Thinc Insights
How we helped a Group Financial Controller diagnose a fragile month-end before she looked for a new finance system, using the same approach set out in Thinc's Amplify™ Framework guide.
This Group Financial Controller wasn’t behind. On paper, month end was under control. Her team knew the monthly routine. Journals were posted. Reconciliations were completed. Board packs went out.
Each of their three entities was running Xero – a straightforward finance setup. But once the numbers needed to come together at group level, the systems didn’t talk to each other – so Excel did the heavy lifting. Consolidations, intercompany eliminations, reporting packs and last-minute adjustments all lived in spreadsheets layered on top of the finance system. And yet, every month, the same problems showed up.
Group consolidation dragged. Adjustments crept in late. Numbers that looked right at entity level didn’t line up once rolled up. More than once, she found herself running parallel versions of the same report in Excel – one built for accuracy, one built for speed – and neither felt like something she could defend in a leadership meeting without caveats. By the time the final numbers were signed off and ready for review, the business had already moved on to the next decision.
She didn’t come to us asking for a new finance system to speed up the close. She already knew their current way of working wasn’t sustainable. What she didn’t know was where to start fixing it without making things worse. Month end was too fragile – and she couldn’t see which part of the setup was actually responsible.
She booked an initial call with me to talk through what was going wrong. At a glance, the symptoms looked operational:
Her instinct was that the system was part of the problem, but she was wary of jumping straight to replacement. Too many previous changes had simply shifted workarounds from one place to another. As we talked it through, a clearer pattern emerged.
Each entity had evolved its own version of “what good looks like”. Close processes were technically compliant, but inconsistent. Some entities accrued early, others waited. Some reconciled rigorously every month, others relied on experienced eyes at the end. Controls existed – but many lived outside the system in spreadsheets, checklists, or email approvals. Month end worked largely because the same people knew:
When institutional knowledge does the heavy lifting, things can run smoothly – until something unexpected goes wrong. And the FC could feel the risk building. She knew the way they were working had to change – but without clarity, any change felt dangerous. Touch the wrong thing, and the month end process could break entirely.
This is exactly where Thinc’s Amplify™ Framework becomes useful. Before you decide what to change, you need to understand how your systems, processes, and people are compensating for one another – and pinpoint where that compensation is starting to fail. That’s why the first step of the framework is Diagnosis.
The FC’s biggest concern wasn’t reducing the number of days it was taking to close. It was the stressful conversations she had to face each month from her leadership team.
None of these questions suggested she wasn’t in control. But slowly, as more data mistakes cropped up each month, trust in finance was eroding. Upwards, confidence weakened. The CFO needed earlier visibility into the accounts to steer decisions. Sideways, friction increased. The sales team questioned figures they didn’t understand. And downwards, pressure was mounting. The finance team spent more time explaining and defending data than analysing it.
This is the hidden cost the Amplify™ Framework is designed to surface. Weak processes don’t just drain time and money – they slow decisions, create tension, and quietly exhaust teams. And until that cost is visible, it’s almost impossible to justify either investment in change or staying as you are. At this point, many Group FCs feel stuck. They know they need a better way of working. They just don’t know where to start without triggering a risky system project.
We dived straight into a 30-minute Diagnosis session – the first step of the Amplify™ Framework. We keep these sessions deliberately non-technical. The purpose is never to sell a new system. It’s to develop a clear, defensible view of what’s really going on. Together, we worked through four core areas:
What did a “better month end” mean in practice? Not “faster” in theory – but earlier insight, fewer caveats, and confidence standing behind the numbers in board discussions. We put her real ambitions to the test, to help her see what good looks like.
Where was effort being consumed? We mapped specific delays – intercompany mismatches, reconciliation loops, reporting rework – and traced them back to process and data decisions made over time.
Not just salary hours, but risk. Late adjustments. Dependency on individuals. The growing exposure if key people were unavailable during close. We landed on precise figures to quantify this.
Which issues genuinely needed structural change – and which could be resolved with clearer governance, process alignment, or better use of existing capability.
The output was a Diagnosis Workbook – a concise, prioritised document she could share internally without translation. For the first time, the FC had clarity without committing to a solution. That’s the point where “we know this needs to change” turns into “we know exactly where to start”.
Some actions were immediate and low risk. She rationalised aspects of the chart and mapping so the group view stopped relying on manual fixes. She standardised key group reporting definitions, so discussions focused on performance, not data semantics. She removed manual controls that had outlived their purpose and were now just slowing the close.
Other findings fed into the next Amplify™ Framework step: a deeper discovery session, where we focused on the features and capabilities she needed from a finance system – grounded in evidence rather than frustration.
From there, month end didn’t just get faster. It became predictable. And more importantly, the FC stopped carrying the risk alone. She had a clear narrative for leadership about why finance needed better systems and what value change would unlock.
Start with diagnosis
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