CFO and Partner, Tyler Caskey loves hunting down and automating manual processes, installing better systems, and redesigning how information is gathered. He adds: “On average I can cut 40% of the time cost out of most finance and payroll teams within 12 months. And with the 40% saved time they can significantly reduce error rates and start to show their true value.”
In this episode Tyler talks to Glenn about some of his experiences working with teams from New Zealand, Australia, the US, UK and Europe.
This episode covers:
- Getting dropped into audit in KPMG New Zealand before discovering a “love for helping messy clients”
- Nonprofits and the finance of Movember getting up to 3000 transactions per day
- How to sell the change of system stack
- SAP vs Xero vs QuickBooks
- Tech upgrades ahead of a liquidity event
- How I have seen PE destroy the culture of the business (and some good experiences)
- Sharing scars and war stories from PE
- My finance horror at a restaurant business and why I walked out
- CFOs and sniff testing the budget
- How we are using AI in finance and budgeting
- My experience being a CFO in the wild recruitment business
- How finance can prepare themselves to make informed tech decisions
- Involving junior team members on projects
- Basketball meditation and wellness
Connect and chat with Tyler on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylercaskey/
Glenn Hopper:
Welcome to FP&A Today, I’m your host, Glenn Hopper. Our guest today is a true expert in the intersection of finance, technology, and process optimization. Tyler Caskey is a partner at the Beam Counters where he specializes in system scoping and implementation process automation and outsource CFO services. With over two decades of experience across multiple industries, Tyler has a remarkable track record of transforming finance, hr, and IT functions often cutting up to 40% of time costs for teams while significantly reducing error rates. He’s a seasoned leader with a deep passion for leveraging technology to streamline operations, empower teams, and deliver high quality results. Tyler’s extensive background and including roles at top firms like Deloitte, KPMG, and Rothsay Chartered Accountants makes him a wealth of knowledge on the complexities of modern financial systems. We’re excited to dive into his insights on the future of finance and technology. Tyler, welcome to the show.
Tyler Caskey:
Thanks. Good to be here. Glen,
Glenn Hopper:
Another guest where I’m just super excited to have you on because when I read your your bio and background, you and I have had similar paths and we certainly have a a similar passion <laugh>. So really excited to have you on
Tyler Caskey:
<Laugh>. Yeah, man, it’s, it’s funny, the the amount of CFOs that, you know, move into this industry has been really cool to see in the last couple years, especially like the, the rise of the VCFO and outsource CFO function.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s and I think that, you know, that the outsource CFO is particularly interesting when you look at the technology, the increasing technology requirements that CFOs are having. So when you know you are a fractional CFO outsource coming in and doing this, you’re, I mean, that’s a, a big role for a full-time, CFO, let alone somebody who’s coming in just, you know, part-time to do it and to get the buy-in and all that when you’re not, you know, full-time in the trenches every day. So I, I appreciate the challenge you have there.
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah, man, it’s, it’s becoming like the, the system, part of the role is becoming like almost a mandatory, you know, requirement on finding for leaders. You know, like you’ve gotta know your tax knowledge, you’ve gotta know your accounting, your debit credits. You’ve gotta be able to stand up in front of a board. But, you know, if you can’t talk systems and AI and optimization and automation, you, you might get left behind in a few industries.
Glenn Hopper:
I wanna dig into you know, you, you picked up this tech along the way, and I think a lot like me, it’s where necessity is kind of the mother of invention here. Like, you have to, to be successful at your job, you have to start figuring out the tech and automation. But I guess, let’s go back. So you started out at Deloitte, KPMG, I’m assuming in audit path there or tell me what you’re doing and how that, and, and now, you know, you moved from that to system implementations and kind of walk me through your, your career journey.
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah, yeah. I did get dropped into audit at KPMG in New Zealand in my first kind of job, you know, but we were doing business services as well as audit, you know, like accounts tax returns and the like. And I, you know, I just quickly found, I was out at an audit client, literally looking at cheese making machines, you know, counting how many they were. And I just found a bit of a love for like, business services rather than, you know, the review function. And, you know, I, I moved from one city to another and, you know, moved out of audit and kind of got a bit of a niche in like helping really messy clients. And, you know, if people were back in those days, like on shoe boxes, or, I remember I had one owner that had five pubs and he was like, I’ve gotta get off, you know, manual receipts.
So I started with a bit of a love for like mess and those types of things. And, you know, then I moved from New Zealand to Australia, you know, really just, you know, most chart of accountants after, after you get a bit of a your ca done and all your CPA done, you know, you go to us, uk, Singapore, Hong Kong or, or Australia. I chose Australia. Like I love the beach. I love to surf and, you know, I really, I enjoy the Australia lifestyle maybe a bit more than New Zealand. And, you know, I got into Melbourne and, you know, got, got into like a really interesting kind of group business services again worked with some really cool clients like Movember, you know, which is a, a not-for-profit that helps like men cancer funding and depression funding, you know, and they were, you know, during November because it was moving, but they, they got up to something like over 3000 transactions a day.
And they came to me, you know, like, Hey, we need, we need a hand automating how, how this should work. So, you know, helped them streamline their functions. And then after like the business services roles I moved into like, my first financial controller roles, did seven years of law firms, you know, did about three years there as a finance business partner slash commercial manager. So it was really good to get out of like the debit credit kind of process, like doing budgets, you know, working with the team on billing processes you know, job management, profit management of jobs, was really cool. Took a, you know, really nice career break, you know, and you and I talked about this, but traveled through all four corners of the states, saw LeBron James and Dwayne Wade, lose the finals in Miami, and then came back to Sydney and got my first couple CFO roles.
Glenn Hopper:
I’m trying to think of what year that was, because I randomly happened to be down there. I wasn’t there in, in game six. I’m trying to, whatever year that was. We might have been in the same arena. <Laugh>. Yeah,
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah, 2014. And the Spurs absolutely pumped them. And it was, it was a fantastic series, but it was just great to be there.
