In theater, when the curtain rings down on a tempestuous climax, it lifts again on characters transformed by the shock of experience. In our little corner of takeover land, life does not imitate art. The new fiscal year finds characters frozen in their poses. Those who got sick get sicker. Those who got angry get angrier. Those who were arrogant get ruder. Those who believed they were right become self righteous.
The accounting department’s cacophony increases when it implements a new release of its financial software. Since managers are still absolutely convinced their profit numbers were right in September, they reconfigure the system to produce more familiar results. They ask no advice from anyone who worked with the application before, since their reports had shown a variance and so they couldn’t have known what they were doing.
By the end of the first fiscal period, they manage to update the general ledger twice, but only write a few checks. The rest are written with backup software outside the system. Parallel books exist for the cash account – what’s in the bank, and what’s in the computer. The information systems department feels comfortable enough to lay-off the three remaining people who knew the old system.
In the meantime, the financial group has had lots of meetings with the customer to discuss the four million dollar deficit the previous fiscal year, and can still render no explanations. The customer patiently explains it’s expectations. Our managers naively believe it’s a growth experience for all, an exercise in cross-organizational management bonding. Networking. Top-down management mandated by Sarbanes-Oxley and the latest MBA program.
At the end of the second fiscal period, they can write checks in the system, but don’t know why a number of checks don’t post properly. The system simply fails to make one of the entries, so general ledger journals don’t balance. They find work arounds to force bad transactions through so the books can be closed for the period. One person makes one large entry with no reference to the generating transactions with the description "this entry’s junk." Another books to the wrong accounts.
Four weeks later, who knows what’s right. I look for offsetting accounts for checks and see only interim wash accounts. The system no longer generates half journals, although it still occasionally fails to make any entry at all. But transactions that require multiple entries, simply aren’t complete: checks are written, but accruals aren’t reversed, credit card purchases aren’t reallocated. To reconcile any of the accounts would take days, and make no difference to the final profit-loss numbers. Labor without benefit.
By the close of the next fiscal period, everything’s in the books, if not distributed between department cost centers. Most entries go to expense accounts that disappear at the end of the year; the important balance sheet looks OK. But the totals aren’t good enough and management finally acknowledges the customer is serious about cutting the money it’s going to spend with us. They eliminate 17 people, three in our department: a clerk who's been there 45 years, the assistant comptroller handling the budget, and me. They also tell the accounting manager who was supposed to implement the computer application she’s being transferred and demoted.
Our customers grumble. They don’t know what we’ve billed them. The one who has been trying to get accurate numbers for several months triggers more charades for managers who think going to meetings signifies their importance. They may have gotten an agreed upon method of communication. She can’t balance her budget; they underrate her importance because she’s a woman.
Another customer complains that when we change computer programs that send him that billing data, nothing’s tested until it fails. His operating costs are twice his budget and the overrun is from our errors. When he tells them they can’t just fire all the institutional knowledge, they shrug. They underrate his importance because he’s not an accountant.
Since our managers are so inherently rude, they mistake their customer’s innate bureaucratic courtesy for acquiescence. They aren’t privy to its fantasies that a way can be found to cancel the contract, that it only needs put up with us for a little longer. Our managers aren’t aware when the fantasies take on the credence of rumors and some state the imminent cancellation as fact.
How would our CFO and his assistant comptrollers know? They were brought here to introduce modern business practices, and obviously our customers are as archaic as we. Only two people with accounting knowledge from the old company are left, and the finance manager downgraded their evaluations. Since the takeover, six are gone, plus three more they brought in. Of the three clerks, one’s been riffed, one’s just given notice, and one’s still on maternity leave. Eleven new people know what to do. Just exactly what’s expected, and no more.
The culture change is complete. The new CFO’s in complete control. He always forgets sequels exist, and never grants his employees are Walter Mittys perfecting the scenario of his cashierment each time he walks by.
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