Business development & sale

Birchcrest Tree and Landscape provides tree services, landscaping and lawncare for residential, commercial, municipal and utility customers.

With over 100 employees, it was the largest, locally owned company in the region providing these services.

We served as Controller and CFO for five years. Management priorities were to strengthen accounting processes and financial reporting and to implement project costing and budgeting. The results achieved in each of these areas were enormously important to healthy, sustained profitability and in facilitating a successful sale of the company.

Essential to obtaining a rewarding sell-price for any business are historical financial results that are accurate, soundly prepared and well presented. Our impact, here, was dramatic. While the company had a staff of three bookkeepers, it was missing the internal accounting and financial management expertise to produce meaningful and timely monthly financial statements. Vital in that process were solving the challenges of correct timing of revenue recognition, project work-in-process inventory valuation, accurate capture of depreciation and commission expenses, proper month end accruals and reconciliation of all balance sheet accounts. At the same time, we greatly simplified accounting processes to simultaneously save staff time and improve accuracy.

An annual financial plan and budget was prepared, implemented and used by management to tightly control expenses. Reporting by line of business was more clearly delineated. Costing and profit analysis for individual projects and regions was established along with overhead rates and mark-up levels for pricing work.

We were instrumental in helping prepare for the sale of the company by working with the investment bank to organize financial and business information for the offering memorandum and, then, to fully satisfy all buyer due diligence requests. Post acquisition, we continued our service to facilitate the transition process.

Birchcrest continues to operate largely as an independent entity at full organizational strength. The acquirer operates a family of companies providing tree and landscape services nationwide.