When a $15 million construction company’s long-time Controller went out unexpectedly on medical leave, the books went with him. He had been the sole keeper of both the financials and the ERP system. He did every reconciliation, every period-end close, and every report that leadership relied on. By the time the company’s Tax Partner called Imperial, they were in trouble: inaccurate financial statements, missed period-end closes, three years of unreconciled bank and credit card accounts, and a federal tax deadline only three weeks away.

The Challenge

The Controller’s role had grown over time into a single point of failure. He owned the ERP system, knew the bank feeds, ran the closes, and produced the financial summaries leadership used to make decisions. When he stepped away, no one else on the internal team had the working knowledge to pick it up. The financial statements that had been going to the CEO and CFO for years were no longer reliable. Some months hadn’t been closed at all. Bank and credit card statements going back 36 months hadn’t been reconciled.

This is a particular kind of operational risk that builds up slowly in construction companies. Job costing, work-in-progress accounting, percentage-of-completion revenue recognition, and retainage releases all depend on accurate underlying records. When the books stop being current, everything that depends on them is not longer accurate.

Their Tax Partner saw the magnitude of the backlog and made the call. With a federal filing deadline three weeks away and no internal capacity to address the gap, the company needed help that could move fast, work onsite, and bring real depth. They called us for help, fast.

The Strategy

Imperial mobilized a specialized team within 48 hours: a senior Controller with 25+ years of experience, a degreed Bookkeeper, and an ERP Software Specialist with 30+ years in system implementations.

The team went onsite the same week and started working the backlog in parallel. The structure was purposeful to facilitate a fast clean-up. While Imperial tackled the multi-year reconciliations and prior period closes, the company’s internal accounting staff stayed focused on day-to-day operations: the billings, vendor payments, and payroll. Nothing about the current month had to wait while the historical cleanup happened.

Within the first few days, Imperial’s team discovered the underlying technical problem: the ERP system had not been pulling in bank data correctly. Transactions were either missing or partially recorded across multiple accounts, which had compounded the reconciliation problem month after month. Our ERP specialist repaired the connection and successfully downloaded 44 months of transaction data, dramatically accelerating the cleanup. The ERP improvements also locked the bank feed in place going forward, removing the structural reason the reconciliations had fallen behind in the first place.

The Results

In two weeks, Imperial completed every reconciliation for the prior three years, cleared the path for the returning Controller to finalize 2024 numbers, and delivered the Tax Partner audit-ready financials in time to meet the deadline.

  • 48-hour onsite team deployment
  • 44 months of transaction data recovered through the ERP fix
  • Three years of bank and credit card reconciliations completed in two weeks
  • Tax deadline met with audit-ready financials, with time to spare
  • CEO and CFO returned to running the business instead of triaging accounting

The ERP improvements continued paying off after Imperial’s engagement closed. The bank feed stayed connected, providing real-time, accurate data. New processes ensured the reconciliation cadence stayed current. The company was caught up and fixed the underlying reason it had fallen behind.

Single Points of Failure Are a Back-Office Risk No One Budgets For

Construction companies build careful redundancy into job sites. They cross-train field crews, document safety protocols, plan for equipment failures. The back office almost never gets the same treatment. A long-tenured Controller becomes the only person who understands the ERP, the only person who knows where the historical reconciliations are kept, and the only person who can produce a clean WIP report on demand. When that person steps away (even temporarily), the cost of the unrecognized risk starts to show. Not immediately, and usually at the worst possible time.

You don’t have to throw your Controller to the wolves. But you do have to make sure your operational knowledge is documented. That includes ensuring the systems are configured correctly and the back office can survive a normal disruption like medical leave, retirement, a new opportunity, without putting the company’s tax filings, audit readiness, or banking relationships at risk.

If your back office runs on one person and you’re not sure what happens if that person isn’t there next month, schedule a diagnostic with Imperial. We’ll take an honest look at where the books stand, where the holes in your documentation are, the processes you need to have in place, and what it would take to get to a place where any reasonable disruption doesn’t become an emergency.

 

Contact the Imperial Team, and let’s have a conversation.