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We love to give back—RoseRyan volunteering in action

Our gang loves to give back to the community. It feels gratifying.

The latest request came in from Second Harvest Food Bank for our annual volunteer event in late October. This is the fifth year we have gone to the food bank to help them out with a gang from RoseRyan. This time, we needed to carry out some due diligence, reconciliation and a bit of fixed asset inventory for 4,600 cans of fruit that will be delivered to hungry families in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. And we delivered—after two hours of sorting and labeling, we had helped pack up boxes for distribution.

Giving back with our time is a gratifying experience for our consultants, and we take on numerous opportunities throughout the year to help out those who are less fortunate. Despite the amazing economic growth we see firsthand throughout Silicon Valley, there are also families in this region who are still struggling. It’s great to work for a company where employees actively give back to the community.

THE ROSERYAN CREW AND FAMILY MEMBERS HELPING OUT AT SECOND HARVEST

THE ROSERYAN CREW AND FAMILY MEMBERS HELPING OUT AT SECOND HARVEST

 

Volunteering at Second Harvest Food Bank (San Jose)

Each year we bring a big team to volunteer at Second Harvest Food Bank after work. One year, we packaged oranges and apples, another we were dealing with pallets of carrots. This time, we were asked to label canned fruit donated by Del Monte. Each can had to be inspected for any rust, leaks or breakage. Small dents were okay but any others had to be discarded.

Then came the fun part: reconciliation. We looked at the code on the bottom of can and matched it to the correct label (for example, OMP was the code for peach pieces). As accountants, we love reconciling everything and anything! Plus, it was kind of like a fixed asset inventory where we locate items and make sure they are tagged. Then, once they were labeled, in they went, into boxes of 100.

Our sorting was a small part of the more than 1 million pounds of food Second Harvest Food Bank manages to deliver to low-income people every week. We love to know we are a part of the engine that makes Second Harvest successful; in fiscal year 2015, 314,000 hours of service were donated by volunteers like us, and those hours add up to real dollars: Second Harvest says it has saved them the equivalent of $7.8 million in personnel costs.

Some of the team gathered for a last picture before the school supplies were hauled out for delivery. Thanks to everyone who donated!

SOME OF THE TEAM GATHERED FOR A PIC BEFORE THE SCHOOL SUPPLIES WERE SENT OUT FOR DELIVERY

 

Backpacks of school supplies for Grail Family Services

We’re passionate about education, so it’s no surprise we’re helping the Grail Family Services with both literacy volunteers and a back-to-school backpack drive. This worthy non-profit, which is also a client, supports needy families of East San Jose. One of our consultants sits on their board, and the RoseRyan team donated dozens of backpacks loaded up with school supplies for kindergartners to start off the school year right.

Literacy Volunteers for young kids

Another way we have helped children in our area is through literacy and mentoring. We have signed up several volunteers for individual reading time with elementary school students. It’s a critical time in their lives to learn to read and to nurture the love of learning. And, who knows, maybe there are some budding accountants that we’re helping!

A big thank you to our colleague and friend Dorcas Kelley for helping us out with this partnership with Grail Family Services and rounding up the contributions from our troops. She has also been invaluable in coordinating past giving events, like the Family Giving Tree, where we provided presents to children in our community who are in need.

Giving back to the community is satisfying on so many levels, and I am grateful to my RoseRyan colleagues for rallying together and all doing what we can. As we live and work with clients across the entire Bay area, we do not always have a chance to work elbow to elbow, so these moments together are a great opportunity for camaraderie and to work toward a common goal.

Theresa Eng, a member of RoseRyan’s dream team, is a superstar whether she’s working with a client or rallying her coworkers to volunteer for a good cause. Her areas of expertise include financial planning and budgeting, finance operations, and SOX.

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How fast is your monthly close process? Better take a look at it.

Ask a finance team how quickly they can pull off closing the books, and you’ll likely get some groans in response. Chances are they want to be faster but something—or many things—are clogging up the works. Inefficiencies have crept up along with trails of approvals and sloppy systems that have not kept up with the times. Errors and frustrations abound.

The result: a financial close that lasts for weeks and makes everyone involved sweat from forehead to chin until it’s over. And even then, no one’s happy. “Outdated and inaccurate financial information can lead to bad decision-making,” warned RoseRyan Senior Consultant Susan Wong during a recent Proformative webinar with Intacct Principal Sales Engineer Linda Pinion.

