Rhode Lyons was dying when he suggested to Karen Deming and Bob Quaid of Sierra Pacific Investments that I take over for him.
Sierra Pacific Investments (SPI) had several funds ranging from about four thousand in the small fund to 44,000 in the largest.
The first tasks involved finishing his programs.
Then we streamlined check printing, accounts payable, distributions, and purchases.
The new programs combined data entry, accounting entries, and printing.
After writing a few reports, Quaid who was the chief accountant determined that round off in the distribution system led to hundreds of unnecessary telephone calls each month. Two related investors, like a husband and wife, who had invested the same $10,000 amounts on the same day in the same fund sometimes had differences of many pennies. The telephone calls were more of a nuance than a discovery of a bug.
The solution was to eliminate all of the round off. Analysis showed that incrementing one penny per partner per item eliminated the round off. Quaid also realized that his Excel spreadsheets ran more precisely. So when a fund has like 44,017 partners, the allocations occurred in multiples of $440.17.
In the fund of $440 million, that was small enough to be precise. The fund retained any remainder. The telephone calls about round off disappeared.
Another investigation into practices revealed that each fund paid about $30,000 per year to a large accounting firm, which certified the year end totals and K1 processing. The accounting firm also charged $7 per limited partner for the K1. For the business, that exceeded $700,000 per year. We discovered that we could use a printing service to print our own K1's. Our cost was like $50 dollars to mount a tape and ten cents for each of the two pages. SPI saved about $1,400,000 in printing K1 costs for the next two years. Then another business bought out SPI.
Mr Christiansen was the president of SPI.
Sierra Pacific Investments (SPI) had several funds ranging from about four thousand in the small fund to 44,000 in the largest.
The first tasks involved finishing his programs.
Then we streamlined check printing, accounts payable, distributions, and purchases.
The new programs combined data entry, accounting entries, and printing.
After writing a few reports, Quaid who was the chief accountant determined that round off in the distribution system led to hundreds of unnecessary telephone calls each month. Two related investors, like a husband and wife, who had invested the same $10,000 amounts on the same day in the same fund sometimes had differences of many pennies. The telephone calls were more of a nuance than a discovery of a bug.
The solution was to eliminate all of the round off. Analysis showed that incrementing one penny per partner per item eliminated the round off. Quaid also realized that his Excel spreadsheets ran more precisely. So when a fund has like 44,017 partners, the allocations occurred in multiples of $440.17.
In the fund of $440 million, that was small enough to be precise. The fund retained any remainder. The telephone calls about round off disappeared.
Another investigation into practices revealed that each fund paid about $30,000 per year to a large accounting firm, which certified the year end totals and K1 processing. The accounting firm also charged $7 per limited partner for the K1. For the business, that exceeded $700,000 per year. We discovered that we could use a printing service to print our own K1's. Our cost was like $50 dollars to mount a tape and ten cents for each of the two pages. SPI saved about $1,400,000 in printing K1 costs for the next two years. Then another business bought out SPI.
Mr Christiansen was the president of SPI.