by Katy Robinson | May 15, 2026 | Financial Operations
Every finance team knows where the problems are. Here’s the playbook for diagnosing, ranking, and improving your financial transaction flow.
Most finance leaders can name the friction points in their accounting and transactional processes without looking at a report. The close takes too long. Manual workarounds that were supposed to be temporary have become permanent. Operational data is difficult or impossible to reconcile to financial data.
Having a playbook to address these transactional issues provides teams with a deliberate, repeatable method for converting that awareness into structural improvement. Without one, the same issues survive from quarter to quarter, accumulating cost and complexity while leadership makes decisions based on financial information that is technically correct and operationally incomplete.
Here is our playbook. It includes three phases: diagnose, decide, execute. By using this framework, we help our clients break ineffective transactional flows and improve business insights.
Act One – Diagnose
The first phase belongs to the data. The data that matters here is in the transactional layer underneath the financial statements: the daily processes that determine whether the information arriving in the general ledger is useful for decision-making or merely adequate for reporting.
Items for consideration include:
- How are transactions flowing into and through subledgers – accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, etc.
- Is critical operational information connecting into financial systems: project-level hours and time, project costs, credit card transactions.
- Are upstream data sources connected into your accounting system: payroll, bank accounts, credit cards, customer relationship management.
If these systems are not connected and data is not flowing into the accounting system, we work with our clients to map out transaction flows, approval processes, and spreadsheet/manual interfaces.
The output of Act One is a clear, unfiltered picture of where the finance function is actually performing and where it is performing on borrowed time, with a keen focus on manual effort, institutional knowledge held by specific individuals, and workarounds that function only because the people executing them remember the context that the systems do not capture.
Act Two – Rank, Prioritize, and Commit
This is where most finance teams lose the value of their diagnostic work. They identify the problems and document the gaps. But nothing changes, because nobody made a formal decision about which problems to fix, in what order, and by when.
Act Two exists to force that decision. Every gap identified in the diagnosis gets ranked on two dimensions: impact and ease of execution.
High impact, low complexity items go first. These are the process changes that free the most capacity with the least disruption. Examples might include a classification correction, an automated bank feed, a billing workflow that eliminates manual revenue recognition entries.
High impact, high complexity items get scoped and scheduled. These are the structural changes that require more time and coordination such as migrating off a legacy system, redesigning the chart of accounts for multi-entity reporting, rebuilding how payroll costs are allocated to projects. They do not get executed immediately, but they get committed to a timeline with clear ownership.
Low impact items get examined honestly. Some are worth doing when capacity allows. Others are the cost of doing business, and the discipline of acknowledging that explicitly is more valuable than maintaining a list of improvements that never gets acted on.
The goal of Act Two is creating a ranked list of commitments with a clear path of completion.
Act Three – Execute and Make the Structural Changes
The final phase is focused execution. It is a specific, bounded process to close the gaps leadership decided to act on in Act Two.
The changes themselves are usually one of five types:
Workflow corrections. Replacing a manual process with an automated one. Connecting two systems that currently require a human to transfer data between them. Eliminating an approval step that adds delay without adding oversight. These are the changes that free team capacity immediately and reduce error rates permanently.
Classification and coding fixes. Correcting how transactions are captured so the data is recorded in the general ledger where it’s intended to be. The objective is to remove correcting reclassification entries, allocation entries, and other workarounds that add time to the month-end close process.
Critical dependency reviews. Determining which processes depend on specific individuals and documenting them so the knowledge lives in the system rather than in someone’s head. Finance functions that depend on legacy knowledge are structurally fragile regardless of how talented the team is.
Reporting and visibility improvements. Restructuring how financial information reaches leadership so the data is timely, granular, and structured for decision-making rather than meeting basic compliance requests.
Each change should be specific enough to verify. “Improve the close process” is not an executable change. “Automate the three intercompany elimination entries that currently require 14 hours of manual work and introduce reconciliation breaks” is. The difference between finance functions that improve and finance functions that talk about improving is the specificity of what gets executed.
The Compounding Effect
Taken together, and repeated as a discipline rather than a one-time exercise, changes and adjustments to the financial process will compound. Each cycle produces cleaner data. Each quarter’s analysis builds on a more reliable foundation. Each year’s strategic planning starts from a position of genuine understanding rather than reconstructed approximation.
Ultimately, the finance team spends less time assembling information and more time analyzing it. Leadership makes decisions faster because the information they need is available when they need it, not two weeks after the question was asked.
