Insights
Practical notes from inside the finance function.
Straight-talking guidance on data hygiene, system selection, and implementation, written for the people who actually have to live with the outcome.
Financial Data Architecture & AI Readiness
Why Your Chart of Accounts Needs Fixing Before You Touch a New System
The most common, and most expensive, mistake in NFP system implementations isn't the software. It's what gets migrated into it.
Read the article →Your AI Tool Isn't the Risk. The Export Is.
Boards worry about whether AI tools are safe for financial data. The real exposure almost always happens earlier, at the moment someone exports a file.
Read the article →The Practical Case for the National Standard Chart of Accounts
Most NFPs build a custom Chart of Accounts from scratch, and it usually cracks within a couple of years. NSCOA already solves this problem for the sector.
Read the article →Why Your Budget Is Probably Already Out of Date
A budget locked in at the start of the year is already drifting by the time you're a quarter in. Here's why that happens, and what to do about it instead.
Read the article →The Point Where Your Finance Function Stops Scaling
Growth doesn't break a finance function all at once. It happens quietly, as grant structures and transaction volumes outgrow the Chart of Accounts.
Read the article →RFP Consulting & Independent Selection
Accounting System Design & Implementation
The Multi-Grant Dilemma: Why Adding More Dimensions Won't Fix a Broken Ledger
Modern cloud platforms solve grant complexity with dimensional accounting, but stacking too many dimensions just creates a new version of the same problem.
Read the article →Why Your School's Enrolment System and Accounting Platform Need to Be Talking to Each Other
A school's revenue is governed directly by enrolment, yet the student management system and the general ledger often run as two disconnected worlds.
Read the article →Building a Procurement Approval Flow That Actually Survives Real Life
A three way match is only as reliable as the approval workflow feeding it. Here's how to design for leave, small recurring spend, and Board sign-offs properly.
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