Justin Aquino, CPA

• Live Nation Entertainment ($16B multinational entertainment company that promotes, operates, manages ticket sales for live entertainment in the United States and internationally)
• Warner Bros. Entertainment Group of Companies ($12B multimedia entertainment producer and distributor)
• Herbalife Nutrition ($6B global multi-level marketing corporation that develops and sells dietary supplements)
• The Wonderful Company – Justin Vineyards & Winery ($5B privately held multi-brand company; $100M winery)
• Manufacturers Bank ($4B commercial and full-service bank that accepts deposits, makes loans, international banking, cash management and provides other services for the public)
• Warner Music Group ($3B major music company with interests in recorded music, music publishing, and artist services)
• Paramount Pictures Corporation ($831M feature film producer and distributor, video and DVD worldwide distributor, and producer of programs for television broadcast and syndication)
• Del Taco Restaurants, Inc. ($513M American fast food restaurant chain that specializes in American-style Mexican cuisine)
• Kindeva Drug Delivery ($200M contract development and manufacturing organization with an innovation offering spanning inhalation, transdermal delivery, and microneedles)
• Drinks Holdings, Inc ($167M online platform for marketing, buying, and selling wine)
• Fuse Media Inc. ($115M digital cable and satellite television company that provides video-on-demand channels targeting millennial and Gen Z viewers)
• PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP – Clients included: The Walt Disney Company, LegalZoom.com, Boingo Wireless, Riot Games, Line6, Princess Cruise Lines, Oaktree Capital Group, Coast Asset Management, Perfect Market, and Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation

• Prepared various month-end/quarter-end journal entries in accordance with company policy and GAAP, including journal entries related to sales, accruals, intercompany balancing, and expenses each month as part of the month end close process.
• Analyzed monthly results, tracked variances, presented financial measurements, and made recommendations for corrective action (e.g., accruals, adjustments, etc.) as needed in formal settings.
• Performed variance analysis on results comparing actual operating performance to forecasted plan and actual operating performance to prior year on a month-to-date, quarter-to-date, and year-to-date basis.
• Analyzed and reconciled balance sheet, revenue, and expense general ledger accounts. Prepared and reviewed balance sheet and P&L fluctuations, supplemental schedules, and related party disclosures as part of the month-end/quarter-end close process.
• Responsible for internal reporting including monthly and quarterly lead schedules and P&L packages for Finance/Management teams.
• Functioned as primary contact liaison for all accounting, tax, and audit (internal and external) activities.
• Prepared depreciation, travel & entertainment, internal order, webhosting statements, and cause of change schedules for quarterly technology forecast planning cycles.
• Managed Balance Sheet reconciliation process with Enterprise Financial/Accounting Services team to ensure Accounts Receivable aging of Top-3 third party consultant billing was properly matched and cleared (invoice to accrual off-set).
• Reconciled Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable accounts as part of the Company’s Transitional Services Agreement (TSA) with ultimate parent company via monthly settlement statements. Proposed adjustment entries to domestic and international plant controllership teams and created issues log and settlement statement responsibilities matrices to ensure finance and accounting teams had a point of contact for settlement statement inquiries.
• Reconciled the bank holding company’s FR-Y9C and the group’s Call Report. Identified, discussed, and resolved any variances that exceed the expectation threshold with Vice President/Assistant Controller.
• Built automated report schedules for Quarter over Quarter analyses for the groups use of the quarterly Call Report updates and to identify significant variances. Sought guidance in documentation for Executive Vice President and Senior Vice President/Controller’s purview.

• Assisted in the preparation of support documents (audit and carve-out financial statements, etc.) in advance of S-1 filing for communication and technology clients.
• Researched financial accounting topics, including Multiple Element Arrangement (MEA) Revenue Recognition (ASC 605-25, formerly ASU 2009-13) and general revenue recognition.