Both speakers offered ways companies can improve and accelerate the close process to get up-to-date, accurate information flowing, to feed the need to make smart decisions and provide the kind of real-time data craved by senior leaders.

There’s another sweet effect too: an improved close can free up the finance function, giving the team time to assist on other meaty matters, like analysis, strategy and planning. A faster, better close sets up the finance organization to be more efficient and responsive to the changing tides of business, according to Wong.

To see what’s mucking up the close, companies need to take an eagle-eye view of the key pieces involved. “If you have the right people, processes and systems in place, it will help you get closer to realizing the dream of the daily close,” Wong said. Below are just a few of the tips Wong and Pinion offered during the webinar.

Focus on the folks

“Your financial close is only as good as your people,” Wong said. “It sounds like a commercial, but it’s true. It’s all about having the right talent.” Is everyone involved in their own world? Rein them in by establishing well-defined roles and responsibilities. “Each participant should know exactly what needs to be done and when,” Wong said.

Track the close cycle time and errors that occur as part of the team’s KPIs to incentivize employees to keep learning and improving, she added. A backup plan is another smart move; by cross-training everyone and having contingencies if someone leaves or gets sick, the process won’t get stuck on just one person and will be more likely to run smoothly.

Step up the processes

Is the word “process” laughable when it comes to getting a close done at your company? Wong said most companies have informal processes that are not documented—and risk getting forgotten if someone leaves the organization. Documented, formalized processes will not only help the exercise of closing but can lead to satisfied auditors who are looking for consistency.

Have a financial close calendar accessible to everyone so they can plan around the dates. And have a checklist that includes all closing activities, such as updating depreciation, getting the inventory count and reconciling bank statements.

Review the systems

Is the company stuck in its Excel ways? Wong loves Excel as much as anyone in the finance and accounting world, especially as an analytical tool, but for accounting purposes, it can slow things down. Some companies are stuck with manually entering the same data into multiple spreadsheets—and risking mistakes with each entry. Others are still matching invoices and purchase orders by hand. Automation can quicken the pace and improve accuracy. “We know from our talks with CFOs that this is number-one on their list,” Pinion said. “They want to be able to streamline and automate processes within their organization.”

Automation can turn companies that have a vague idea of how they’re doing in the moment into a real-time data machine. “Visibility is in my opinion the key to accountability,” Pinion said. “If you’re responsible and you need to be accountable for these closings and these reports and documents you’re preparing, one of the first things you need is visibility to that information.”

Wong said most companies should take less than five days to close, and some may need more time if they need to consolidate. Sound like an out-of-reach figure for your company? Keep in mind that finding and resolving issues as the business trucks along with its daily transactions should occur outside of the close. Could the one-day close ever become a reality? Not at the moment for most companies, but the help of new technologies and streamlined processes could get them closer to seeing it happen at some point.

Even large businesses, organizations rife with complexities and teams that are mired in unwieldy spreadsheets, can get to where they need to be—an accelerated and smooth process. The fact is it is an ongoing process, with room to improve month over month. Wong suggested doing regular reviews and looking for ways to improve at every turn. “Track accomplishments and setbacks during the close,” she said. “We can all learn from our accomplishments and mistakes.”

With higher visibility, the finance team can provide senior leaders with more reliable metrics that they can use to pull the trigger on smart decisions. And that should mean less sweating all around.

Did you miss the webinar? Click here to watch Realizing the Dream: The Daily Financial Close Is Becoming Reality.

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Meet the Boomerang Bunch: 5 RoseRyan alumni return home

RoseRyan is thrilled to welcome back five finance aces who worked with us earlier in their careers. In the time since their last stint with us, these returning employees have sharpened their skills and gained new insights. They’ve worked at high growth, fast paced companies, experienced acquisitions firsthand from the inside, and had amazing, once-in-a-lifetime travel opportunities. And now they have come back. Why? To experience the positive points of the consulting life.

Who knew we’d have five RoseRyan alumni coming back out of the corporate world during an all-out talent war. We are pleased as punch to get these savvy finance pros back in the fold.

