Record-to-Report Close Factory Redesign Director

The mandate

This project addresses a close process whose calendar is maintained through accumulated workarounds rather than an explicit production design. The required result is not a generic faster-close recommendation. It is an executable close factory with controlled inputs, sequenced work, visible constraints and acceptance measures that protect accounting quality while removing avoidable elapsed time.

The consulting director will establish a baseline during the first four weeks using task evidence, posting timestamps, dependency failures, late adjustment patterns and reconciliation ageing. By the end of week eight, the director must deliver a signed design covering close lanes, critical-path ownership, readiness gates, exception routes and the criteria for reopening completed work. A two-cycle pilot follows before controlled deployment.

Five named artifacts govern delivery: the evidenced current-state ledger, a dependency-and-bottleneck model, the target close production design, two pilot-cycle result packs and the final operating handbook. Each must be complete enough for an accountable finance leader to accept or reject without relying on oral explanation. Acceptance depends on traceability, tested control preservation and measurable improvement against the baseline.

The finance process owners will provide calendars, task records, journal and reconciliation extracts, policy constraints, control descriptions and access to participants within agreed response times. If inputs are withheld or materially late, the director must record the effect on milestones rather than fill gaps with assumptions. The project excludes policy rewriting, financial-statement approval and operation of the close after handover.

Final acceptance in month five rests with the Chief Accounting Officer after evidence from two representative closes. The close must demonstrate shorter critical-path elapsed time, fewer uncontrolled late entries, clearer ownership and no deterioration in reconciliation or review evidence. The director will leave a prioritised backlog for improvements that fall outside the fixed project boundary.

What you will own

• Produce a timestamped baseline that distinguishes task duration, queue time, approval latency, upstream input failure and genuine accounting complexity.
• Identify the critical path by entity and close lane, showing where local calendars mask shared constraints or repeated rework.
• Design readiness gates for data, estimates, subledger completion and intercompany agreement, with explicit authority to stop an unready close lane.
• Specify journal classes, reconciliation points and review evidence that may be simplified, automated or rescheduled without weakening control intent.
• Run two pilot closes and issue comparable result packs covering elapsed time, late adjustments, reopened tasks, exceptions and reviewer workload.
• Provide a practical operating handbook, role map, daily control room protocol and escalation matrix accepted by process owners.
• Recommend work removal and sequencing decisions; management retains approval over policy, staffing and any permanent system change.
• Close the project with measured benefits, residual risks and a costed backlog ranked by dependency and value.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate leadership of at least two complex close redesigns in which improvement was proven across live cycles rather than forecast in a presentation.
• Show advanced command of consolidation inputs, journals, reconciliations, intercompany dependencies, estimates and controllership review points.
• Provide an example of reducing elapsed close time without moving work into uncontrolled pre-close activity or increasing late corrections.
• Evidence the ability to derive process truth from system timestamps and task records while protecting confidential financial information.
• Describe how an artifact was tested, rejected and corrected before executive acceptance on a prior fixed-scope engagement.
• Bring strong facilitation across central and local finance teams where neither geography nor hierarchy resolves competing priorities.
• Show commercial discipline in managing client-input delays, milestone changes and exclusions without allowing ambiguous scope expansion.

Working terms and boundaries

• The fixed fee covers five milestones over five months at five days a week: baseline, design, pilot one, pilot two and final handover.
• The Chief Accounting Officer accepts each milestone against completeness, traceability, control preservation and agreed performance measures within five working days.
• Management supplies the defined extracts, participants and policy constraints; delayed inputs are recorded through formal dependency notices.
• The assignment excludes accounting-policy authorship, audit opinions, sign-off of balances and ongoing close operation.
• Scope change requires a written change note stating added artifact, schedule effect, acceptance test and fee before work starts.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 6 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-CON-2026-TOR-05.