Corlett Solutions - Case Studies:

Accounting and Bookkeeping:

One client of Corlett Solutions prefers to write their checks and make their deposits by hand.  Corlett personnel use QuickBooks to enter about 100 deposits per month, each with about 10 categories of revenue, and 70-80 checks per month, process the monthly sales tax payment online for the client, prepare bank reconciliations for two bank accounts, and prepare monthly financial reports, all for under $400/month.  The fixed monthly fee also includes working with the auditors at year-end.

Another client has their office manager enter transactions in Quicken, but this individual is not an accountant by training, and various errors creep in.  Corlett Solutions connects remotely to the client’s computer, saving time and money by not going to the client’s site, and we review all transactions, prepare bank reconciliations, and assure that payroll withholdings and other monthly obligations are remitted on a timely basis, all in an hour or two each month.  At the end of the year, comparative financial statements are generated for dissemination to the Board and the bank.

Controllership and CFO Services: 

One of our clients is a non-profit organization for whom we function as an independent controller.  A number of system level initiatives include the following.  We ended the use of Peachtree for accounting and implemented a QuickBooks accounting system for the client, obtaining efficiencies in data entry and reporting and gaining access to many more years of cumulative data.  Also, as the organization grew, we started the recording of transactions and reporting by operating unit, so that not only the financial performance of the organization as a whole could be reported, but also each unit could be analyzed for its profitability and performance.  In the area of cash management, some large grants were received, and we recommended that money market accounts be opened at multiple institutions, to provide full FDIC insurance coverage and to increase earnings on these funds.

Financial Analysis and Report Writing: 

A client of ours is a distributor.  Its salesmen generally price products as a markup from cost, and their goal is to maintain fairly consistent profit margins, both to protect the company and to be fair to their customers.  But how do salesmen and the owner know that consistency is being achieved?  A system of standard costing was implemented, and Corlett Solutions provides a series of reports that allow each salesman to examine his sales, by client, by product, to identify changes in profit margin, changes in purchasing patterns, and to take action to correct pricing or pursue a customer who may be reducing his purchases because he is buying elsewhere.  The ability to price correctly is directly responsible for increased profits, and many salesmen at this client live and die by these reports.