CLIENT · SERIES B SAAS · ~180 PEOPLE ·  REDACTED

Two ARR numbers on the board deck became one — before the deck was sent.

ARR MISSTATEMENT AVERTED
$184k
DRIFTS RECONCILED
47
ESCALATIONS TO CFO
0
BOOKS ON DAY 3
14 / 14
// 01
WHAT WE WALKED INTO

Three different ARR numbers on three different decks. None of them wrong, none of them the same.

Sales presented bookings as ARR. Finance presented invoiced revenue as ARR. The board pack derived something a third way in a spreadsheet only the controller understood. The CEO stopped trusting any of them and built a fourth — by hand, on the morning of board meetings.

The IT team had four full-time admins. They were busy. None of them were paid to ask whether the numbers leaving the building were the same numbers.

// 02
THE WATCH · 14 MONTHS
DAY 1
Ingested
127 SOPs, 4 years of board minutes, 14 connected systems. ARR was defined three different ways across them.
DAY 9
Reconciled
Sales' bookings number, Finance's invoiced revenue, and the Board's ARR — all three reconciled to one definition with the CFO's sign-off.
WEEK 6
Held
An attempted CRM field rename would have broken the pipeline report. Held until reviewed; renamed in a way the report could follow.
MONTH 3
Caught
Quarterly close slipping by 2.5 days because a tax code was wrong in two systems. Corrected; close now lands on day 3 every month.
MONTH 8
Caught
An ARR report drifted from the board-approved definition by $184k mid-quarter. Reconciled before circulation.
MONTH 14
Verified
47 drifts caught and reconciled to date. Zero escalations to the CFO. Books closed on day 3 for 14 consecutive months.
// 03
WHAT IT MEANS
“I stopped doing the math on the morning of board meetings.
That alone paid for the engagement. The other forty-six things were the bonus.”
— CFO · SERIES B SAAS · ~180 PEOPLE ·  NAME REDACTED
Your numbers are probably also three different numbers.
We can tell you which one is the real one. Usually within a week.
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