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Case studies · Sanitized

Real engagements.
Numbers that moved.

Six engagements pulled from the active book — names redacted, industries and outcomes left intact. Each one started with a free 30-minute call and a written brief. None were billed by the hour.

Cases on file40+
Avg. payback6.4 mo
Repeat rate72%
Net promoter71
About these case studies

Client names, sector specifics and identifying numbers are intentionally redacted. The shape of the work, the duration, the team composition and the order-of-magnitude impact are accurate to the active engagement.

Selected case studies

Six engagements, three practices,
one operating philosophy.

Each engagement is mapped to the practices involved — almost every one of them crosses two or three. That's the multidisciplinary thesis in operation.

Case 01
CONSTRUCTION · 34 EMPLOYEES

From 19 months of CRA arrears
to current — in 90 days.

Practices
Finance Tech
The situation

A 34-person mechanical sub-trade had stopped filing HST returns 19 months earlier when their bookkeeper left mid-project. Three CRA arrears notices on the desk, a banking covenant breach 30 days out, and a binder of receipts in the foreman's truck.

What we did

Voluntary disclosure to CRA on day three. Migrated from QuickBooks Desktop to QBO with a rebuilt chart of accounts. Backfilled 19 months of bookkeeping in 6 weeks with two senior staff on-site. Filed all overdue HST returns, negotiated a payment plan, restored covenant compliance.

90
Days to current
$48k
Penalties waived
0
Covenant breaches since
Case 02
B2B SAAS · 22 EMPLOYEES

First SR&ED claim and a
$340K non-dilutive cheque.

Practices
Tech Finance
The situation

A 22-person B2B SaaS, three years post-launch, had never claimed SR&ED. Their previous accountant told them they "probably didn't qualify." Two engineering teams had spent eighteen months building a multi-tenant data pipeline and a custom inference layer.

What we did

Eligibility memo in week one — qualified on both work streams. Built the technical narrative in interview sessions with the engineering leads. Reconstructed labour allocation from git history, payroll, and Slack. Filed the claim, defended one CRA review query, refund issued in month seven.

$340k
Refund received
14 wk
Engagement length
3 yrs
Retroactive claim
Case 03
MANUFACTURING · $42M REV

Three-entity consolidation,
month-end from 27 to 11 days.

Practices
Consulting Tech Finance
The situation

A precision-parts manufacturer running three legal entities across two provinces. Month-end consolidation took 27 days, executive reporting was always two months stale, and the CFO had quit. The lender was asking for monthly covenant packages — and not getting them.

What we did

Stood up a fractional CFO. Rolled three NetSuite-compatible chart-of-accounts onto a single OneWorld instance. Designed an 11-day close calendar with named owners per work-stream. Trained the in-house team on the new cadence. Built a board reporting pack the lender now accepts as-is.

−59%
Close cycle time
3 → 1
Entities to GL
$1.8M
Facility renewed
Case 04
E-COMMERCE · 4-CHANNEL DTC

Inventory accuracy from
62% to 97.4% in one quarter.

Practices
Tech Finance
The situation

A direct-to-consumer apparel brand selling on Shopify, Amazon, Etsy and a wholesale channel. Inventory accuracy at 62%, COGS lagged sales by two months, and the founder couldn't tell which SKU made money. Two stockouts during a Black Friday push.

What we did

Migrated from Shopify-only bookkeeping to an Odoo backbone with Shopify, Amazon and Etsy feeds. Built a custom landed-cost calculator that allocates freight, duty and FX to SKU. Stood up a daily inventory reconciliation, weekly cycle-count protocol, and a per-channel margin dashboard.

+35pp
Inventory accuracy
+11pp
Gross margin
4 → 1
Source of truth
Case 05
HEALTHCARE · 6-CLINIC GROUP

A six-clinic dental group's
HR re-platforming.

