The responsibility no CFO job description mentions

1. Xero for Core Finance: Xero is the backbone of our finance function. We recently upgraded to Xero Ultra, which builds on the platform already managing the general ledger, AP, AR and bank feeds across all 13 entities.

2. ApprovalMax for Financial Controls: ApprovalMax gives us structured purchase approval workflows on top of Xero for all business overhead related spend, helping maintain strong financial controls as the business grows.

3. Mayday for Month End: Mayday has become a key part of our multi-entity close process, handling consolidations, intercompany reconciliations and month-end automation across the group. Easy Month End is an incredible tool for tracking and ensuring our month end processes are adhered to and ensuring no steps are missed and responsibilities are clear.

4. Employment Hero for HR and Payroll: Employment Hero supports employee records, onboarding and leave management and payroll processing and compliance while integrating payroll journals with Xero.

5. Spotlight for Reporting Packs: Spotlight helps us produce our consolidated management reporting and board packs from our Xero data.

6. AssetAccountant for Fixed Assets: AssetAccountant manages our fixed asset register and depreciation, giving us a dedicated solution beyond the core accounting system. 

7. dataSights & Power BI for Reporting: dataSights brings together data from Xero, Procore, BQE Core and other systems into a central data platform, with Power BI delivering month end tools as well as business line, group executive and board-level reporting dashboards. It also has out of the box consolidated financial reports like Xero for the finance team.

8. Procore for Project Management: Procore provides project financial information including budgets and progress claims, giving Finance greater visibility into project performance and forecasting.

9. BQE Core for Project Financials: BQE Core manages time, billing and project financials for our consulting engineering businesses.

10. OpsCentral for Integrations: OpsCentral is our in-house integration platform that connects our best-of-breed systems where standard integrations don't exist.

11. Claude for AI: Claude is connected to dataSights and allows us to use AI to assist with our financial reporting, analysis and the month end process via direct connection to all our data, both financial and other. Permissions are managed within DS and managed tightly.

First 90 days as an In-house Finance Hire? Don’t Rush the Handover

Readers question:

Finance at our company is still mostly handled by our external accountants. I have just joined as the first in-house finance hire. What should I prioritise in the first 90 days?

Harriet’s answer:

First things first, resist the urge to cut the external accountants loose. When you’re the first in-house finance hire, it’s tempting to prove the business no longer needs them. Don’t. A thorough handover is worth its weight in gold.

Keep the accountants in the loop, on purpose

Budget for an overlap period, ideally the full 90 days. It gives the external accountants time to walk you through the detail instead of leaving you to piece it together yourself. It will cost a little more, but it’s worth every penny.

The handover doesn’t have to end after 90 days either. Keeping the same accountants involved for other services means you retain the knowledge they’ve built up about the business. That might be year-end accounts, the tax return or simply having someone to call when an unfamiliar issue crops up.

Treat the systems as a blank canvas

The setup you’ve inherited was probably built for compliance. That’s not a criticism of the accountants. It’s simply the job they were there to do. Now that you’re in-house, the expectations are different. Start from first principles. Automate the bookkeeping. Build a robust month-end process. Get the foundations right before introducing anything more ambitious. Walk before you run.

It’s common in early-stage businesses. An outsourced finance function will often have an accounting system and a data ingestion tool such as Dext, and that’s usually enough at that stage. As the business grows, the finance function needs more capability. That might mean introducing tools such as Mayday to support the month-end close, ApprovalMax to strengthen finance controls, and more robust accounts payable.

That’s why it’s worth making sure those foundations can support the next stage of growth. A chart of accounts should be built around how the business wants to understand its performance, not just how it needs to file. Do that now and you’ll save yourself months of rework later.

Get a handle on cashflow immediately

The moment you’re in-house, expectations change. Leadership will expect answers on cash much sooner than they did when finance was outsourced. Even a simple weekly cashflow summary in your first few weeks shows the business that you’re on top of the numbers while you build the rest of the finance function.

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