Thanks for the crew of 15 that joined us for our 13th edition!
Big shout out to John who is retiring and joined his last meeting. Congrats John! Really appreciate you being one of the most active members for the group since it’s inception. Enjoy retirement!
Note Summary
- Accounting for physical assets
- Most in the industry struggle keeping track of all their assets
- Super time consuming process
- Most have used barcoding, some are considering Airtags on bigger items, such as a cage
- Challenges on what to count, what not to, economical thresholds, how to enter, etc.
- Objectives to have an accurate accounting – appease ownership on total assets, where money is being spent (i.e. not buying something at one location that is not being used at another, redeployment), bank financing (increase the borrowing base)
- During an accounting audit, some auditors look at a one or two branches and apply the same principles through the rest in multi-location operations
- Fees from a full audit from a review don’t vary significantly in upfront cost, it’s simply more manhours in-house to respond to the full audit
- Cycle counts vary significantly from weekly to not being done
- Some have found it helpful to pay an asset valuation firm $5-10k to do some of this lift for them
- Some are also using programs to assist
- Branch Performance Reviews & Metrics
- Varies widely
- Sales, profitability, budgets
- Sales is the most popular
- Some apply corporate costs, others don’t since the branch can’t control
- PowerBI and NetSuite have been helpful for tracking
- Many share financial data with branch and key level management – but all struggle with educating those levels on key finance principles
- The best method is to keep it simple and leave out a lot of detail, so they don’t get stuck in the weeds
- Repeat the training regularly to drive the points home
- Can’t sell your way out of everything – expense management vs profitability
- Varies widely
Topics for next discussion – December 11
- Collection efforts – outside vs inside, economics conditions, dealing with bankruptcies
- Lien waivers – dealing with paper lien waivers
- Might be a short topic, so we might be able to fit another
Please email me with any other topic ideas.
Future CFO Club Meetings
- December 11th, 2024 – same time
- February 12th, 2025 – trying a slightly different time, 2 EST/11 Pacific
Tony Hopkins
Tony has also realized that talking a good game is not enough. The true mark of a professional is execution. Horton achieves this through a process which consistently delivers on promises made and holding themselves accountable. “Once a plan is established, we are committed to plan execution. Our team functions as an extension of our clients operations; we are just as invested in their success as our own – their goals are our goals,” says Tony.
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