Glenn Hopper:
I was also gonna insert a a dumb American joke about how I thought New Zealand was just like, Lord of the Rings, like that’s what’s going on in New Zealand, but I <laugh> we can skip over
Tyler Caskey:
<Laugh> it, it can be like, new Zealand’s very green, you know, like I’ve got a couple friends that run, you know, really good businesses back home and within five minutes cycling from their house. Like, you’re in farmland, you know, and that’s in one of the top four cities, or the biggest four cities of the country. So it’s very, you know, it’s much more rural, smaller cities. You know, I grew up in a city of about a hundred thousand people, but a really good university, so, so got quite lucky. But yeah, like, you know, to, to finish that story, after doing CFO roles, I think I had about three CFO roles and one contract CFO role for an IT business. You know, I went back into practice and into consulting, you know, worked in for a year in a accounts and tax returns and VCFO business, and then opened the bean counters in 2021 and, you know, have been helping people find and install systems and do that as safely and as efficiently as they can since then.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. So you, so with bean counters, I mean, I guess you lead with finance, but the technology services are, are part of the package or does it just depend on the, the client? Why are most companies selecting you over other firms that do similar services?
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah, we, we did find a niche in the market around system selection and implementation. And, you know, we do have, like, we’ve got a team of about to be nine, you know, four of us will be ex CFOs you know, and we’ve got a couple accountants and then some system engineers and a power BI programmer. And so we get a variety of projects. You know, the one of the clients I was working on this morning, I was helping them with a budget and, you know, getting their payroll system up and running. Most of our work is when people are growing really fast or they’re on archaic systems and they’re large, and the risk profile of changing systems by themselves is really large. So they reach out to us because they’re like, Hey, we don’t wanna make a bad mistake, you know, ’cause these mistakes, they can be six figures, you know, for, for a couple businesses we’ve worked with, like, it’s been seven figures of implementation costs, you know, and those mistakes, if you pick the wrong system, if you, you know, pick the wrong implementation partner, it can be, it can be really large.
So, you know, we find ourselves going against like a lot of the top 10 accounting firms, but, you know, we’ve really found a bit of a niche that they do really well in the large ERP markets. We do a few ERPs, you know, each year, but, you know, we really try to specialize in that, you know, mid-size business that we can knock out a system implementation with a bit more speed and efficiency and price than, you know, the, the top four can. Because, you know, we’re maybe we’re less constrained by red tape, you know, like if, if someone wants to start tomorrow, you know, my answer be might be, Hey, why don’t we start today?
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, <laugh>, that’s great. We’ve been carving the same path because I’ve been, I’ve been involved in several, but I haven’t worked as an implementer. I’m always kind of the, the subject matter expert that’s helping sort of bridge the gap between the, the finance and accounting folks and the tech folks. And taking on the full IT part of the implementation would make me very nervous. But it’s, I mean, the change management and getting the teams around buying in to ERP and understanding what they have to do and getting everybody to do everything that’s required for the implementation, it’s, I guess it’s beyond project management, but it’s its own level of work, just getting the internal people, especially when you’re coming in from the outside to get to get buy-in and get them to support it and, and do the work that’s needed.
Tyler Caskey:
It’s the magic sauce to the project is, you know, and it’s something I’ve, I’ve learned through trial and error and you know, I’ve done some things really well. I’ve done some things poorly, you know, and I’ve tried to learn from all those. And it’s, it’s been a I don’t know, it’s been a really good learning for me about how to, how to adapt to each client and how they need it. So, you know, I look at, when I look at the project, I look at the, you know, how much, how much project management do they need? You know, how much communication and assistance do they need? Are they, do they wanna do a crash and bash, you know, and get it in as fast as possible because their system’s about to expire in 30 days, you know, and they don’t wanna renew. Or, you know, for other projects, like, I’m really detailed on like one page project plans, like, so I make sure we are really clear people, like I, I’m not a big fan of, you know, raid logs and, you know, a million kind of like different project sheets.
You know, I, I really like to make project plans that get used, that get read, and then help people like tick these things off in the fastest and most efficient way. And, and then as you said, like being able to like manage a project, but also like look at the detail and, and understand the detail, you know, can really help speed the project up. And that’s the role myself and my business partner Dan, have been trying to play is, is not only we make things stay on track, but, you know, we make sure like when things get, you know, touchy or like, we get down to the, you know, know final parts that the quality’s really high, that the balance sheet balance is exactly to what it should. And, you know, the payroll reconciliation from this month to last month, we make sure that every single difference is, is noted properly. You know? And so that’s, that’s what we try to do is yes, we, we do some projects, but also make sure that, you know, the things a really good CFO would do in a project to make sure that the risk profiles managed. You know, we, we offer that as well.
Glenn Hopper:
We’ve operated in, in kind of the same space, and I’m thinking of businesses say that range from $10 million revenue to maybe up to a hundred million. I mean, the most common transition I see is like, they want to go from QuickBooks to NetSuite or, or zero to Acumatica or Sage or something where they’re kind of getting leaning in for the first time into, you know, a, a small ERP kind of system. But a lot of times, and especially at the low end of the spectrum, you know, you can’t justify the expense yet. If you’re at 10, $12 million, you know, maybe a, a full-blown ERP isn’t, isn’t what you need yet. But there are things that people can do just through APIs and integrations where they’re getting, you know, different, the systems they have, if it’s a HubSpot or you know, something, you know, they’re not on Salesforce, but they just getting their systems to talk to each other and being able to collect data and, and sort of maximize what they have before they have to really dive into an ERP implementation, which if they don’t have their data house in order before they start that it, it could be a mess.
And I, you know, and we we think a lot not just about the, you know, the GL and maybe the CRM and then there’s project management tools, but there’s also reporting tools that small businesses would like access to. And it’s one of the things that I see in, when working with businesses of that size is they don’t know what they need. They don’t know how to link it in. And if you, if you have a business that’s coming to you and you know, they’re saying, we think we need an ERP, like, what sort of, or, or, you know, we just know we need to streamline our processes, we need to put automation in. What’s the approach that you take to sort of evaluate where they are, what systems they need? Like how do you guide businesses when you come in if they don’t know what they wanna do, they just know they need to kind of put on their finance and accounting big boy pants and they’re trying to move up from where they are.
