Ep. 12: Mason Brady - Finance Function for a Small Enterprise

Contact Mason Brady:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonbrady/
https://www.hgofarms.com/


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


Music: (00:00)

Mitch: (00:05)
Welcome to Count Me In. If you're joining us for the first time
and you're interested in staying up to date with the latest
perspectives on all things accounting and finance, please make
sure you subscribe to our series, download rate and review all
your favorite episodes as we keep you informed on what the
experts are saying in the industry. And this week's episode, my
co host, here Adam talks with Mason Brady, director of finance
and supply chain for homegrown organic farms out in California.
Now, Adam, you talked a lot about the finance function in a
smaller enterprise. What did Mason have to say about it?

Adam: (00:38)
You know, Mitch, his passion for finance and operational
efficiencies truly came through as he shared some of his insight
into how one can lead strategic initiatives for smaller
companies. Just like homegrown organic farms. Mason is a CMA with
a finance and entrepreneurship focus MBA. He has a motivating
perspective on improving the finance function for smaller
businesses. So let's hear about Mason's current role and some of
the rewards and challenges he's most familiar with.


Music: (01:02)

Adam: (01:04)
Mason, you currently serve as the director of finance and supply
chain for homegrown organic farms. Can you tell us a little bit
about the rewards and challenges of serving as a CFO or finance
director for a small enterprise?

Mason: (01:23)
You know, it kind of goes hand in hand as a reward and a
challenge, but it's just the idea that you wear a lot of hats. So
you know, it, you go online and you look up what does the CFO do
for, and oftentimes you get a response FOR what a CFO does for a
large corporation. And that usually involves capital management
and procuring capital for projects and expansion plans and growth
for the company. And it also involves a flavor of investor
relations and having relationships with banks, et cetera, et
cetera. And so that is a part of my job, but I also directly
oversee the accounting functions. I do have a controller, an
accounting manager in place, but very much so. Still involved in
the accounting and, and building standard operating procedures
and I'm really involved in the operations of our business and the
operations of our accounting department as well. And so while I
am tasked with doing a particular settings that a CFO or finance
director, and usually it's known for when you work for a small
enterprise that's just a sliver or a fraction of the entire pie
of what you do. And so you know finding capital and procuring
capital for growth for our company, that makes up maybe 10% of my
time, while FPA makes up anywhere from 15 20% of my time.
Overseeing accounting makes up another 30% of my time. And then
in addition, I oversee the quality control functions and the
procurement functions of materials, of packaging materials for
our company. And so, yeah, it's just overall, it's the idea that
you wear a lot of hats, which it's a lot of fun and it's really
rewarding because you really understand the business as a whole
better. But it is a challenge in ensuring that you are delegating
appropriately, that you're not creating a bottleneck that you
yourself are not becoming a bottleneck and ensuring that you're,
you know, the operations of your business can flows smoothly
without you having to be involved in absolutely everything or
habit saying everything. And so yeah, it's finding that
appropriate balance between the idea that you really get to see
what's happening in your business. And so you can guide your
accounting and your financing functions to ensure that they're
meeting the needs of the business appropriately. But you really
have to learn how to delegate and balance things as well.

Adam: (03:47)
So what comes with the oversight of accounting and FP&A in
your organization?

Mason: (03:52)
Well you know a regular week looks like I have an accounting
meeting with both my controller and accounting manager. Our
County manager handles the AP and the grower accounting and then
our controller you know, kind of, he provides a, we really have a
part-time controller and he provides a higher level financial
reporting perspective. And then also oversees our AR and our
invoicing. And so the oversight there is really me engaging with
them in those weekly meetings and reviewing our financials as a
team together and ensuring that I'm able to spot out things or
I'm able to ask questions and see how things are going and
identifying where we may need a revised procedure and working
with them directly to ultimately go implement a revised
procedure. So if there is something related to AR invoicing, I
would work, you know directly with my controller and go, you
know, talk through what I understand and what they understand and
try to come up with a common solution or, you know, I work with
our accounting manager and talk to our AP and say, Hey, you know,
how we're going with this. It doesn't seem to, it doesn't seem to
align properly with the cruel standards. Maybe, maybe we need to
make an adjustment like this and try to find the, a more simple
way to do it. And so that's really what the oversight of
accounting looks like. On the other hand, FP&A FP&A
really resides in me And I, it's just the, it's just the fact
that I have to you know, control the budgeting. I'm in charge of
the forecasting, but I'm really the one with the financial
modeling Excel skills to do that. And yeah, those are skills
that, especially in a small enterprise are difficult to hire
because you do have to pay good amounts of dollars for people who
do have those skills in within small enterprises. That may not be
something you can necessarily find the budget for. And so those
functions really reside in me and really working directly with
our CEO to provide forecasts and budgets as necessary. But I'm
really pulling the data from our accounting team and our
controller accounting manager and making sure that we all agree
that what is being presented and in the financial reports looks
appropriate. So then I can use that information and then forecast
with it. So, in a way it's nice because from an FP&A
perspective, I have my hand in the accounting, so I really no how
to forecast something appropriately because I really understand
the transaction. But I, yeah, I wish I could say that there's an
oversight of FP&A, but really it's just me doing FP&A and
well I do have a project coordinator that does handle a lot of
KPI dashboards, produces a lot of KPI dashboards for me. It's
still very much so me guiding that function me saying this is,
this is how we're going to do it. And then laying out the plan of
how we're going to do it.

Adam: (06:45)
That's great. That's a great kind of description of where you
are. You know, so you were mentioning, you know, budgets and
getting the right people involved. You know, a common story we
hear is that small businesses can't take advantage of emerging
technologies and software advancements because of their budgets.
So what is your experience been with that? And do you have any
best practices you can share to overcome the troubles with
software design and implementation?

Mason: (07:10)
Oh, man. Yeah, this is probably the toughest question I have.
It's, you know, it's very hard to replace the functionality and
the flexibility of Excel. And I suggest whether somebody is in a
smaller enterprise o...