Amy, an accounting professional at a fast-paced privately held company, is responsible for many critical tasks related to servicing outside investors as well as regular accounting and reporting procedures. In addition to financial management, transaction integrity, and overall efficiency, the mandate to expense equity compensation (FAS123R) has added substantial complexity to the monthly financial process.

Today the executive management team needs a capitalization table for each of the past four fiscal quarters in preparation for a meeting with the board of directors. Her current spreadsheets are taking too much time to administer and the files have become more complex and difficult to reconcile. Further she's currently the only person that knows how the spreadsheets work and isn't really sure if all the formulas are correct since she inherited the model from someone else. Oh, and next week the auditors will be in... 

 

Amy also is charged with providing updated financial statements at the quarterly board of directors meetings. At present, she has no secure way to distribute these sensitive documents to board members except via email. At the last board meeting she had to make changes to the financial numbers the day before the board book was sent overnight and stayed late that evening modifying the binders and pages affected.