The following are the stages in the development of a Strategic Engineered Precision Chart of Accounts based on the Cubic Business Model approach:
1. First session – orientation, theory, development of headline Divisions, Locations, Functions and Accounts – a lot about the facilitator learning about the business and the business learning about the approach – this session MUST involve executives – first few sessions involve a substantial learning curve for both teams (client team and facilitator/s)
2. Flesh out the Chart of Accounts, etc with the Chief Financial Officer assisted by the Senior Financial Manager
3. Review with key operational finance personnel – demonstrate concept of hierarchy using filters on Divisions, Locations, Functions and Accounts in Excel
4. Take through to concept business model to demonstrate principles
5. Step right back, second iteration, may need to restart from scratch or perform major surgery, code and check levels on filters – Divisions, Locations, Functions and Accounts
6. Build master sub-sections for people, assets, products, customers, projects, mobile plant, sister companies, etc, as required to fully model the full complexity of the business and provide summarization logic for other modules – iterate with other modules
7. Flesh out to full detail, suffixes, flags, etc
8. Tic master chart against existing charts of accounts – may necessitate major surgery, additions, restructuring
9. Code and review filters, make sure each level or report is correct, restructure as necessary
10. Final review and approval of all lists – Divisions, Locations, Functions, Accounts – may take several iterations to get to this point
11. Commence construction of the cubic model – start with the matrix, add items as required, software is vital for this
12. Select applicable accounts for each Location – Function cell of the cubic model
13. Internal review of the accounts per cell, ensure these are exactly the accounts that the owners of each cell have management and supervisory control over – likely to be significant refinements – this is a governance model
14. Detailed mapping of existing Chart of Accounts onto the new Chart of Accounts, revisions as necessary – expect two iterations as a minimum, almost certainly will be items to add
15. Final adoption of the full Chart of Accounts at all levels of management
16. Outline full suite of standard financial reports based on standard column and row detail examples – build on the V3 reference document as a starting point
17. Refine standard report designs
18. Use software to generate a full library of standard reports with all permutations by cell, by location, by range of locations, by function, by range of functions, by division, by range of divisions at different levels of summarization by hierarchy – provide library software to track reports
19. Review and revise reports if necessary
20. Deploy GL and reports – training, etc
21. Design and build data warehouse with standard ETL, etc
22. Map history onto new logic in data warehouse in a separate set of tables so that new logic is not corrupted
23. Build standard multi-dimensional business intelligence view, drop down lists of Division, Location, Function, Account with options to select ranges according to hierarchy and a wide variety of standard views in terms of graphs, lists, matrix view, etc
24. Iterate as necessary to get models working
25. Develop more complex business intelligence economic and other models with forecasting and correlation capability – understand the business far beyond historical capability