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah. Yeah. I, I’m actually presenting at this in a conference in London next month, you know, at about, and like I’m presenting about how to sell the stack, right? How to sell the, a change of a system stack and, you know, all part of the sales process to like, to a board or in my position now is like as a systems consultant, you know, assisting businesses making a change, you know, like I need to make sure that like we’re, we’re asking the right questions. And so, you know, a lot of people, they do come to you and like, they’re like, Hey, we’re about to double in size. We’ve got a finance team of four, you know, and they’re screaming that like, everything’s really hard and, you know our month end reports might come out 40 days after the close of month end. And, you know, they just get these, they get these sniff tests that like, oh, something’s wrong.
Like, something doesn’t feel quite right. And so what I’ve, what I’ve learned there is, the number one thing is don’t rush. Like we play the 55 and five rule. So for every hour, you know, of those scoping sessions and, and you know, working with a client, I should be asking questions and listening for 55 minutes, and then for five minutes I might propose some potential solutions, is the play. You know, so I really, I look at that and I look at on the next play, what, what do we do that can be a quick win, right? So let’s say they’re on QuickBooks. Quickbooks has got hundreds of apps, you know, Xero’s got something like 3000 apps on, its on its app store. So what can we do in this, in this moment that could maybe do be like a little step up that could solve some pains that might not be a half a million dollar change to NetSuite, Sage Intacct or whatever, whatever that system is.
And so I like to help them compare the processes. So I’m like, alright, let’s say you want better controls of your finances, or I get a lot of retail businesses going, I want better stock. And everyone says, NetSuite stock is the best. I’m like, okay, you know, NetSuite is a full GL as well. You know, the last NetSuite install we did, we billed the client about $350,000. Netsuite billed them about $250,000, and that’s Aussie dollars. So, you know, half a million dollars for a 300 people entity, right? So it’s, it’s a good chunk of change. And, you know, we did a side, side by side comparison of what I call a spider web stack, like Xero plus all the add-ons versus NetSuite. And, you know, they, they decided to go with NetSuite because the volumes that they were gonna be putting through one entity meant that they had to go.
And so, like we really dived into, you know, the why, the how, the, you know, let’s, let’s talk, let’s look at how many transactions you are, you’re actually putting through. Let’s talk about what pain points you are trying to do. And, and Glen, the key thing I’ve learned is bigger is not always better. You know, like I’ve worked in $10 billion listed businesses, electricity businesses, using SAP, and they, they operated honestly, like probably at 40% of the optimization and speed that I can put into maybe a $50 million business using Xero or QuickBooks plus a whole bunch of apps. You know, because it’s so hard to build for SAP because they’ve got, you know, 8,000 different endpoints that you need to attach. Whereas if someone wants to build a really cool payment app, like we’ve got, we use airex in our business, or, you know, there’s Expensify that does a lot of those things in, in the American market, you know, they, the way those, you know, if you’re on Xero, QuickBooks or one of those systems you can tag in Expensify within about two days, you know, and it’s, it actually works probably a lot better than SAP Concur, you know, which is a larger, bigger install and your staff will be a lot happier.
So, you know, what I’ve, what I’ve found is, is listen, talk to a lot of people, understand their pain points, and then when they’ve got pain points, really show them the benefit and the value of, hey, maybe, maybe going through a big install might not be what you need. Maybe you just need to add on some cool apps and look at the market a bit more.
Glenn Hopper:
It’s, as you’re talking, it’s funny, this is kind of a a side question that I was just thinking about as you were walking through the decision making process when they’re selecting whether to go ERP or kind of the unbundled ERP approach, but what percentage of installs or finance tech stack upgrades do you deal with that are about to have or aspiring to have some kind of liquidity event, whether it’s pre IPO or we’re looking to bring in PE or we’re looking to sell the business? For me, it seems like, I, I mean, I’m trying to think of one, like that seems like the main driver to me, but I wonder if that’s been your experience as, as well.
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah. I, I’ve, I’ve worked in PE twice in my, in my life. You know, and PE can be a blessing or a, or a curse. Like there’s some, you know, we’ve worked with clients for like nine month heavy, intense, half a million dollar projects that will run by PE that, like, I’ll be honest, they destroyed the culture of the business because they just turned everything into money. They lost their good staff, they disenfranchised the COO, everything turned into reporting to the private equity folk rather than delivering actual outcomes. But what they do do is, you know, probably seeing around 20% of our larger jobs come from private equity that are going, Hey, you know, we’ve acquired three to four different businesses. They’re on two to three different systems. Let’s consolidate the systems, automate the finances, streamline the reporting, and so they can actually get like a handle on the business.
Because once you’ve got a handle on the business, then your decisions aren’t based on gut feel because private equity is not good on gut feel. Where a founder, you know, up until 20, 30 mil million a founder can make the best gut feel decisions ever. You know, oh, we need to move off this system and onto this because the pain points are too high. Where, where private equity, you know, has got like a really good play for systemization and optimization, but they just want to get it to like, I call it like the A minus. They don’t need a plus, they don’t need everything built in. They just need good, reliable numbers. They need daily tracking. They need power BI that updates every hour, every hour using, you know, power automate or power on, you know, and then automatically send them reports using Power BI robots so they can manage the business and like manipulate the, the metrics, or not manipulate the metrics, but control the metrics and make good decisions.
So yeah, I’m seeing about 20%. But you know, like it’s, it’s a tough market like private equity. It’s more often than not I’ve seen negative outcomes. But when I’ve worked with really good private equity people, they have kept the, you know, the business culture. They’ve optimized, you know, the things the business do well, they’ve shredded the things that the business don’t do well and don’t need to do. And sometimes that definitely can be systems automation and optimization. And it’s been, yeah, it’s been, it’s been a very, probably over the last 10 years as, as I’ve been interested in learning about what is good private equity and what’s not.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, yeah. It’s been, it’s been, and I’m, I, you know, came up through most of my career in PE backed companies, so it’s really like, it, it’s after getting beat up by PE guys for, you know, 15 years <laugh>, I’m I’m, I’m like you know, <laugh>, I get it. And I’ve just kind of, I’ve adopted the mindset to some extent, but I, I do hear what you’re, you’re saying on the you know, what happens when you, when it’s a numbers first business, and of course from the PE standpoint, it’s like, yeah, it’s numbers first because that’s what’s gonna get me my multiples. And it’s you know, a whole different approach than what the, the founders would have.
