In this episode of Controllers Classified, host Erik Zhou, CAO at Brex, dives into the world of accounting and automation with Jake Jones, Controller at FinQuery. Jake shares his journey from a decade at Cherry Bekaert to his current role, detailing the transition from audit to client side and his 30, 60, 90 day ramp up plan at FinQuery. He also shares some background on his company, including their approach to their recent fundraising efforts and the accounting team’s role in that. 

The discussion then turns to achieving efficiencies in the accounting process. Jake shares how he got their accounting close down to 5 days from 10 days, and reflects on the productivity benefits of automation. He underscores the need for ongoing collaboration with cross-functional partners like rev ops, sales, and engineering teams to ensure seamless tool and system integration, and shares how he thinks about evaluating new accounting tools and technology. 

The episode wraps up with an insightful discussion on the importance of taking the accounting function from proactive to reactive through continuous process improvement. And at the conclusion, Jake closes out with some funny anecdotes from his early days in audit, including the time he had to audit medical socks as a part of inventory count. 

Key Quotes

• “It’s very easy to get your CPA and forget about it. But there are so many things that are changing, it’s important to stay up to speed.”
• “Going through the fundraising process, it was important that we had a good bridge between accounting and the FP&A team.”
• “We’ve had to work a lot with our Rev Ops team to make sure we know about changes in Salesforce.”
• “We’ve had a lot of support from our CFO around relying on automation tools. We were closing in ten days when I first started and we’ve gotten down to five.”
• “I always look at: are the dollars you’re going to spend worth the time you’re going to save?” 
• “For us, we want continued process improvements. We want to be a proactive instead of reactive organization.” 

Time Stamps

• (00:38) Jake’s career journey
• (04:09) The importance of community building
• (11:31) The role of Jake’s accounting team in fundraising
• (19:03) Transition from Auditor to Controller 
• (27:32) Implementing new tools and systems
• (30:00) Evaluating ROI on various vendors
• (32:02) Challenges and successes of automation

Links

• Connect with Jake
• Visit FinQuery
• Connect with Erik
• Visit Brex