A national manufacturer and retailer of sustainable, luxury home furnishings was facing an immediate gap in its finance function. The team member responsible for internal reporting, financial planning and budgeting, and manufacturing cost analysis was leaving for a new opportunity, and the company would need 6 to 8 weeks to fill the role. With a lean finance and accounting team already stretched across other priorities, these responsibilities could not simply go unattended.
Having previously worked with DLC and been pleased with the results, the company turned to our team again. This time, the engagement called for an on-site presence to absorb critical reporting duties, support the company’s forecast modeling efforts, and help establish a more sustainable cost-accounting process for the long term.
The departing finance team member managed three core areas: a recurring sales report, inventory change commentary, and SKU-level cost updates in NetSuite for manufacturing. Each of these tasks fed directly into the company’s financial reporting, planning, and decision-making processes, and none could be paused during the transition.
Compounding the staffing gap was the state of the company’s existing reporting and budgeting infrastructure. The Excel files used for these processes had grown highly complex over time, with an unusually high number of tabs whose purposes were unclear, and data that was often linked across multiple source files. After several layers of linked files, the underlying data was frequently hard-coded with no remaining trace of its origin, making it difficult to verify, update, or troubleshoot.
A separate and unusual challenge was the SKU costing process itself. While SKU costing is typically handled within manufacturing operations, this responsibility had landed within the finance team, generating up to 300 costing requests per week, many of which carried expectations of immediate turnaround. These requests frequently interrupted finance projects, even when the underlying changes, such as a minor component cost adjustment, had minimal impact on overall inventory value or standard costs.
Our team’s first priority was continuity. Working alongside the departing finance team member and the Director of Accounting, we spent two weeks absorbing detailed training on the company’s reporting, planning, and costing processes, with sessions recorded for future reference. Once the transition began, our team took over the recurring sales report, inventory commentary, and SKU costing in NetSuite, ensuring these critical deliverables continued without interruption.
As the engagement progressed, the focus shifted toward a larger opportunity: rebuilding the company’s forecast model. Working closely with the Director of Accounting and COO, our team streamlined the model down to the sections leadership actually relied on, rewrote the assumptions to be clearer and better documented, and restructured the balance sheet and cash flow into a format designed with outside investors in mind. The cash flow statement, in particular, was reimagined around real inflows and outflows, mapping cash receipts by sales channel alongside borrowing, inventory purchases, operating expenses, and debt payments.
In parallel, our team tackled a long-standing inefficiency: SKU costing requests that were landing on finance’s desk at a volume of up to 300 per week, often with expectations of immediate turnaround. We redesigned the process so manufacturing would handle the SKU-level updates needed to keep products moving, while finance shifted to a quarterly review that captures smaller cost changes in batches. We documented the new process, trained the manufacturing team, and prepared finance for its first quarterly cycle.
We also began building an automated bridge reporting tool, using waterfall charts to compare monthly, quarterly, and year-to-date results against budget and prior-year figures, with Excel automation handling the recurring data updates. While this work was still in progress when the engagement concluded, our team documented the build and outlined the remaining steps for a smooth handoff.
Throughout the engagement, we maintained the company’s monthly sales reporting, inventory commentary, and quarterly board presentations, while staying closely aligned with the Director of Accounting and COO through regular check-ins. As the new finance hire came on board, our team trained them across all workstreams, supported additional forecast refinements requested by leadership, and ensured every initiative could continue independently after our departure.
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