The Person in Finance is Not a Finance Person
“The person in finance is not a finance person” is a phrase we hear a lot. If you're considering bringing in an accounting team like Sutro Li to support your situation, here’s a couple of pieces of advice. We’re here to help.
Our advice for this situation:
establish an agreement that all questions are good
set clear expectations about roles and responsibilities
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Hi, I'm Burton. I'm the founder and CEO of Sutro Li. We provide accounting for great causes. “The person in finance is not a finance person.” This is a phrase that I hear a lot. It's incredibly common if you're running a nonprofit and you've gathered your team more from a sense of mission and they're not coming from a business background, or perhaps you're running a small business or a startup and you have a very lean team, you're just getting started getting an idea off the ground and it's all hands on deck.
It's incredibly common that the person running finance is not a finance person. If you're considering bringing in an accounting team like Sutro Li to support this situation, here’s a couple of pieces of advice:
One - establish an agreement that all questions are good. Your questions let us know what is most important to you. They also let us know what you need help understanding.
The second piece of advice is to set up very clear expectations. This could take the form of clarifying roles. For example, who's running payroll? Or who is approving bills, and when did they get approved? We'll work with you to establish a very detailed listing of every step of the financial process and who's responsible for what. This is incredibly helpful when you're working with somebody who's not coming from a financial background.
So creating an agreement that all questions are good, and being very clear about expectations about roles in the financial process. These are the two pieces of advice we give when the person who's in finance is not a finance person.