Practices
Consulting Finance
The situation

A six-clinic dental services organization with 84 clinical and administrative staff. Three different payroll providers, two HRIS systems inherited from acquisitions, and a turnover rate trending above 31% in dental assistants. No standardized comp band, no exit interviews, no benefits parity.

What we did

Designed a unified comp framework and benefits package across all six clinics. Consolidated payroll onto a single Wagepoint instance. Built a quarterly performance and retention review cadence with the clinic managers. Stood up exit interviews and a dashboard the executive team now reads at every monthly meeting.

−54%
Voluntary turnover
3 → 1
Payroll vendors
+8.2
eNPS uplift
Case 06
NON-PROFIT · 14 STAFF

A T3010 cleanup, a clean audit,
and a new funder onboarded.

Practices
Finance Consulting
The situation

A registered charity, $2.6M in restricted-fund inflows, running on a tired QuickBooks Desktop install. Two T3010 returns filed late, restricted-fund accounting blurred with operating funds, and a major foundation funder had paused on a $400K grant pending an audited statement.

What we did

Migrated to QuickBooks Online with restricted-fund class tracking. Re-stated two prior years of fund balances. Filed both overdue T3010 returns. Built an audit binder and liaised with the external auditor through a clean opinion. Stood up a quarterly donor reporting pack the foundation funder accepted as their new standard.

Clean
Audit opinion
$400k
Grant released
2
T3010s caught up
In their words

Quoted, attributed by role —
names on request.

"

They closed two years of overdue books in six weeks. The CRA was talking to us by week two. I have no idea how the bill stayed at the fixed quote — but it did.

Founder & CEO
Mechanical sub-trade · ON
"

Our previous accountant told us we didn't qualify for SR&ED. Muia filed our claim retroactively for three years. The cheque covered the entire fee, twice over.

CTO & Co-founder
B2B SaaS · 22 staff
"

A consultant who's still answering my Slack at month 14. We hired them to do a transformation, kept them for the operating cadence. That's never happened to us before.

CFO
Precision manufacturing · $42M
"

We finally know which SKU makes money. That sentence took us four years and three previous bookkeepers to be able to say.

Founder
DTC apparel · 4 channels
"

Turnover in dental assistants halved inside a year. The framework they built didn't just standardize comp — it gave our clinic managers a vocabulary they didn't have.

COO
Dental group · 6 clinics
"

The foundation funder accepted our new reporting pack as their template for other grantees. That's the first time anyone has thanked us for our finance discipline.

Executive Director
Registered charity · ON
Patterns we see

The same problem,
across industries.

If you read the six cases above with their industry labels off, the underlying engagement shapes are almost identical. Here is the cross-industry pattern.

PATTERN · 01

Cleanup

Overdue filings, neglected books, CRA correspondence. A confidential reset to current — usually inside 90 days.

PATTERN · 02

Migration

Desktop to cloud. Single-entity to multi-entity ERP. Always paired with a workflow redesign, never just a software install.

PATTERN · 03

Grant capture

First-time SR&ED, IRAP, CDAP. Retroactive claims where eligible. Stacking strategy for repeat claimants.

PATTERN · 04

Fractional CFO

For 30–100 staff businesses needing a finance voice in the room without a six-figure full-time hire.

PATTERN · 05

Close acceleration

Compress month-end from 25–30 days to 10–14. Named owners per work-stream, daily standups during close.

PATTERN · 06

Custom tooling

Where Excel runs the business and shouldn't. Internal apps, dashboards, integrations. Built to be owned.

PATTERN · 07

HR re-platforming

Comp frameworks, benefits parity, performance cadence. Almost always follows an acquisition or fast hire.

PATTERN · 08

Audit readiness

NTR to review. Review to audit. First-time audit prep with external auditor liaison through opinion.

See yourself in one of these?

Most of our work
starts with "that's us."

If one of the cases above looks like the situation on your desk, the conversation usually goes quickly. Send the messy details — we've seen all of it before.