A Cash System Made Stronger

Background

With a population of around 15,000, WHG's client has a solid economy with down-to-earth expectations from its local government. Conveniently situated in Macomb County, the industrial facilities are expanding, the workforce is rebounding and the city is replete with diners and savory steak houses. That said, the city government financials have not yet recovered from the economic downturn, and with slow recovery comes fast turnover.

Pain Point

WoodHill Group's wonderful client had a problem – a cash problem. The city was not running out of money, but their money was running around. Cash was running around in a frail accounting architecture that tied-up the accounting team, was a roadblock to city operations and stymied progress. To adjust for these underlying issues, external resources had created complicated, time-consuming business processes to ensure the money was all accounted for. The month end close took 7-8 days with an external bank reconciliation process and a fragile general ledger mapping framework. The dedicated in-house team of financial and operations managers were overly burdened with tying down the cash and tracking the city’s funds which helped to impede progress and prosperity for the city.

The WoodHill Group Solution

With a dedicated team of experts, the WoodHill Group conducted financial surgery to reset the framework, rebuild the processes and realign the cash flows.

• The general ledger was redrawn to offer a more robust framework that accurately reflects cash flows between funds and eliminated wasteful, duplicative processes.

• The current software architecture was realigned to support operations and leveraged to streamline the bank reconciliation process.

• Cash flows were made more transparent and easier to trace with rationalized, efficient business processes.​​

Resulting Benefits

• The 37 bank accounts were streamlined down to 10, resulting in substantial savings in bank fees.

• Month End closing process was improved from 7-8 days down to 2-3 days.

• Current account software was leveraged to more comprehensively manage operational and financial transactions.

• The entire bank reconciliation process was integrated with the current software program to improve tractability between funds.

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