Tyler Caskey:
Have you got, have you got any scars? Like have you been asked for daily sales reports? I got,
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, yeah, <laugh>, I think my first my first meeting where I was a super junior in a meeting at a telecom company in early two thousands where I got torn apart by a Goldman Sachs guy was <laugh>. That was about <laugh>. That was about the deepest scar I, i, I got from it. And but yeah, that’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a whole different mentality and you know, when it, when it works for ’em, it, it works. And they get their Patagonia vests and their yeah. Exit paydays, and they get,
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah, I’ve, I’ve got, I’ve got like one scar that plays is, you know, it was a restaurant franchise you know, growing. And it started to go south. It, it started to, you know, the growth plans didn’t quite hit, they didn’t hit their revenue numbers. And, you know, I, I put in a really nice system stack into this business, you know, like they, they were working probably on, you know A grade finance. Like everything was connected. Everything was humming from point of sale through to inventory, through to, you know, sales trackings through to reporting. And the only thing I’ve always struggled, I’ve struggled with for mid-size businesses, getting good level budgeting, you know, and good level forecasting. And there’s a few apps that do it, but, you know, businesses like Datarails and, you know, there’s a few others in the market. They, you know, they’re really the gold standard ’cause they do budgeting and forecasting based on drivers rather than sales times a percentage.
You know, like for a professional services firm, they might do, how many head count have you got times average hours, times, you know, recoverable rate. And then you can add in new hires and departures and such, right? Which is really good. And so for a restaurant business, you know, I got all the actuals and all the, the payroll and the HR and the onboarding humming. But the one thing I could never get was like the budgeting. And I had this 10 tab Excel budget, and it was beautiful. Like, you know, I, it, it, it was, it was, it was fantastic. They weren’t at the size where I could get in like a larger system to do it. They had too many entities. So it was multi-entity. So I just couldn’t get like a good budget system there. And about once a week, you know, I had a 25-year-old guy from a, from a private equity thing asking me to update the budget.
And Glenn, you’ll know this, like budget updates, you know, they take time, like, you know, and so I was like, Hey, I’ll do it, but like, you know, this is three hours, or sorry, three days of work to do it. And also like, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to get it done by Monday, you know? And so, like, if I pushed out this private equity guy, you know, he’s calling the, the founder and owner who sold off 51% of the business, and he’s like, man, we need to get it done. And I’ve got a meeting with him, 10:00 AM you know, Monday. And I was just like, oh, man. Like, everything became urgent and quick. And I was like, we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta find a better way. So I actually, you know, it’s one of the first clients I’ve, I’ve asked to, I’ve said to the founder, I was like, mate, I, I don’t wanna do this anymore. Like, the budgets got, you know, I think they started to mess with the budgets of the possibilities of the turnaround. And like, I just didn’t feel it was there. So I actually kind of walked out because, you know, I, I didn’t wanna spend three days a week churning Excel budgets anymore.
Glenn Hopper:
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God, it’s so funny, so many of these stories make me think back on my own career. And I think that that’s kind of the goal with audience too, is we’re, we’re preaching to the the proverbial choir here. But I really, I think the happiest I, it’s been a while for me, but the happiest I’ve been in my work life is when I was building a really cool budget in Excel and just deep in there getting all my drivers and my assumptions and pulling in external data and, and finding these correlations and, you know, seeing how accurate I can make the forecast. Conversely, the worst part of my professional career, <laugh> was having to keep go, going back and updating that budget and changing all that and chasing everything through. I was so excited about building it out in the, you know, the old Excel days and all that.
And it was, yeah, it’s, so, it’s the, the academic exercise of, of building the budget the first time, it’s great, but then when you keep pruning it and changing it based on whims, and, you know, I understand you have to update it based on actuals, you know, the sort of the reforecast that happens through the year, but those, you know, somebody deciding that, oh, I, I, let’s change this assumption that’s somehow different than how you even built it in the model. And you’ve gotta go, you know, chase your, you know, go do your dependencies and chase your formulas back down and figure out <laugh> Yeah. How to, how to change certain drivers. So,
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah. I, I got good though. Like, you know, I think one of the skill sets A CFO needs to manage is, you know, managing the budget and learning how to sniff test, you know, false, false information and people that are being too optimistic, people that are being too conservative and really learning about, you know, why someone might you know, might falsify a budget. You know, so if you’ve, if you’ve got a salesperson and they’re measured based on target, you know, they’re gonna be pushing to push that target low, low, low, low, low, you know, and then, you know, you’ve gotta be like, oh man, that’s, maybe that’s not it. But then you’ve also gotta get to the stage as a CFO to go, maybe the salesperson shouldn’t be measured on target. Maybe they should be measured on profitable growth or something else. So, you know, really learning those, those things, it’s, it’s a, you know, it’s a baptism by fire and we’ve all gotta go through it. And honestly, the best way to to to learn it is to do it.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And that’s, that’s where FP&A really can add value to a business is not just, I mean, it’s when you can stop and, and you’re, you can pull your head out of the model and say, well, wait a minute, you know, we’re doing a linear regression or, or whatever, a, you know, a top down sort of, this is what everybody’s target is, that’s not really based on anything. But instead of just saying, okay, I’ll plug that into the model, when you can actually say, Hey, here’s a hunch that I have, and here’s the data to back it up. I think that’s a fun part of FP&A too. So while it’s great to go in and going back to our PE teams, you know, w with PE it’s all about, you know, how, how detailed and, and how precise you can make a budget, you know, but it’s what’s that Mike Tyson quote that everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face.
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you can sit in the, in the ivory tower or the back room or, you know, <laugh> the boiler room, putting these budgets together, but you also have to have some basis in reality. So, you know, there is a real opportunity to, to provide value there and say, I understand, you know, we’re not just gonna do a numbers based forecast. We are, we need to, you know, figure out what these assumptions are, what we’re gonna do, what are we driving, what are we asking for, and all that. And that’s FP&A and whether you’re a, a full-time, CFO or a fractional CFO coming in consulting, you know, that’s the expectation. And that’s how you move from sort of this idea of cost center and sort of backward looking reporter to, no, I’m an integral part of the strategic management of this company, and this is what I bring to the table.