Your accounting and transactional processes are either producing the timely, accurate, granular information your leadership team needs to make high-quality business decisions — or they are not. If they are not, the playbook for fixing them is not complicated. It is three phases, executed with discipline and specificity, repeated until the finance function reflects the business leadership actually wants to run.
At Lavoie CPA, we partner with finance leaders to run this playbook, facilitate the prioritization decisions, and execute the structural changes that turn their finance function into the decision-making infrastructure their business depends on.
Start the conversation today.
by Katy Robinson | May 7, 2026 | FQHCs
For Federally Qualified Health Centers, the CMS-224-14 cost report isn’t optional. It’s required and complex, and for many FQHCs, it’s the most stressful financial obligation of the year.
But here’s the truth most health centers don’t hear: the cost report itself isn’t the problem. The problem is how financial data is managed during the year leading up to it.
When accounting lives in one system, payroll in another, grant tracking in a spreadsheet, and reporting with an outside firm that only shows up at year-end, the cost report becomes a reconstruction project. Teams spend weeks pulling, reconciling, and re-classifying data that should have been structured correctly all along. The result is missed deadlines, audit risk, and a finance team burned out before Q1 even begins.
At Lavoie CPA, we approach this differently. We help FQHCs structure financial data throughout the year so the cost report becomes the natural output of disciplined operations, not an annual fire drill.
The Cost of Fragmented Financial Operations
Most FQHCs don’t realize how much fragmentation is costing them until cost reporting season arrives. Multiple vendors, disconnected systems, and inconsistent classifications create a chain of handoffs where no single team owns the full picture.
This fragmentation has a direct impact on the CMS-224-14. Cost allocations don’t tie cleanly to the general ledger. Statistical bases shift between fiscal periods. Supporting documentation lives in three different places. Each gap requires manual reconciliation, and each reconciliation introduces the possibility of error.
Integration solves this at the source. When accounting, reporting, and cost report preparation are built on a single financial backbone, the data is already structured for compliance the moment it enters the system. We’ve written before about how operational and financial integration eliminates the silos that slow FQHCs down, and nowhere is that more visible than in cost reporting.
Accuracy Is Built in January, Not December
The CMS-224-14 demands precision. Cost center classifications, allocation methodologies, and reclassifications all have to tie back to documented, defensible records. Small inconsistencies, a misclassified expense, an undocumented reclassification, a statistical basis that shifts mid-year, compound into delays, revisions, or penalties.
The FQHCs that submit cleanly aren’t working harder in November and December to clean up financial records. They’re working smarter all year long. They use a consistent chart of accounts, standardized cost allocation rules, and clear documentation protocols from the first transaction of the fiscal year. By the time the cost report period begins, the data is already audit-ready.
This is what year-round financial transparency actually delivers in practice. It’s not a reporting feature, it’s a discipline that protects the organization months before any deadline arrives.
Automation Turns Cost Reporting Into a Validation Exercise
When financial processes are manual and fragmented, cost report preparation becomes a reconstruction effort. Teams pull data from multiple sources, rebuild allocations from scratch, and chase down documentation that should have been captured in real time.
When processes are automated and integrated, cost reporting becomes a validation exercise. The numbers are already there. The classifications are already correct. The team’s job shifts from assembly to oversight, confirming accuracy rather than building it.
Automating the financial workflows that feed the cost report, accounts payable coding, payroll allocation, grant tracking, intercompany transactions, is what makes this shift possible. We’ve covered the broader case for automating routine financial tasks inside FQHC operations, and cost reporting is one of the highest-leverage applications. Hours saved here don’t just reduce stress; they redirect finance team capacity toward strategic work the rest of the year.
From Compliance Burden to Strategic Asset
Here’s what most FQHCs miss: the cost report is one of the most comprehensive views of your organization’s financial and operational performance you’ll ever produce. It captures cost per visit, payer mix dynamics, program-level economics, and operational efficiency across every site you run.
When that data is fragmented and reconstructed annually, it lives and dies as a compliance document. When it’s integrated and continuously available, it becomes a strategic asset. Leadership can monitor cost center performance in real time, identify margin pressure before it becomes a crisis, and make resource allocation decisions grounded in the same data the federal government will eventually see.
This is the visibility that separates reactive FQHCs from strategically managed ones. We’ve written extensively about why real-time financial visibility is now a baseline expectation for FQHC leaders, and the cost report is where that visibility either pays off or breaks down.
