpful.

Okay.

Okay. One more question before we jump off. I know we're over time. Why are you leaving your current role and why are you looking for a new position?

I'm looking for something that is more, as it says in the job description, task-oriented, more deliverable-oriented. And shifting a little bit because you have the flexibility to Eastern time. And something that I can work through my morning without any problems or interruptions, because I check my list every day. I take my mate here in Argentina, check my inbox, and then I need a certain period of time to go to work out. Because of a health issue. I had stopped doing it 5 months ago and I need to resume that. It's not for looking good, just health. Sure. And this is something that I need to accommodate and I cannot do if I constantly look in, in Teams, this, do this, do that. So just to have a clean schedule and methodic, if everything falls out of my calendar, so it's difficult to accommodate. Of course, I'm always available, but this type of arrangements is very well to this stage of my life.

Yeah, I think, um, I think this role would be very, um, well positioned to be asynchronous. So occasionally we will need to sync up and get on a phone call or get on a video call and just make sure we're on the same page about things.

That It's not a problem because the ideal scenario, I work in Australian time zone and matching with US. So it isn't a problem, but the thing I need the flexibility to say, okay, during this 2-hour slot, I'm, I'm will be working out, come back, refresh. And if the afternoon we can connect, we have meetings, you have, uh, the summary of what I've done, right? Um, anything. It's not— it's having more flexibility to accommodate personal stuff, right, in a better way for both parties.

Okay, great. Uh, that's very reasonable. I think that is something we could definitely work with. Um, okay, any final questions for me before I let you go?

No, I just have my list already.

Okay, great. Um, if you can share if you could share that, that work example, I would appreciate that. And if you have any other questions, let me know. Judging based on what you send over, I'll probably let you know if I want to see anything else, but I'm imagining I won't need to see any further, I guess, proof of competence, let's call it, because I can tell you're a very knowledgeable person. Yeah. So, well, I really appreciate the time, Maria. It's great to meet you. Call me Veronica.

Yeah, and we'll talk soon. Okay, okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye. I just got done with my call if you want me to feed her.