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s, the budget shouldn’t just be a number, you know, it shouldn’t just be like a metric, it should be a way of planning the growth and profitability or, you know cash management of the business. And, and Glen, I’ve got the same quote. It’s a budget is wrong from the day you release it, you know, and <laugh>, you know, I’ve, on month one, you know, the amount of the amount of budgets I’ve thrown out, completely thrown out at the end of quarter one because of the GFC, you know, like I was a financial controller during the GFC, you know, because of all the covid and lockdowns budgets just got thrown out the door, you know, like everyone’s planning to grow, but like, not everyone plans for a downwards quarter, you know? So that’s, that’s where a really good CFO and FPA manager can add that value is like to, to have good conversations to query the numbers and, you know, to, to maybe get yourself out of the 10 tab formula or TED 10 tab Excel, you know, hell that I’ve been in, and I’m sure you have too. Oh,
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, yeah. And I’m gonna come back at you with another quote, <laugh>, since you said the budget is wrong from day one. I’ll say that George Box quote that is, well, all models are wrong, but some are useful, you know,
Tyler Caskey:
<Laugh>. Yeah, yeah.
Glenn Hopper:
But if you’re only doing one version of the budget, then you’re not doing your job. You know, you’ve gotta have your sort of scenario analysis and stress testing and build all that in. And that’s the kind of stuff that back in the day of doing that in Excel was such a, I mean, that was such a slog and trying to, you know, go through and just tweak it and, you know, your 2022 budget, V 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, <laugh>, you know, dated whatever, where you’re, you know, you have all these different versions and it’s, you know, it’s very hard to keep up with it and trying to figure out, you know, how you’re gonna manage all these and how you’re gonna present all of them. And then, you know, which budget is kind of the operating budget and what you’re presenting to, whether it’s the bankers or, or the board or, or, or whatever.
But trying to get all that right. And that’s one area, I don’t know how much you have leaned into what we can do with generative ai or even really like classical machine learning. And but I am seeing, and I’m very excited about, and it’s not just the tools that kind of let you get out of Excel where you’re trying to, you know, run all these different spreadsheets of, of, of kind of the same model with different assumptions in ’em. But have you messed around with AI at all and whether, whether it’s machine learning or regenerative ai, I’m doing, you know, scenario analysis or Monte Carlo simulations, or have you, have you played around with that at all?
Tyler Caskey:
Not, not in those specific examples, but like, I, I’ve got a really cool one where I’m playing around with AI you know, there, there’s two functions that I think AI can, can really add huge value in the accounting world. Number one at the moment is transaction coding, you know, and like with the average transaction coding time in in the world is still too long. Like, it’s still too hard to attach document, you know, I, I want to see documents automatically pushed from pause into an accounting system matched to a transaction, automatically coded sales tax, GST, vat as coded correctly. You know, those types of things I think are, you know, are, that’s where the huge value to like, not only the bookkeeping, but the accuracy for the accountant. You know, because you get, you’ll get faster data, you get more accurate data, and you’ll be able to like trust the data a little bit more.
But I’ve got one on effectively on budgeting and reporting that I love. So I, I do a bit of product management with a few accounting apps now and then just to, you know, I teach a few consolidation apps, how to make sure their consolidations are, you know, right and good, and they’re, they’re presenting them in, in the right way. And I’ve got one app that I work with that after you do a p and l for a consolidated entity we’ve taught the AI how to read the P&L versus prior year versus budget and do your one to two page summary sheet that effectively you could present to the board in words, right? So the amount of times I used to make a Power BI document that said, you know, sales have gone up, you know, 15% from budget, but are down 12% from prior year. The reasons are, you know, these four, you know, clients have gone higher or lower. I’ve started to be able to build that into chat GPT well, it’s, it’s not chat GPT, but effectively like a language model that runs over a P&L and helps you draft those things, which is, that’s, that for me has been really cool. But have you been playing with it in in the budgeting space?
Glenn Hopper:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I actually teach, teach courses on it for the corporate finance institute, and I’ve done, so, you know, I, I lean mostly on chat GPT because of the data analysis tool, which is, you know, if you think about the, the limitations of LLMs, they’re, you know, they’re not designed to do math, so they’re getting, you know, it’s kind of an emergent capability and they’re getting better, better at it. Like the latest Claude anthropic model is, is very good with their artifacts and can build like realtime dashboards. I mean, it’s, it’s doing some crazy stuff, but I, I keep going back to, yeah, but with the data analysis tool, I’m actually writing Python code under the hood, and it’s, you know, that’s my protection against a hallucination. Gotcha. Is LLMs aren’t good at math, but Python, you know, computer programming is good at math.
That’s kind of what it’s, what it’s designed for. So when chat GT four O came out, it’s much better at, you know, it’s not full reasoning, but it can take on larger tasks. And I think may I, I don’t remember if the context window went up with that at all, but I was actually able to run Monte Carlo simulations in the GPT-4 oh interface, which is huge. I, I’d tried it in the, in the prior versions, and none of the none of the prior ones would let you do that. So really been able to say, okay, here’s my, you know, here’s my budget. Let me build out a, you know, sort of worst case, mid case, best case. And, and then with each of those, I want to factor in, you know minor tweaks in, in some of the drivers and then run 10,000 simulations through a Monte Carlo simulation.
And it’s just happening in the background and it’s what, but so, and you know, I, I always have to throw this caveat out. If you’re using chat GPT and you’re using proprietary company information, you know, don’t, don’t put it into the the public chat GPT unless you have a, a team or an enterprise account where they know you’re not gonna, you know, they’re not gonna use your data for training and all that. So that’s the caveat to throw out. But since I’m on an enterprise account, I’m able to, you know, know that I’m in a, a walled off secure area and do this. And it’s, I’m seeing really amazing results and I’m, I’m looking forward to it. You know, it’s, it’s still, you have to sort of know how to go through the chain of thought prompting to get it to do what you want.
And it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s not prompt engineering, it’s just knowing how to interact with them. But I’m really anxious to see when more of these SaaS providers start integrating it into their, and, and, and several are doing it now, where they have sort of the AI wizard that you can interact and, and plain language with your with your data. And that’s cool. But I think in the coming years as the big software providers start incorporating, that’s how most of us are gonna use it. Because most companies, especially in the space where you and I have, have spent our careers in sort of that, you know, SMB under a hundred million in, in revenue space, they don’t have the internal resources. They’re not gonna develop this in house, and they’re not gonna just go out and use the, the publicly available tools. So, I don’t know, I mean, what do you what do you envision for adoption of generative AI in the next say, you know, five years or so?
