Frequently Asked Question

What type of businesses are DHAC services designed for?

DHAC services are designed for small and medium sized businesses that are located in Ontario. DHAC caters to business in all industries but specializes in the service sector.

Why size of business are DHAC’s services designed for?

In general, a business must be “not too big and not too small” in order to benefit from the services that DHAC provides.

A rule of thumb is that a business should be large enough to have a few full-time finance staff member.

Feel free to contact us if you would like to discuss if your organization’s size is a good fit with DHAC’s service offerings.

How much time is required from my staff on a monthly basis to work with DHAC?

More detail about the time required from our clients to support the FP&A process can be found here.

Can we just provide you with our forecasted trial balance on a monthly basis and have you run the FP&A process?

On a short-term basis yes, and we actually recommend this approach during the implementation process as this allows your newly outsourced FP&A systems to get up and running quickly and with minimal extra work from your staff.

While although this approach allows for a smooth implementation, it is highly likely that over time you will have FP&A objectives that will not be answered by simply graphing your existing trial balance data.

Therefore, after the implementation process, it is recommended to integrate more or different data into the FP&A process than what is provided by your trial balance.

Can you provide us with services on an annual basis?

No, we only provide monthly services. Many accounting firms are well suited to provided business advisory services that are designed for one-time FP&A activities such as forecasting financial statements and setting budgets. We have chosen to specialize in offering only monthly FP&A services to our clients, and differentiate ourselves from the marketplace.

How much do your services costs?

Although prices vary based on the specific needs of your business, the range you can expect is between $3,000 to $4,500 per month.

We strive to provide this services at about a third of the cost of hiring a single, senior FP&A staff member in house.

Further information on pricing can be found here.

How can you provide such a small price range before understanding our FP&A needs?

While our FP&A reporting is highly customized to your specific FP&A needs, our services will always include a monthly FP&A reporting package, and a monthly in-person half-day review meeting.

So although we couldn't advise about what the contents of your reporting package would be without first going through the implementation process, we do know that we would be providing you with a monthly reporting package, and a monthly review meeting.

Since we offer a specific service, we can provide a specific price range.

Are there any additional costs per month or will the price go up over time?

There are no additional costs aside from the monthly fee.

The business model that we follow is that we charge the same predictable cost every month. We expect a certain amount of extra work every month beyond the preparation and presentation of the reporting package and that is already built into the monthly fee.

Prices are reviewed annually, and could go up in the cases where our clients have requested an unusually high amount of our time over the preceding year and expect to continue to request this additional time in the upcoming year.

Our business is rapidly growing, can your systems keep up with our changing FP&A needs?

Our systems are specifically designed for businesses that are growing and changing. See here for how we continuously revise the package as part of a continuous improvement process.

Aside from the preparation of the reporting package, what other types of FP&A guidance do you provide?

You will be dealing directly with David who is the founder of DHAC, for all professional matters.

Guidance on FP&A matters is provided both during and outside of the monthly review meeting.

This support is included in our all-inclusive pricing.

How many months can be included in the data set that is used for the reporting package?

The maximum amount of time periods that can covered in a single reporting package is 24 months. Although any 24-month period can be used, the most common is to have the preceding calendar year as historicals and the current calendar year as actuals/forecast.

As you approach the end of the year, we typically see our clients switch to reporting the current calendar year as actuals/forecast and the next calendar year as a forecast. When the forecast for the next calendar year is approved by your organization, it is typically promoted to the budget.

Although the 24-month maximum scope may initially seem as a limitation:

Prior reporting packages with further historical data are always available in the archive that is available though the data entry tool.
Forecasts beyond 24 months are usually better served by a strategic planning process (which deal with a smaller data set and a higher amount of uncertainty) as opposed to an FP&A process.

Can we have different versions of budgets/forecasts

Only one version of the budget is supported, although three versions of the forecast are supported.

Multiple forecast versions can either be done as part of the regular monthly process, such as have a base-case forecast and two other versions of the forecast, or it can be done on an ad-hoc basis, such as doing a one-time version of an additional forecast.

Adding another version of the forecast will include all GL accounts and business performance metrics and will increase the size of the data request by a factor of two.

Our FP&A objectives are complex and require more data than the trial balance. Can your system handle this?

Our system accepts trial balance data, as well any other monthly quantitative data that we refer to as business performance metrics.

Business performance metrics can be presented alongside your trial balance data, or can be formally integrated into your reporting package such as Cost per ____, Net Income per _____, EBITDA excluding ____ etc...

I’d like to discuss DHAC's services but aren't ready to proceed with a demo. What other options do you have available?

Feel free to schedule an intro call with David here to have a more informal conversation.

Does our data need to match GAAP financials, or can we provide it using a basis of accounting tailored for FP&A?

During the implementation process, it is encouraged to use financial data reported on the basis that is currently used for existing FP&A processes in your organization.

As more FP&A objectives are added, it will most likely be required to use non-GAAP reporting specifically tracked for the purposes of FP&A. This could be GAAP results with only minor changes, or it could be significantly different than GAAP results.

Moving away from GAAP results to non-GAAP reporting for FP&A purposes should be viewed as a positive step, as there is a limit to the benefit that can be obtained by analyzing GAAP reporting as opposed to reporting that has been re-defined and tailored to best support the FP&A process.

This is no different from most public companies that report adjusted financial results and discuss these results in their MD&A and on earnings calls.

We already preparing budgets and forecasts, can these be ran in parallel with DHAC's systems?

Yes, absolutely. Please see more information about our hybrid in-house / outsourced FP&A systems here.