What you get
Four things, all yours to keep whether or not we work together after.
- A map of the recurring work. Every weekly and monthly workflow in finance, operations and ecommerce, who does it, how long it takes, and what it feeds.
- Your business, written down. The definitions (net revenue, contribution margin, a returning customer), the sources of truth for cost, returns, inventory and cash, and the judgment calls your best people make without thinking about them.
- The first workflow, built and running. Usually the one with the most hours behind it: the weekly recap, the close pack or the replenishment plan.
- A ranked list of the rest. Each item with the hours it takes today, what it would take after, and a rough dollar value, so the next decision is easy.
How the weeks run
Listen and map
Interviews with the people who run the numbers. I watch the work being done, not described, and time it.
Build the first one
The highest-hour workflow, built on your definitions in the tools you already use. Your team runs it alongside the old way to check every number.
Rank and hand over
The ranked list, the written definitions and a walkthrough with your leadership team. You decide what happens next.
When it is worth doing
The audit fits a consumer brand between $10M and $100M with a lean finance and operations team. It is most useful when something is about to make the manual work hurt more:
- A new investor or board asking for better reporting
- A lender field exam coming up
- Budget season
- A hiring freeze, or the person who knows how the numbers work giving notice
Not sure the hours are there? The hours calculator gives a rough number in two minutes.
Want a head start? The free definitions worksheet is what we fill in together in week one.
It is not a strategy deck, a chatbot for your website, or a tool you have to learn. It ends with working software and a list.
After the audit
Three options, and the third is a real one. A build sprint of six to eight weeks installs three to five more workflows from the list. A monthly partnership keeps the model current as the business changes and adds new workflows. Or you take the list and the definitions and run with them yourselves.
A common first workflow is the weekly business recap, because it has the most hours behind it and leadership sees the result every Monday.
Questions
Do we need clean data before we start?
No. Most brands this size have the numbers spread across Shopify, the accounting system, a few spreadsheets and someone's head. Part of the audit is writing down which source wins for each number. That map is what makes every later answer trustworthy.
What access do you need?
Read access to the systems behind the workflow we build first, usually the store platform, the accounting system and the shared drive, plus a few hours with the people who do the work today. Everything runs in accounts you own.
Who owns what you build?
You do. The model, the definitions, the workflows and the documentation live in your accounts and stay there if we stop working together.
Do you bill hourly?
No. The audit is a fixed fee agreed before we start. Hourly billing would charge you more as the work gets faster, which is backwards.
What if the audit does not find much?
Then you'll know, with the hours written down, and you will not need a sprint. In practice a $10M to $100M brand with a lean team almost always has a few hundred hours a year in work that repeats.