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah, I, I think it’s just gonna enhance like the accounting, hr, admin, marketing function, like, and just make, you know, make things like so much better and easier. You know, I, I work with a a really nice HR and payroll system in Australia called Employment Hero, and it’s got AI built into their recruitment platform. So it’s just reading job ads, and then it’s reading people’s cvs and career history on LinkedIn and seek, and then bringing them all together and like producing, you know, shortlists for you. And like, no one, this, this is, a lot of people are like, oh, it’s gonna take our jobs, but like, no one loves making a shortlist. Like, the last thing I want to do in my days is read 30 cvs or 40 or 500 cvs and go, here are the, here are the top people, right? So I think, you know, those types of functions are really, really good.
The bookkeeping market is gonna be amazing, like being able to automate transaction coding. And I think about this all the time. Like, I’m, I’m in Lisbon, Portugal at the moment ’cause I’m working on a, a project in the UK and, and the states, you know, and it’s just like a nice central location for me. But like, I’m traveling a lot, you know, and so like, I’ve got Ubers, I’ve got, you know coffees and this type of stuff, and the amount of time I spend taking photos of invoices and, you know, putting them through our finance system and making sure they all work, that that will just disappear. You know, like the connection from A to Z and automation of like, spend and, and tax deduction, I think will just start to streamline because that’s, that’s a pain point for any, you know, sales person.
You know, like, I mean, back in the day, like coming back from a sales trip for two weeks and you’ve got 400 invoices that you have to put through, you know, a manual system like is, is no fun. The last one I’m really interested in is like error detection. So I, I love systems. I’ve got one here in Australia called Expert, which is an accounting firm app and expert helps businesses review for financial errors already. And it does something really cool where it like can review all the transactions for GST errors. So if you’ve got like 400 transactions all to the same supplier, but three of them have got the wrong sales tax or VAT or GST, it can actually flag that for you and start to start to kind of review those functions. So we, all the things that create high risk and high errors that, you know, a good CFO financial controller will do on a, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to make sure their financials are good, those risks and error detection things that sitting in everyone’s head that can honestly keep you up at night and can make, if you are wrong, like you can be materially wrong, you know, and you can lose reputation sleep.
You know, you’re gonna be sitting in calls with the, the tax office and your CEO if you know you missed something large. You know, those, those things I think are prime for automation, you know, and, and AI like review because it’s really just a chunk of data and a process. Stick that together, you know, and we can really make it better.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. <laugh>, I do have a non-technical way to really expedite the CV review process. I actually heard this from a an executive recruiter. So you take all the cvs, you print ’em out, and you take half of them and throw ’em in the trash and say, I don’t wanna hire anyone who’s unlucky <laugh>. He didn’t do that. He was using it as a joke, but it was <laugh>. I thought that was great, <laugh>. Yeah. And I don’t, I don’t advocate for that. I, I’m sure there’s all sorts of legal things around that are as well. So <laugh>,
Tyler Caskey:
I’ve, I’ve worked in recruitment as a CFO for a couple years and you know, like recruitment is a, it’s a, it’s a wild area. Like it’s very much a sales business is what I learned. And it’s a, you know, the emotions that recruiters go through when people accept or don’t accept jobs really taught me about, you know, so much about the hiring process that I knew, but like really ingrained into me about how safe some businesses go. And you know, how, you know, Glen, I post a lot on LinkedIn about a good accountant is a good accountant and should be able to figure out your industry pretty quick, you know, and it’s been, it’s been interesting kind of watching you know, when I was in law firms, I did three law firms in a row because I was young and people were throwing another $50,000 at me to change from law firm A to law firm B, you know, and, but then I quickly realized I’m gonna get pigeonholed here if I don’t make a change. But then I, I also found out on the other side, you know, as soon as I change roles, gimme a couple months and I probably can make things better and have figured out recruitment and IT, and, you know, I, I jumped into electricity, you know, and which probably wasn’t my most fun decision, but like you can figure out an industry pretty quick. So yeah. That, that recruitment market’s gonna, it’s gonna be different like in 10 years time.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely see that. So I’ve taken us off on a couple of tangents, but there’s two, two areas that I wanted to hit that we talked about before the show. And one, you know, we talked about this as it relates to CFOs, but I’m gonna expand that and talk about it relating to FP&A folks in general. So say, whether I’m early career, I got my, you know, bachelor’s in accounting or, or master’s or you know, finance or whatever, and I’m in, my first role in my, the bulk of my study has been on, you know, the domain expertise of, of finance and accounting, or I’m mid-career. And I, the way I’ve moved up in my career is by being an expert at finance and accounting. And then, you know, or at the senior level where you’re sort of making these system decisions and you’re, you’re taking an approach to what’s happening from a technology standpoint in your company.
Certainly, you know, in a good company, you’ll, you’ll partner with IT and with, with other groups for this. But ultimately the, the financial leader, you know, if it’s finance adjacent, they’re gonna say, this is your project, you’re, you have ownership of it. And there’s a lot of, when I talk to people, there’s a lot of fear around, I’m not an IT guy. How am I gonna make these decisions? First part of my question is, how can finance people better prepare themselves to make informed tech decisions and like have an understanding of what’s the mindset they need to have when they’re making these dec well, let’s say mindset and skillset they need to have when they’re making these decisions and evaluating software?
Tyler Caskey:
There’s two things that I hold really close when making good systems decisions. Number one is understanding the market. And number number two is understanding the business. So, you know, if I look at the market I hold, like I, I keep very up to date with tax and accounting knowledge. Like I’ve read accounting standards, you know, in, in my time when I used to consult on rules, you know, and yes, we still do a bit of finance here and there, but, you know, I hold my system knowledge just as high as I hold my accounting and tax knowledge. So that means for me, I go to new webinars, I touch and test new products. If someone releases like a, you know, a new HR module or a new HR system and I’m on an old HR system, I’m gonna go have a look. I’m gonna go to a demo, and so I’m gonna make sure I stay up to date.