The Bottom Line
The CMS-224-14 will always be a requirement. Whether it’s a burden or an advantage depends entirely on the financial infrastructure underneath it.
FQHCs with integrated systems, disciplined classifications, and automated workflows submit cost reports in weeks, not months. They use the data year-round, not just at filing. And they free their finance teams to focus on the work that actually moves the organization forward.
If your cost report still feels like an annual scramble, the issue isn’t the report. It’s the architecture.
Start the conversation today.
by Katy Robinson | Apr 29, 2026 | Financial Planning & Forecasting, Sports
Automate Consistency, Eliminate Chaos
Every club director knows the feeling. A new location opens. A new program launches. And suddenly the week dissolves into manual setups, custom approvals, retraining staff, and rebuilding processes from scratch.
This is the hidden tax of growth.
It pulls leadership into the weeds. It multiplies errors. It creates inconsistency across locations. And it scales linearly with every new expansion you take on.
Growth should compound your club’s impact, not your workload. That gap between the two is almost always a transaction-flow problem, not an effort problem. When systems depend on memory, email threads, and the goodwill of whoever happens to be in the room, every new program rebuilds the plane mid-flight. Scalable clubs solve this by embedding their rules directly into how the club operates, so the system expands automatically as the club grows.
This is the third pillar of scalable club operations. If you haven’t read it yet, our foundational guide to scaling youth soccer clubs lays out the full three-pillar framework: unified visibility, disciplined budgeting, and the governed workflows this post focuses on.
The Workflow Bottleneck: When Processes Can’t Keep Pace
Think about the last time your club launched a new program or a new location. How many of these sounded familiar?
- Someone manually added new categories or accounts to a spreadsheet.
- Approvals stalled because no one was sure who needed to sign off.
- The new location submitted expenses in a completely different format than the rest of the club.
- Reimbursements got tracked in a personal inbox instead of a system.
These aren’t small frictions. They’re signals of a reactive model, one that relies on tribal knowledge instead of structure. And as growth continues, that model doesn’t just slow you down. It introduces real financial risk, burns out leadership, and quietly erodes consistency across the organization.
The Real Shift: From Rebuilding Processes to Inheriting Them
Scalable clubs don’t rebuild processes every time they grow. They design systems that inherit structure.
Governance defines the rules. Workflows enforce them automatically.
The practical difference is enormous. When you add “West Location, Competitive Program,” a governed system already knows what to do: standard categories apply, approval routing activates, the right directors get access, and the new program shows up in reports the moment it’s created. Nothing is reinvented. The system simply extends.
This only works when data moves cleanly between systems in the first place. Automatic data feeds are the infrastructure that makes real-time governance possible, without them, every rule you set still depends on someone manually moving information from one tool to another.
From Manual Mayhem to Automated Order
Consider a simple scenario. West Location needs $1,200 in equipment.
The old way, fragmented:
- Quote emailed to leadership
- Approval bounces between inboxes
- Payment made on a personal card
- Reimbursement submitted weeks later
- Categorization guessed after the fact
The result is slow, inconsistent, and almost impossible to audit cleanly.
The scalable way, governed:
- Purchase order created and tagged correctly from the start
- Approval rule triggers automatically based on amount and program
- Approver reviews and clicks once
- Payment issued directly to the vendor
- Transaction recorded to the correct budget line in real time
The result is fast, controlled, and fully visible, without anyone chasing a paper trail. The difference isn’t effort. It’s design and leveraging systems.
Core Elements of a Scalable Governance Framework
Clubs that scale cleanly tend to build their governance around four non-negotiables:
- Clear financial policies. Simple, written rules for spending limits, approvals, and reimbursements, so decisions don’t depend on who you ask.
- Standardized launch checklists. One repeatable process for adding any new program or location, regardless of who runs it.
- Automated approval workflows. Requests routed by logic and dollar thresholds, not email threads.
- Role-based access controls. Directors see what they need to manage their program — nothing more, nothing less.
These four elements work together. Policies without workflows become suggestions. Workflows without policies become arbitrary. Together, they turn governance from a document people ignore into infrastructure that runs quietly in the background.
What This Actually Unlocks
When governance is built into the system, the benefits compound quickly. Clubs launch new programs faster and more consistently, prevent overspending through built-in controls, reduce operational risk through clear approval trails, eliminate confusion for coaches and staff, and free leadership to focus on the work that actually grows the club, not the work that maintains it.
