The Opportunity:

A government agency sought to dramatically improve its financial operating processes and procedures and enhance its monthly reporting, as well as clean-up past accounting records.

Engagement Scope:

Innovar was chosen to assist a government agency that was feeling the pains of high turn-over in the Finance Department, a new system implementation that led to a lack of understanding by Finance and Accounting staff, and complex accounting associated with governmental fund accounting. Innovar worked in the following areas:

• Budget shortfall investigation anddocumentation
• Process creation and improvement for a number of functional accounting areas:
• Accounts Receivable
• Accounts Payable
• Encumbrances
• Payroll
• Budgeting
• Reconciliation of cash accounts that were eight months in arrears
• Fund balance reconciliation and cleanup, coupled with review and improvement of surrounding processes
• Interim Director of Accounting services

Results:

Innovar deployed a team of experienced professionals led by one of partners to quickly identify an approach that would result in a clean starting point to begin building the new operational processes. Major areas of analysis and recommendations included:

• Successfully reconciled all cash accounts in arrears and designed new processes and procedures to improve accuracy, efficiency and timeliness of reconciliation processes leveraging existing system tools
• Reviewed major accounting processes and procedures, identifying areas for improvement and designing and implementing process improvements that resulted in greater efficiency and accuracy. Major highlights of this effort include:
• Redesigned treasury management system employing a lockbox system that accelerated the deposit of cash receipts by two to four weeks
• Redesigned disbursement approvals and transaction processing and recording to prevent duplicate payments and to ensure accurate and timely recording of transactions
• Redesigned processes around recording of encumbrances to ensure proper accounting and to prevent extensive revision of accounting records
• Redesigned processes around payroll allocation resulting in appropriately allocating costs in accordance with budget and any subsequent revisions
• Budgeting
• Successfully reviewed and reconciled the fund balances for 165 separate funds assisting the agency in recording all necessary adjustments to cleanup the fund balances. Additionally, redesigned processes and procedures to ensure that future transactions will be allocated to the appropriate fund in a timely manner.

Innovar Collective Differentiators:

Experience – By bringing a team of specialists that averaged 20 years of experience each, government accounting knowledge, fund accounting expertise, and a proven methodology, the Innovar team was able to rapidly clean-up past accounting issues.

Real World Solutions – We don’t make recommendations that are known Best-In-Class practices. We understand that every client is different and thus we tailor solutions to meet each client’s needs, utilizing our years of operations experience in the real world.

Cost Effective – Innovar fees were significantly less than Big Box advisory firms while providing a more experienced team.
Financial & Operational Experience – The ability to blend strong project financial understanding, along with deep project operation experience, enabled a rapid delivery of a successful outcome.