Case Study: Joint Venture

Context:

Our client was undergoing several strategic initiatives at once, which included:

• taking part in a new joint venture, which involved their finance team temporarily overseeing the finances for the newly created entity
• Hiring and training new team members to take ownership of the newly created joint venture's finances going forward.

Additionally, our client was also transitioning to a new ERP system, effective January 1, while undergoing their annual financial statement audit.

Issue:
As the clients finance team was now responsible for two entities and an ERP implementation, they needed assistance from an experienced accountant to be able to work independently and assist in many ad-hoc areas.

Upon the creation of the joint venture, expenses flowed through the the original entity and then were subsequently reimbursed by the newly created joint venture. However, due to limitations within SAP, it became apparent over time there were errors in flow through mapping, and a resultant overstatement of liabilities.

Solutions:

Data

Using Solaris' experience in data analysis and various ERPs, we were able to identify outliers in the data set. Through interviews with management, our team was able to bucket these into categories and clearly isolate each issue.

Controls & Operations

Additionally, our teams’ experience allowed us to jump into problem areas quickly. As a result, we were able to take over processes, alleviating stress on our client’s team. Additionally, we created simple and logical processes for the newly created joint venture, took ownership of them, and offboarded and trained new staff to efficiently assume said processes.

ERP ASSISTANCE

Solaris was also able to assist their team with troubleshooting issues in their ERP implementation, leveraging our ability with datasets and understanding of accounting software