How to Start This Season
You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Start small and let the system teach you where the real friction is.
- Map one broken process exactly as it exists today.
- Redesign it as a simple, rule-based workflow.
- Configure it inside your core financial system.
- Pilot it with one team or location.
- Document it and roll it out as standard operating procedure.
One clean workflow reveals more about your operations than any strategic offsite will.
Ready to Systemize Your Growth?
Growth without governance is chaos in slow motion. When workflows and rules are embedded into your systems, consistency stops being a leadership responsibility and becomes an operational default. Scale stops feeling painful because it stops requiring rebuilding.
This is the third pillar of scalable club operations. Paired with real-time visibility into financial results by program and location and budget vs. actual reporting tailored to your club’s structure, your club finally has systems that grow as fast as it does.
Start the Conversation Today.
by Katy Robinson | Jan 22, 2025 | Healthcare, Women Who Lead
In the intricate and demanding world of healthcare, true leadership is forged through resilience, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to making a difference. Spring Moore’s remarkable journey provides a profound testament to the power of perseverance, illustrating how personal challenges can transform into professional strengths.
A Childhood That Shaped a Career
Spring’s path to healthcare was not a random choice, but a deeply personal calling rooted in her early life experiences. Growing up on a farm, she developed a unique perspective on care and healing. “I had a deep sense of compassion and wish to help anything that was hurting,” she reflects. Her childhood, which she describes as colorful and challenging, became the fertile ground from which her compassionate nature grew.
Working with animals on the farm taught her an invaluable lesson: “You can do small things to help an animal recover faster or keep them safer.” This early understanding of nurturing and support would later translate seamlessly into her nursing career.
Building Foundational Skills
Before becoming a nurse, Spring worked in customer service, an experience that further refined her interpersonal skills. “I got to see some of the traits that fit well with wishing to bring joy, positivity, and help,” she explains.
Finding Her Professional Niche
When Spring began her nursing career in 2010, she discovered a perfect match for her personality in the Neurotrama Intensive Care Unit. Her detailed nature and ability to remain calm under pressure made her an exceptional critical care nurse. “I realized that my ability to remain calm and perform well in stressful situations was actually a perfect fit for the Neurotrauma ICU,” she shares.
Embracing Professional Uncertainty
One of the most pivotal moments in Spring’s career came when she transitioned from bedside nursing to a role supporting hospital organizations in glycemic management software. This shift was not without its challenges. “I went overnight from expert to novice,” she candidly admits, describing a period of professional transition.
Confronting Imposter Syndrome with Strategic Resilience
Instead of allowing self-doubt to derail her, Spring developed a strategic approach to personal and professional growth. Her methods for navigating uncertainty included:
- Intentionally seeking wise counsel
- Watching expert recordings
- Consulting mentors
- Leaning into uncomfortable learning experiences
- Pursuing recommended skills
Her guiding principle became “just do the next right step” – a philosophy that helped her navigate complex transitions with grace and intentionality.
A Family Legacy of Determination
Spring draws profound inspiration from her aunt, who immigrated to the US and rose from an administrative assistant to a vice president of an international company. Her aunt’s life philosophy of embracing unexpected changes and encouraging others to pursue their full potential deeply influenced Spring’s approach to both personal and professional challenges.
Balancing Professional Demands with Personal Well-being
Recognizing the potential for burnout in healthcare, Spring has become intentional about work-life balance. “Start early and make balancing the two a habit,” she advises, reflecting on her own journey of learning to prioritize self-care. She schedules time for family, friends, and personal activities, understanding that personal resilience is crucial for professional effectiveness.
A Patient-Centered Approach to Healthcare Innovation
In her current role at Monarch Medical supporting hospital organizations with glycemic management software, Spring remains committed to a holistic, patient-centered approach. “Even though we’re dealing with software, it’s crucial to keep the focus on improving patient outcomes and promoting wellness,” she emphasizes.
Contributions to Positive Change
Spring sees her contribution to healthcare not through grand gestures, but through authentic, compassionate interactions. “I want to embody the values I wish to see and encourage those around me,” she explains. Her approach focuses on collaboration, trust, and maintaining a positive culture that supports healthcare professionals and, ultimately, patient care.
