Writing
Articles
Practical writing on accounting operations and on automating finance work without giving up the controls. Mostly the things I wish someone had written down before I had to work them out.
Browse by topic: accounting (14 articles) or automation (11 articles).
Building a Month-End Close Checklist Anyone on Your Team Can Follow
A close checklist that links every task to its procedure lets someone who has never done the task complete it correctly. That is most of the value.
Automating Bank Reconciliations: What to Automate and What to Keep Under Human Review
Reconciliation looks like a matching problem, which is why it gets over-automated. The work splits into three categories, and only two should run alone.
Accounts Payable Automation Without Weakening Your Controls
Automating AP is easy. Doing it without ending up with faster payments and weaker controls takes one discipline: separating clerical steps from controls.
How Accountants Can Use Claude, ChatGPT, and n8n in Real Finance Work
Where Claude, ChatGPT, and n8n genuinely help in accounting work, where they do not belong, and the one rule that reliably tells the difference.
Building KPI Dashboards for AP, AR, and Inventory
Most finance dashboards fail because they show too much. A small set of metrics that each point to an action beats a comprehensive one nobody opens.
SOX-Style Internal Controls for Growing Companies
You do not need to be public to benefit from the discipline behind Sarbanes-Oxley. The trick is separating the substance from the compliance apparatus.
Where AI Automation Actually Saves Small Businesses Time
Most automation advice is written by people selling automation. Here is where small business time actually goes, and which of it responds to automating.
From Accounting Operations to Business Automation
The habits that make a month-end close reliable are the same habits that make any process reliable. Accounting is unusually good preparation for this.
Using Automation to Improve Lead Follow-Up
Follow-up is the most commonly skipped task in small business. The design question is not how to send more messages, it is where automation should stop.
What Business Owners Should Know Before Automating Their Workflows
The questions worth answering before you build anything, and the four mistakes behind most automation projects that end up abandoned.
Accounting for a Multichannel Consumer Products Company: E-Commerce, Retail, Wholesale, and DTC
The same unit sold through four channels creates four different accounting problems. Where the complexity actually sits, and what it does to margin.
ASC 606 Contract Review in Practice
The standard is well documented. The operational routine that keeps contract review from becoming a year-end scramble is not. Here is that routine.
Inventory Accuracy: Cycle Counts, Standard Costing, and Reconciliation
Inventory accuracy is three separate assertions: quantity, valuation, and cost assignment. They fail independently and need different controls.
Preparing for an External Audit: A Practical Checklist
An audit goes well or badly based on work done months earlier. What that work is, and when it has to happen to matter.
Why SOPs Are the Foundation of Finance Automation
You cannot automate a process you have not defined. Most failed automation projects are undocumented processes discovering that expensively.
Lessons From Running a Remote Bookkeeping Practice
Four years, 20+ small business clients, and a distributed team. What it taught me about small business and the limits of doing it alone.
Accounting Systems and Operational Efficiency
An ERP does not make a finance team efficient. Configuration, reporting, and what gets built on top are where the difference comes from.
Building a Business Around Practical Automation
What it takes to sell and deliver automation to small businesses honestly, including the parts that make it harder than the pitch suggests.
Something you would like me to write about?
If there is a close, controls, or automation topic you are stuck on, tell me. It is usually a sign that it is worth writing up.