And, you know, when I was a CFO, I made sure I gave my team time and authority to do this at any stage. And I still do it with my team now. And in fact, because we’re system consultants, I actually require it from my team. You know, like I ask them, how many demos have you gone to this month? How many systems have you trialed? And so the mindset we’ve gotta do there is holding that as a priority. And then the second part you’ve gotta look at is, I, I almost call it like, it’s like a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you know, triangle in my head around system change, you know, and you’ve gotta understand a business’ ability to, to hold system change and to do it effectively, efficiently, and with low enough risk. You know, the first thing I look at is cashflow. You know, like, do we have enough cash to actually, you know, make a change to buy a new system?
And honestly, Glen, sometimes if I’m changing from, I, I moved the business from NetSuite, five, five businesses in a group from NetSuite down to Xero, and I cut their systems cost by 50%, you know, and they went up in efficiency probably about almost by two times by moving to the zero plus app store. And you know, so cash doesn’t always have to be about it, but you’re gonna pay some implementation and, and change costs and you’ll have a little bit of a slowdown for a month or two until you get completely used to the system. But you’ve also gotta look at then the IT infrastructure. So my biggest value I’ve ever been able to put into any business is leading IT. You know, like I, I’ve help a lot of accounting firms now, and one of the things I always ask is, you know, how many people have laptops?
You know, what’s your, what’s your server room look like? You know, are you cloud for your emails or are you still running off a hard server? Talk to me about your wifi connections. Talk to me about your back backup connections. How many spare laptops do you have in the business that if someone forgets theirs that day or drops it in the river, that you know, you can get them up and running within 30 minutes? And so I think about money, I think about IT infrastructure, and then I think about the team. You know, I’m like, do I have the people that are open to change, that are gonna benefit from change? If I can actually, if I can actually put this in, is it gonna be adopted by 80% of the, the business and they’re gonna thrive? You know, are they gonna be happy with it?
And you know, that’s where you’ve gotta trust your gut. You know, like I, I remember standing in a design business once, and I remember watching one of our senior designers on a Friday scanning about 16 receipts on the photocopier because she had to give them to finance and she was scanning and then photocopying them because that’s what finance needed. But also finance was so inefficient that before I got there that if they didn’t take a copy, they might not get paid the right amount. And so, you know, I really look at those pain points and I look at, you know, should I put in an expense app like Expensify, Airex Wheel, Patreon, OFX, any of these things, you know, to make these people’s lives better? And then right on the top of it, I’m like, what is my end goal? You know, like, am I just doing this because I want a new system?
Or am I, you know, as you and I have talked about, am I as lazy accountant that hates doing manual work? You know, or am I, is there a business need that I’m really looking at? So I look at, for growing businesses, can I set up a system that could grow, could I could the business times by four in revenue and staff? And that be an easy transition and we not have to change systems and everyone would just happily get onboarded and start working, you know, within, before noon on their first day. You know? And if I can do that, if I can make the back office absolutely hum, but then also add on better business decisions, hourly updates for my Power bi, I’m like, okay, now I’ve got like a mindset of, you know, what is the, what is the goal I’m trying to hit? And you know, when I, when I’ve been, when I’ve thought through those, that’s when I really start attacking system change.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And one thing that you hit on there a couple times, and this is the last one I wanted to hit before we got onto some more kind of personal and fun questions. ’cause ’cause We talked about this before the show, when we were talking about the decision making process, you really emphasized the important of involving junior team members in system projects. And I think I just, I wanted you to expand on that because so many times these decisions are made top down. It’s, you know, the sales guy for the software comes in and talks to finance leadership, gets them convinced, and then they just, you know, a a, a new system change or, or addition or whatever, whatever migration, whatever it is, gets kind of forced down on the people below. Where the people below are the ones who are in the weeds trying to <laugh> do the work. And they know, you know, they know the requirements probably a lot better than the top down does. But talk to me about your approach in, in involving the junior team members on these projects.
Tyler Caskey:
There are two sides to that. Junior. One is like the juniors on bad systems are often the people that are doing manual processes. So I ask a lot of questions. And I, I ask them to show me their day, you know, like, what are you doing today? You know, why, why are you printing this off? And then typing it into the system, and they’re like, ah, you know, the, we, we haven’t been approved two screens, right? And I’m like, so I’ll, I’ll, what I’ve done in the past is I’ll go out and or order a screen online, I’ll put it on my credit card and then install the new screen and I’ll just reimburse the boss. Right? And those types of things, those pain points, you’ve gotta really look at how many people they impact. The, the second part is when you’re doing the sales pitch, like the more people you can get talking to the board, the head of IT, the decision makers, the chairman, going, oh yeah, we really need to improve this.
The easier of a yes, you are gonna get, and instead of having to go through the ringer and write a 16 page business case with pros and cons and all this type of stuff, they’re just gonna be, yeah, look, our top three smart people that we trust and have been in the business for, you know, four years, and we want to keep them, you know, and they might only be 26, but everyone knows that they’re like, you know, an absolute weapon there. If the, if they say all the, the same thing and support the change, then your ability to get this done efficiently, quickly, and with board support just skyrockets.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. That’s so key. You know, as you’re talking about your approach to deciding what systems to put in, it starts with the, what’s happening in the real world, the manual process. Like what are people doing? Like it’s important to know that somebody’s printing something out or that somebody is, you know, copying and pasting from one system into another when they could easily be integrated. Like, that’s where you’re gonna be able to identify where those roadblocks and and speed bumps are in a process. And that’s what you’re solving for with the software.
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah, absolutely. Like those little wins, because the job of every CFO is to make themselves completely redundant on day-to-day, week to week, month to month tasks. Like you should technically be doing nothing except strategy, a bit of budgeting, planning, those types of things. Like you shouldn’t be doing daily tasks and without a good system and without your team being optimal, you’re never gonna be able to delegate all your high level tasks. So, you know, the, the more you can automate the, the manual stuff that no one really likes doing, you know, and get it down, you know, you’re always gonna have some billing, you’re always gonna have some payroll processes that have manual intervention, but if you can get those super automated, then those people can take maybe one task off you as a CFO, and then you can start to absolutely fly because you walk in the door and you’re not a, you know, you haven’t got a burden of, I have to update the cashflow forecast because your accounts payable accountant has automated their system and process so much that they’re now sending out the cashflow before you walk in the door.