• External audit background in entertainment, media, communications, technology, and financial services
• Extracted, prepared, and data mined financial data to support various data requests made in conjunction with 3rd party participant audits, audits of 3rd parties, US GAAP financial audits, international statutory audits, various guild (Screen Actors, Directors, and Film Musicians) audits, proration/Post 60’s payroll inspection audits, pension plan audits, and new media (digital content and platform) inspection audits.
• Provided various statement and contract support to complete on-going request lists from participant and residual auditors.
• Actively participated in User Acceptance Testing (UAT) initiatives to assist in identifying areas of inefficiency and opportunities of improvement in client’s reporting tool to participant and residual auditors.
• Actively participated in SOX 404 compliance initiatives including standardizing journal entry support, documentation and support of accrual entries, and upper-level sign-off retention.
• Created and maintained desktop procedures for monthly and quarterly accounting procedures including cash activity, accruals, and reconciliations (AP, AR, Intercompany, Sales Returns Reserve, Fixed Assets, etc.).
• Developed and maintained month-end, quarter-end, and year-end close checklists to ensure that the balance sheet accounts were consistently and systematically updated according to company policy and GAAP, and that stringent timelines were met.
• Managed internal control procedures for professional fees accrual, financial reporting, and technology allocations by reviewing senior inputs and making revisions where necessary prior to executive management submission, review, and approval.
• Created detailed desktop procedures and process flow diagrams for critical accounting and finance functions (Acquired Programming, Online Banking [Global Reporting Account Management], Advertising and Affiliate Revenue, Concur T&E). Worked with finance lead team and interim CFO to ensure proper and holistic documentation.

• Prepared budgets and forecasts and iterated results with senior management teams and technical lead teams. Coordinated with managers, executive director, and vice president of technology finance to consolidate detailed templates for projections for each plan cycle (Operational Budget, Quarterly Forecasts, and Long-Term Plan).
• Analyzed and managed the annual Asset Digital Management (ADM) base fee allocations for Capgemini and Cognizant technology application services. Monitored the monthly charges for each system application used by various business groups and confirmed the change of cost or the transition of costs to each of the technical lead teams. Additionally, upon payment of system allocation usage, accurate analysis of consolidated monthly payment to be appropriately allocated to each of the systems utilized.
• Developed key analytics and reporting from various sources of data across the Technology Finance group and effectively summarized financial data.
• Centralized and prepared planning schedules for company-wide depreciation assets. Coordinated with Global Fixed Asset team to attain current year depreciation simulation and determine budget and long-range plan for entire operations (domestic and international).
• Centralized and prepared planning schedules for company-wide capital projects. Coordinated with Finance – Investment Council to determine current and in-flight projects that would impact each budget forecast cycle and system application. Explained year over year, forecast over forecast and variances changes as appropriate.
• Performed vendor analysis for senior management to determine Top-20 vendors for each material financial statement line items and where year-to-date professional services and IT costs were effectively spent.
• Tracked and reported upon actual spend against line-item budgets for highly sensitive compliance projects, including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and Vulnerability Remediation, to ensure spend was within budget.
• Provided interim planning support by maintaining financial models that tracked wine sales by volume, revenue, state, premise, channel, wine vintage year, and wine varietal brand.
• Prepared weekly financial sales templates that summarized the YTD shipment volume and revenue for the company’s wine business by channel, brand, varietal, vintage, and month. Coordinated with Direct to Consumer and Wholesale wine teams to provide consolidated results and additional downstream analysis for the CFO.
• Prepared domestic and international monthly outlook analysis with updates provided by regional SVP’s that incorporated YTD actual spend by premise and channel and remaining year forecast; adjusted outgoing months to adhere to team’s plan and budget.
• Prepared month-end, quarter-end, forecast overview and Board of Directors earnings schedules for domestic and international sponsorship divisions that measured how far the overall company is meeting their sponsorship goals for the year.
• Managed the tracking and consolidation of the domestic and international site visits for the various company’s websites and applied a 70/30 percent methodology allocation between mobile and desktop visits for a quarter over quarter analytical perspective.
• Managed the Contracted Full Year Contribution Margin by industry segment and all sponsors that generated >$1M revenue reporting to provide a complete overview of all sponsorship deals and the expected contribution margin provided by the domestic and international divisions.
• Managed the consolidation of the monthly and forecast variance explanations of sponsorship divisions, corporate and management reserves to better explain the fluctuations of adjusted operating income for the period.

• Developed financial model for senior management team that tracked Internal Order performance from each forecast cycle to year-to-date actuals. Internal Order model efficiently helped track the teams “left to spend” remaining year outlook. Developed financial model for senior management team and technical lead teams for all 42 cost centers of infrastructure technology finance. The model effectively used business warehouse reporting and provided an overall consolidated and a detailed view of summarized Overhead and P&L detail activity – month-to-date and year-to-date forecast to actuals.
• Refined and improved financial model that tracked PCS deployed technological assets across 38 business units of a company. Analysis incorporated and applied year-over-year rate cards to obtain an accurate snapshot of the cost of the assets utilized by each business unit.
• Developed financial model that updated the planning of technology allocable costs to studio-wide business units. Analysis involved intense and in-depth discussions with various application owners and recipient cost centers. Determined allocable cost by incorporating head count and planned costs passed through Enterprise Infrastructure Support corporate group.
• Enhanced financial models to include YTD spend (prior year, plan, and actuals) for volume, revenue, wine varietal mix analysis, premise (retail, on-site and international) channels, depletions and discount & promotional spend.

