Mike Liston Email & Phone Number

Minneapolis

The CLA Consulting & Accounting Solutions Team (CAST) seamlessly manages key organizational challenges and deadlines. Whether you are an established organization or an emerging business, we can be a resource to help fill a gap, tackle critical projects, and navigate changing reporting regulations. Count on our experienced consultants to help you with large-scale projects, work flow demands, or a vital interim financial role. We’ll free your hands so you can get back to the business of doing business. Our professionals are CFOs, controllers, auditors, and managers, so we can serve in interim roles or manage projects without hand-holding. With 10 – 30years of accounting, audit, technology, and business leadership experience, our CPAs, project management professionals, certified internal auditors, and other certified professionals work alongside our clients. CLA’s Consulting and Accounting Solutions Team (CAST) serves public, private, and nonprofit entities, providing you with the assistance you need to help strengthen financial outcomes and boost productivity.

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Hired and trained accounting staff for a newly spun out company while implementing the new financial systems. Led staff through all financial activities and due diligence preparation until it was acquired just one-year after it was spun off.

Bloomington, Minnesota

Assisted with clean-up of system data to systematically recognize subscription and service revenue in the correct period. Developed new processes and trained new staff on reconciling deferred services revenue.

Edina, Mn

Led accounting department of 7 for a $35 million software company with 160 employees through profitability and process improvements in order to make it into an attractive acquisition target. Successfully integrated an acquired company’s books into our system and then our processes into the buyer’s system.• Financial Policy/Process Development: Established and implemented procedures for transaction processing, reconciliations, payroll, tax filings, and reporting that restored confidence in our back office processes.• Operations Improvement: Shortened time to close monthly books by 50% while improving quality of financial reporting by establishing a standard monthly schedule, prioritizing work, and reconciling key accounts prior to closing the month.• Cross-Functional Team Leadership: Oversaw renewals team that maintained renewal rates over 95% by monitoring report of renewal status and coaching team to work with sales department and customers.• Internal Controls: Discovered, verified, and corrected accounting error from prior to my arrival that resulted in recovery of $600,000 in book revenue. Established reconciliation processes to prevent similar errors from recurring.• Project Management: Recovered over $100,000 in overpaid sales tax from incorrect filings submitted prior to my hiring, established procedures to prevent issue from recurring.• Team Leadership: Reorganized billing and renewals teams into a single group that more effectively serviced customers and sales team by clearly defining roles to better understand customer needs.• Accounting/Finance System Administrator: Oversaw the accurate functioning of the system to ensure proper revenue recognition, measure and report all operations, transactions, assets and liabilities, generate balance and income statements.

Burnsville, Mn

Valued assets of a subsidiary company for integrating them into the corporate ERP system. This required catching up on several months of reconciliations and resolving differences with the bank and vendors.

Edina, Mn

Led project to set up query reports in upgraded PeopleSoft system for a division of a Fortune 100 company. Assisted with user acceptance testing to ensure accuracy of data imported into the upgraded system.

Edina, Mn

Led accounting and financial reporting for the Minnesota residential real estate brokerage operation of NRT LLC, a division of Realogy, LLC with $200 million in annual revenue derived from $8 billion in real estate sales.• Team Leadership: Provided leadership for a 5-person general accounting department through monthly close, including journal entries, financial reporting, and financial analysis.• Policy/Process Development: Developed standard operating procedures for monthly reconciliations of balance sheet accounts, then coached staff on more effective and efficient ways of completing responsibilities.• Operations Improvement: Utilized advanced Excel skills and Visual Basic to design and maintain a tool for billing real estate agents for their share of expenses paid by the company.• Budgeting/Forecasting: Prepared detailed budget for 35 local real estate offices and overhead departments and analyzed monthly performance versus forecast to lead division to top ratings on forecast accuracy.

Minneapolis, Mn

Led accounting department in closing annual books, preparing audit schedules, and SEC reporting as interim controller at MakeMusic. Reconciled accounts and researched accounts payable problems at Stellent software. At Coldwell Banker Burnet, developed an Excel model for billing agents that automated the lookup of agent ID's, determining the account to post, and setting up a file in the format that could be imported into their new Trident accounting system.

Eden Prairie, Mn

Led accounting department for a publicly traded software company with $12 million in revenue and close to 100 employees.• Accounting Team Leadership: Led accounting department in all financial accounting responsibilities from accounts receivable, accounts payable, and payroll through financial statement preparation and public reporting.• Financial Statement Preparation: Prepared, reviewed, and distributed annual 10KSB and quarterly 10QSB.• Budgeting/Forecasting: Integrated PeopleSoft system with Excel tools to prepare annual budget and 5 year forecast that was used for long-term planning and financing decisions.• Audit Compliance: Worked with outside audit firm to manage annual audit, prepare client reports, review financial statement footnotes, and set agenda for board meetings.• Project Management: Assumed leadership of cross-functional team that managed the PeopleSoft system and promptly resolved any issues affecting business performance.• Financial System Implementation: Maintained PeopleSoft system by setting up general ledger accounts, designing entry of sales programs, setting up financials, and report writing.• Sales and Use Tax: Administered collection and remittance of sales and use tax for 45 states and their cities and counties.• Inventory Accounting: Ensured effective monitoring and accounting of inventory and related costs, resulting in accurate cost of sales calculations on a monthly basis and ongoing asset valuation.

Edina, Mn

Handled all accounting, facilities, and IT processes for a CRM software company as it was marketed for sale.• Financial Strategy: Work with senior management to develop strategies for company growth and profitability, resulting in becoming an attractive acquisition target. • Financial Analysis: Strategically executed all accounting, oversaw fixed assets (facilities and IT), forecasted financial performance and prepared financial statements for the company as it successfully sought to become a takeover target.• Relationship Management: Managed bank relationship by providing reports needed by the bank and drawing on and paying down the line of credit based on cash forecasts. • Valuation / Due Diligence: Prepared due diligence reports, including calculating forecasts, asset valuations, and financial ratios for review by purchasing company.

St. Louis Park, Mn

Oversaw all finance and accounting processes for a software company with $30 million in revenue and 100 employees.• Finance Team Leadership: Managed accounting staff in financial operations, including financial statement preparation and analysis, budgeting, payroll, accounts payable, billing and collections, and journal entries.• Report Creation: Calculated sales commissions by extracting sales data into calculation spreadsheets, distributed them to sales staff, and ensured payment was processed per company policy.• System Implementation: Led team that successfully installed a Softrax ERP system with a TaxWare sales package.

Bsb, Accounting

Education record