Glenn Hopper:
In our, our remaining time, I do you know, we, we dive straight into geek talk, but we always do like to kind of bring it back around and get a little bit of a, a personal insight to our guests too. So let me know what’s something that maybe not many people know about you, something maybe that we couldn’t find just by Googling you.
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah I’ll give you two. I used to have a pretty nice jump shot in my day. I played a, played a lot of basketball, you know, almost represented New Zealand, you know, just loved the game. And I, you know, stopped playing maybe about 10 years ago, but it, it’s probably one of my biggest passions in life. And I think, you know, leading and being a captain of a few school teams and, you know, men’s grade teams, you know, really helped me in my business career. That, that one has been a, a blessing and a curse playing sport, you know, for every, you know every person with kids, you know, I do think there’s a huge correlation between, you know, playing team sports and, you know, being a successful team player in work. I think that’s, there’s, there’s some big things there that have, have done me well.
The other, the other side, I’m, I’m really big on health and wellness, you know, and I, I spend a lot of my time, you know, making sure that you know, myself and my, my friends, you know, like we, we exercise, we sleep enough, we you know, you know, we don’t drink too much or too often. You know, we get out and get a lot of sunlight, you know, we are doing the hard things because I reckon if you consistently do lots of little hard things when, when the going gets tough in work, like you can really perform, you know, it’s, I, I, I like to be someone that’s very hard to be rattled. I wanna be calm under pressure. And someone said to me once, it’s pretty hard to think about work with a hundred kilos above your head. And then what I kind of have correlated this to now is it’s really good to really understand the depths and how far you can push your mindset, because if you can outside of the office, push yourself into, you know, immense levels of, of your capability, you know, be that exercise, sprinting, you know, even meditating, I’ve got friends that have done 10 day silent meditation retreats.
Those types of things sharpen the mind. So, you know, when you’re leading a team and when you’re doing really hard bits of work, you know, you can perform at your highest potential. And for me, that’s something, you know, I like, I’m not, I’m not something that’s, you know, preaches it too much, but I’m really interested in it because I think it, it helps me be a, a better team player, you know, a a a better partner, a bit of friend, you know, and also a better boss.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, I love those points. And you know, they’re sort of the there can be sort of the David Goggins, I know he’s the extreme of it, <laugh>, but the mentality there, I, you know, I used to put when I was younger and had room on my resume, I would, I put Marathon Runner on there, and it’s like, what does that have to do with your <laugh>? With work, it’s a lot because it shows, you know, dedication and, and commitment and sort of ability to endure and all that. So yeah, as my resume went beyond a page and two pages, I, I had to eventually drop that, but I think it’s still an important part of, you know, the mentality and, and approach.
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah, I, I talk a lot in accounting conferences about this, about, you know, what does your morning look like before you walk in the door? I remember when I was working at KPMG, we had one partner that was very, very up and down on his days when he walked in, and I, I didn’t like it. Like, he created an environment that was, you know felt not safe and you didn’t know what you were gonna get. So I’ve really worked on like, what does my morning look like? My morning routine’s pretty strong. It’s pretty strict now. You know, and that, that helps me, I think be a, a good to the clients, good to my team, and, you know, also good to myself.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, that’s great. So, so important to have that work life balance too. Now it’s time for our favorite question of the day, and I kind of, I want to do this like on a panel and have people argue about it, but <laugh> short of that, maybe we’ll just collect the results and then we’ll we’ll, we’ll tally him and, and figure out what the, the best one is. But here’s, here’s our question that everybody gets. What is your favorite Excel function and why?
Tyler Caskey:
Oh, easy. Mine’s, mine’s SUMIFs. Like I, you know, I, I’ve, I’m deep in Excel, like I’ve done, I’ve touched every Excel formula, you know, I, I, I, I google them, I play with them. As soon as I hear a new one, I still thank a guy named Glen Bruce at Deloitte, who’s taught me probably another 20 that I didn’t know. But what I love about SUMIFs is it doesn’t really return an error. So, you know, with a V lookup, you’ve always gotta put an f error on it because you get the nas and I hate nas, whereas I can do so much with SUMIFs. One of the skills our business does is we deal with mass data. Like, you know, we are dealing with, you know, up to a hundred thousand lines of data and like being good on a keyboard and like knowing my home and ends and ups and downs, and then dropping some SUMIFs fs and pivot tables on that. Like, I can, I can usually find myself getting a quick sniff test of the answer faster than most with, you know, a vlookup, an X lookup or some ifs and, you know, maybe a pivot table than most people. And you know, everyone, if anyone’s listening, dear Lord, learn your keyboard shortcuts. Like, it saved me. I, it saved me weeks of my life, you know, I’m less in Excel now, but like in my early days, like it, it paid me big bucks.
Glenn Hopper:
Absolutely. And interestingly, I don’t know what order these episodes will air, but you’re the second guest in a row to say, to identify SUMIF is your favorite. And the other guy who said it also a big ERP and, and system and process guys. Yeah.
Tyler Caskey:
Big data. I dunno, maybe there’s
Glenn Hopper:
Data,
Tyler Caskey:
Right? <Laugh>. Yeah.
Glenn Hopper:
This has been great. I guess last question wanna be sure and let everybody know how can our lister, how can our listeners connect with you and, and learn more about you and your work and, and bean counters and all that?
Tyler Caskey:
Yeah, thanks Glen. The best place to reach me is Tyler Caskey, a partner at the Bean counters on LinkedIn. You know, I love a, I love a LinkedIn chat. You know, our business is based in Australia, but we do Australian, and, and almost all of all of Europe system installation and change work. You know, we’re, we’re only a team of nine, but we, you know, we try to really help people and honestly, if, if anyone just wants to reach out and, and talk about their thinking about changing a system, but they’re not sure which one to go to and they just want a bit of advice about, Hey, you know, what’s your favorite expense app or what’s your favorite AP app, don’t hesitate to reach out. Like, I, I spend most of my days, you know, reviewing time and billing systems and AP systems, so you know, I usually can point you in the right direction anytime. Alright,
Glenn Hopper:
Tyler, thanks again for coming on. Great episode.
