My mission is to help every accountant learn how to do reconciliations right.

Reconciliations & I go way back to the beginning of my career (yes, the awesome ‘90s) and we’ve been together ever since!  From the time my chair was anointed with oil by the owner of a company I was auditing to when I was fortunate enough to be on the NASDAQ floor when BlackLine went public, I’ve had some interesting times and amazing opportunities - all because of reconciliations.

I’ve influenced the quality of hundreds of thousands of reconciliations over my 30+ year career.  This includes my work preparing, approving, auditing and optimizing reconciliations across many different industries.

When I was an auditor at Crowe in the mid-1990s, I had some tough managers.  They drilled into me the importance of a quality reconciliation.  That was a great foundation for when I transitioned into industry as I understood what auditors needed to efficiently do their job.  Unfortunately, as an accounting team leader, I encountered way too many poorly performed reconciliations and accountants who had never been exposed to good reconciliation practices.I spent a lot of 1:1 time with my team and also invested in emerging technology to guide the preparation of quality reconciliations.

At BlackLine, I witnessed first-hand the use of technology for reconciliation preparation, workflow and automation. This technology also highlighted how serious of an issue reconciliation quality is due to the transparency it provided. But it wasn’t until I was asked to optimize a reconciliation process from beginning to end that I realized what was really needed.

The more I listened to accountants and the more I evaluated reconciliations, the more I understood that the lack of quality reconciliations was just a symptom of the real problem - the lack of a complete reconciliation program. Technology is just a tool – one piece of the puzzle. An accounting team can have the technology, the people, a process, and, of course, the data it needs to perform reconciliations. However, if they haven’t pulled all of these pieces together in a comprehensive program that is governed with accountability and excellence, they’re missing a strategic opportunity.

Yep! I help accounting teams take advantage of strategic opportunities hidden in their reconciliations by creating programs and helping accounting teams build and continually improve upon them. Companies change, teams change, systems change. The focus can’t be just on the process or on the technology. It has to be on the overall program and how everything fits and works together. That includes 1:1 on the job training, clearly defined roles and responsibilities, communication and, yes, automation too. But, first, let’s be sure that accountants really know how to reconcile, what they’re trying to reconcile and what questions are needed to feel confident in the balance. That’s when I’ll be happy - when reconciliations are so good, you want to show them off!

In my spare time I watch baseball with my husband, adventure all across the country with my 5 kids, hunt for quality vintage, and plot to build a family farm.