• Over 5,000 hours of experience in all phases of project management, including project scoping and initiation, planning, budgeting, executing, and closing/signing off of client reviewed deliverables. Experience encompasses a diverse range of projects including process reengineering, global finance transformation, revenue recognition, international office integration, and regulatory SOX compliance efforts.
• Monitored project costs and ensured that total costs remained within established budgets.
• Prepared project closing activities, such as archiving files and documenting lessons learned.
• Documented recommended approaches and created new desktop procedures for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of company’s individual finance and accounting processes. Developed business cases, presented to key stakeholders that supported the implementation recommendations, and obtained approval and sign off.
• Updated Call Report PPM and FR-Y9C procedures to include periodic regulatory changes and methodology. Created documentation tracking log so that such changes can be properly documented, reviewed, and acknowledged by Vice President/Assistant Controller and Senior Vice President/Controller.
• Assisted with use of group’s internal reporting tool, enhancements of reconciliation templates, and updated process procedure documents to efficiently complete sub-selection methodology of revenue reporting systems.
• Actively participated in business process improvement (BPI) initiatives including automated purchase order accruals, master use royalties, and journal entry template upload revisions.
• Improved month-end and quarter-end close procedures to reduce closing time from 10 days to 7 days after month end. Activities included developing accruals, determining and depreciation of fixed assets, intercompany transactions, account reconciliations, and preparation of journal entries.
• Improved process and timing for completing complex intercompany account reconciliations between U.S. and international divisions.
• Improved digital chargeback billing process so that appropriate webhosting charges received costs that matriculated in technology purview. Improved process to almost error-free and created desktop procedures for efficient interim management.
• Created process documentation and walk throughs for the various sponsorship related activities that will aid corporate administration planning finance team members understand the underlying procedures in getting pertinent schedules updated for month-end, quarter-end, forecast overview and Board of Directors earnings periods.

Microsoft Excel

• Certified Microsoft Office Specialist – Excel 2010 Expert
• Proficient Level Excel User including, pivot tables, formula building (IF, IFERROR, SUMIF, V-LOOKUP, H-LOOKUP, CONCATENATE, CLEAN, etc.), subtotals, grouping, multiple spreadsheets linking, hyperlink creation and insertion, filter, sort and data manipulation, basic analytics, worksheet sharing and protection, and customization of toolbars.

Microsoft PowerPoint

• Advanced Level PowerPoint User including working with templates and layouts, inserting objects (pictures, symbols, charts, sound), creating graphs and organization charts, working with embedded and/or linked objects, slide transition and animation as well as creating and running slide shows.

Microsoft Word

• Advanced Level Word User including imbedding objects, linked spreadsheets, charts, tables, and form design.

Microsoft Visio

• Proficient Level Visio User including key process flow map diagrams and organizational charts design, development, and creation.

Microsoft Access

• Basic Level Access User including table design and development, data import and query, and report creation.

Microsoft Power BI

• Basic Level User, including retrieving and extracting data for Excel for variance analysis schedules and uploading data into application.

SAP R/3 SAP BW, SAP PRD, SAP BPC

• Advanced Level SAP User including journal entries, business warehouse reporting, and data file processing and extraction within the system.

Oracle HFM/Business Suite

• Proficient Level usage of ERP system including creation and posting of journal entries, database inquiries, financial statement report generation, and exporting data to Excel.

 
BLACKLINE

• Proficient Level User with experience utilizing matching module for approving cash and credit sales between bank and general ledgers. Experience extracting and exporting details for financial analysis and various reporting packages.

TABLEAU

• Proficient Level User with experience executing queries and data exports via crosstabs for monthly close tasks, journal entries, variance analysis and ad hoc reporting requests.

Other

• Working experience with the following packages: COGNOS, QuickBooks, JD Edwards, InsightSoftware – Hubble, PowerBI, NetSuite, OnAir, WideOrbit, Sintec Information Management Systems, Microsoft D365, SharePoint, Cold+, Horizon and Comperio.

California State University, Los Angeles

• BS, Business Administration

 
CPA

• State of California (In Progress)

 
PMP

• Project Management Institute (In Progress)

 
CFE

• Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (In Progress)

 
CAMS

• Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (In Progress)