Wisdom for Future Healthcare Professionals
If Spring could send a message to her younger self and aspiring healthcare professionals, it would be a powerful reminder of resilience: “Failure is an opportunity. It’s not a bad thing to experience a no or a closed door. Keep your eyes on the goal, but remain open and receptive to what life will bring.”
The Essence of Perseverance
Spring Moore’s story is a powerful narrative of perseverance in healthcare. Her journey demonstrates that success isn’t about avoiding challenges, but about how we choose to respond to them. As she wisely notes, “Discouraging moments don’t have to define how you choose to show up.”
For aspiring healthcare professionals, Spring’s narrative offers an inspiring blueprint: embrace challenges, remain compassionate, cultivate resilience, and never stop learning.
by Katy Robinson | Jan 22, 2025 | Healthcare, Women Who Lead
Christine Nicodemus’s path to becoming CEO of Wayhaven is a powerful narrative of resilience and purpose. Her story begins with a profoundly personal experience that would ultimately shape her professional mission. During her college years, Christine faced significant mental health challenges.
The Seeds of Innovation
Christine transformed her struggle into a driving force for positive change. Her entrepreneurial journey began with her first company in the K-12 space, where she focused on measuring students’ social and emotional skills. Drawing from resilience theory, she understood that social and emotional skills serve as protective factors for mental health and wellness.
Wayhaven: A Mission-Driven Solution
Driven by her personal experiences, Christine founded Wayhaven – an innovative AI-powered mental wellness platform designed specifically for college students. The company takes a unique approach by collaborating closely with clinical psychologists to create a specialized AI that provides support through evidence-based tools and techniques derived from cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and mindfulness practices.
What sets Wayhaven apart is its hyper-localized approach. The AI is meticulously tailored to specific campuses, integrating knowledge about local resources, clubs, and events to provide truly personalized support. A student chatting with the AI on Wake Forest’s campus, for example, will receive responses contextualized to that specific campus ecosystem.
Navigating Uncertainty
Perseverance wasn’t just an abstract concept for Christine – it was a daily reality that tested her resolve. She candidly shares a critical moment in her entrepreneurial journey when her first startup was on the brink of financial collapse. With only a few months of runway remaining, she faced the daunting task of asking her team to take voluntary pay cuts.
“I had raised a couple hundred thousand dollars to hire a small team around me, and we were getting to the end of our funds…I was feeling immense doubt.”
The emotional weight was significant. Yet, in an unexpected twist of fate, the pandemic became a turning point. As students transitioned to remote learning, demand for Ascend Goals services surged, and investor interest was renewed.
Beyond Professional Success
Christine’s approach to perseverance extends far beyond professional achievements. She emphasizes the critical importance of not defining oneself exclusively through work. Her personal philosophy centers on creating a balanced life and maintaining perspective.
“I’m all about flexibility between the two domains,” she explains, discussing her approach to work-life balance. Some days might involve working late into the evening, while others include midday activities like a [CN2] run to rejuvenate herself.
Inspiration and Personal Growth
Her commitment to personal development is evident in her diverse interests. Christine is a competitive flag football quarterback with ambitious goals. She even challenged herself to perform stand-up comedy, demonstrating her willingness to step outside her comfort zone and embrace vulnerability.
When asked what she would tell her younger self, Christine’s wisdom shines through. Her message is clear: embrace humility, don’t take yourself too seriously, and recognize that success often involves a combination of hard work and occasional lucky breaks.
A Role Model’s Perspective
Christine finds inspiration in leaders like Amanda Lannert, CEO of Jellyvision, whom she admires for mentoring underrepresented founders and giving back to the entrepreneurial community. This reflects her own approach to leadership – one that values creating a supportive workplace where team members can flourish both professionally and personally.
The Most Rewarding Aspect
For Christine, the most fulfilling part of her work isn’t just the technological innovation – it’s the human impact. She finds profound motivation in student feedback, particularly stories of individuals who found crucial support during challenging times.
“I get this a lot when I get to read student reviews of our AI…reading success stories of students who mention, ‘Hey, I was really going down a spiral here, and this helped me a lot’ – that goes a long way.”
A Message of Hope and Resilience
Christine Nicodemus embodies the true spirit of perseverance – transforming personal challenges into a mission that supports and empowers others. Her work with Wayhaven is more than a business venture; it’s a testament to the power of resilience, innovation, and compassionate leadership in healthcare.
Her journey reminds us that our most significant challenges can become the catalysts for our most meaningful contributions.
