Three Numbers That Changed
- 4–6x faster | Inventory reconciliation
- 3–6x faster | Ramp-to-Sage preparation
- 50% sooner | Month-end borrowing-base certificate submission
Company Snapshot
Company: Paul Fredrick
Industry: Direct-to-consumer menswear
Founded: 1986
HQ: Wyomissing, Pennsylvania
Products used: Truewind workpaper agents
Paul Fredrick began as a direct-to-consumer shirt business and now sells a full menswear collection.
A Team That Lost Its Playbook Overnight
In mid-2025, abrupt turnover left Paul Fredrick's finance team without the people who had quietly run its core processes. Documentation was thin. Much of how the work actually got done had never been written anywhere.
"There was a lot of what I referred to as tribal knowledge, just things in their head that they knew how to handle certain ways, but they didn't necessarily share a lot of it with other team members," said Brady King, who moved from Senior Accountant into the Director of Finance role during that transition and took responsibility for the close and financial reporting.
The systems did not make it easier. Sage 50, an older inventory system, and a stack of Excel-driven financials did not connect cleanly. Inventory accounting, Ramp expense data, lender reporting, and other recurring tasks all required exporting CSVs and hand-assembling multi-tab workbooks before any real analysis could begin.
"Everything is Excel-driven, everything is spreadsheet-driven, and that just takes so much time," Brady said. "Where can we get the quickest input here to start to knock those things off of our hands and turn it more into a review process than the time-consuming prep process?"
That question had a deadline behind it. Paul Fredrick was also planning a broader move to QuickBooks and a redesign of its chart of accounts and financials. Brady needed to keep the monthly machine running and free up enough of his own time to lead that rebuild.
Teach the Process, Then Review the Output
Rather than replacing the systems Paul Fredrick already ran, the platform learned the existing processes and took over the assembly and preparation work sitting between them. The systems stayed where they were. What changed was who did the manual putting-together.
"We teach Truewind the process and it's able to do that putting-together part," Brady said. "Then you can go straight to reviewing and looking at the outcome of a reconciliation."
Usage started with Brady, with the CFO beginning to sign off as a reviewer. The work moved from prep to review one recurring task at a time.
Where the Hours Actually Went
The clearest wins are workflow-specific, not a blanket close-speed claim. Brady was candid that overall close duration is still hard to measure, because the old process was undocumented and his month-to-month availability varies.
Paul Fredrick's inventory reconciliation used to run about 2 to 3 hours without automation. A comparable clean run now takes about 30 minutes of Brady's active time: roughly 20 minutes pulling reports, 1 to 2 minutes uploading and rolling forward, and about 10 minutes reviewing the result. That makes a comparable routine run 4–6x faster, a 75%–83% reduction in active time. Exceptions can still lengthen either version, but the routine case is now mostly review.
Paul Fredrick's Ramp-to-Sage preparation used to mean 1.5 to 2 hours manipulating 3 or 4 CSV exports into the format Sage 50 expects. That is now about 20 to 30 minutes: export the data, upload it to the platform, check the result, and import it into Sage. Depending on the run, that makes the workflow 3–6x faster, a 67%–83% reduction in active time. The platform does not connect the two systems. It handles the reformatting labor that used to sit between them.
Paul Fredrick's lender reporting is required at least twice a month. The month-end borrowing-base certificate previously consumed roughly 1.5 to 2 elapsed workdays and was typically submitted on the 4th. Brady says he can now submit it on the 2nd in most cases, about 50% sooner by the team's calendar-day measure. Consolidation still involves workarounds, so this is faster preparation and submission rather than a fully automated certificate, and Paul Fredrick's process there continues to mature.
The staffing picture matters too, precisely because it is not a headcount story. Six finance contributors became five after a controller departed, and a sixth role was being filled at the time of the interview. Brady was explicit that this is not reduced headcount. What the automation added was capacity.
Capacity to Rebuild, Not Just Keep Up
The point of clearing the recurring prep was never the prep itself. It was reclaiming Brady's attention for the modernization Paul Fredrick actually wanted.
"We've been able to take some of the completely not value-added work that I'd been doing previously and shift to focus on making progress on revamping the chart of accounts," Brady said.
He landed on a description that captures how the team now thinks about it. "I would probably describe it as an extension of the accounting team," he said. "It's almost another employee without being another employee."
Before and After
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Inventory reconciliation | About 2 to 3 hours, manual | About 30 minutes, mostly review |
| Ramp-to-Sage preparation | 1.5 to 2 hours across 3 to 4 CSVs | 20 to 30 minutes, export to import |
| Month-end BBC submission | Typically the 4th, 1.5 to 2 workdays | Typically the 2nd in most cases |
| Brady's focus | Assembling spreadsheets | Reviewing output, rebuilding the chart of accounts |
What Brady values most is the runway underneath a team mid-transition. "It gives you something to work with to get you through those kinds of challenges," he said. "It's for that specific type of team that's saying, 'We need to get from here to here. How do we do it?'"
See what Truewind can automate for your finance team. Schedule a demo.