We’re not the only ones getting reacquainted with some all stars. In a survey of over 1,800 HR professionals by The Workforce Institute at Kronos Inc. and WorkplaceTrends.com, 85 percent of respondents said former employees have sent them job applications over the past five years, and 40 percent said about half of those former employees were hired. Taking back “boomerangs,” the report revealed, didn’t used to be so common, but has become more acceptable for industries in the middle of the battle for talent.

A big draw for any of our consultants is the variety of assignments at high tech and life sciences companies, the ability to jump in and actively grow a company, the latitude and individual autonomy to get things done, and a predictable schedule so that they can have a life. It’s OK to actually take vacation, spend time with their families and tend to their hobbies, we think. Not many companies think that way. It also helps that we’re an award-winning firm that our employees believe is headed in the right direction—evidenced by our earning a coveted spot on this year’s Top 100 Workplaces list in the Bay Area.

So who’s returning? We’re delighted to re-introduce these folks: 

LIZ BARCLAY

An expert in SEC reporting, technical accounting, SOX, revenue recognition, M&A and international accounting, Liz left us for several years for some exciting international assignments and adventure. She worked the SOX front at Maxtor. Liz was also the SEC reporting manager, SOX manager and AP manager at Power Integrations, most recently handling SEC, accounts payable and international due diligence work in the United Kingdom and Switzerland. “I was drawn to RoseRyan for its work/life balance and more flexible work options,” she says. “Consulting leverages my career’s wide and deep experience while giving me the opportunity to make family events.”

LYNN CHRISTOPHER

Lynn first got to know RoseRyan as a client, when she was the controller at Blue Coat Systems. She’s joining us after an eight-year gap with a solid résumé of controllerships at Force 10 Networks, Responsys and most recently Adap.tv, which was purchased by AOL. Lynn is a force to be reckoned with when clients need revenue recognition expertise, SEC reporting help or assistance going IPO. 

CLARISSA ENANY

With audit prep and technical accounting among her top talents, Clarissa gives the rest of us a reason to visit the Seattle area, her home base. A KPMG alum, she most recently was the assistant controller at DocuSign, where she managed the month-end close process, accounts payable and payroll. Clarissa was with us for over three years taking on SEC filings, stock-based compensation work, and assignments for our Technical Accounting Group. “I love having the opportunity to work with multiple clients and see a variety of issues each week,” Clarissa says. “My work with RoseRyan allows me to spend time with my family while maintaining my professional edge in accounting.”

LAURA MAGALLON

Laura brings a mix of senior leadership thinking and nitty-gritty accounting expertise to everything she does. Since her first consulting tour with RoseRyan, she has held VP of finance and controller positions, and she has fine-tuned her passion for startups and newly funded companies. She loves setting up financial structures and ramping up companies from the start to grow phase of their lifecycle. Laura’s specialties include the month-end close process, FP&A, accounting systems, SOX, revenue recognition and audit prep. What brought her back to us? She loves the flexibility that comes with being a consultant plus the benefits package we provide our gurus. Plus, the camaraderie and support she gets here can’t be beat. “I really like working for Kathy Ryan—she’s a great boss and mentor,” Laura tells us. “And we have a great team of consultants!”

SUSAN WONG

Susan was here at RoseRyan from 2007 to 2012, working closely with startup clients. She knows the controller and CFO roles inside and out for both small businesses and midsize companies. Her expertise includes cash flow management, audits, business strategy, budgets and debt/equity financing. To top it off, in her spare time she teaches finance at UC Berkeley Extension and Menlo College, where she is an adjunct accounting professor.

All of our seasoned pros want to stretch and grow professionally. We love to provide them with a variety of assignments and challenges to help them do just that. They strive to stay on top of their game. They have found a supportive place in RoseRyan, where we have a healthy learning and development focus, an enviable list of clients, and our culture is known for being friendly and respectful, and for doing the right thing. No sharks here!

Sure, we’re always disappointed if a consultant jumps off for a hot corporate job. But we’ll be here to welcome them back.

LI profile pictureDoes RoseRyan sound like your kind of place? We are hiring! Check out our current opportunities here. As Talent Manager at RoseRyan, Michelle Hickam is always looking for finance and accounting pros who have strong technical chops as well as “soft skills” for melding into our clients’ corporate cultures. She’d love to hear from potential candidates. Email her at [email protected].

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