How to build a finance function from greenfield in 7 months

An asset buyout looks straightforward on a deal sheet — a purchase price, an effective date, an inventory schedule. What it doesn't show is that the morning after, you own an entity with no SOPs, no ERP, no banking relationships, no audit trail, and a workforce that doesn't yet know how the numbers are supposed to flow.

This is what I inherited when a large Pharma API company executed a full asset buyout. Here's the playbook I ran to get it from zero to mature, audit-ready financial operations in seven months — what worked, what I'd do differently, and the order in which it actually matters.

1. Start with cash, not GL

Conventional wisdom says start with the chart of accounts. Don't. The first thing that breaks in a newly acquired entity is working capital visibility — vendors expect payment, customers stop paying because the entity name changed, and treasury has no view of either.

Week one priorities, in this order:

• Open the bank accounts — current account first, then OD/CC facility second.
• Migrate AR collections — write to customers with the new bank details same day.
• Daily cash position — even on Excel. Just the discipline of seeing it daily.

The rest can wait two weeks. Cash can't.

2. ERP, but only after SOPs

I onboarded the new entity onto Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The temptation with a fresh ERP is to start configuring it immediately. That's a mistake — you'll configure based on assumptions, not reality.

Better sequence:

1. Write the SOPs first — inward registers, GRN, QC release, sales order processing, customer credit policy.
2. Then map each SOP step to a Business Central transaction — purchase order → GRN → vendor invoice → payment.
3. Then configure — dimensions, posting groups, approval workflows.

An ERP doesn't replace bad processes. It encodes whatever process you give it. Write the process first.

This is also where group benchmarking earns its keep. The existing Ami entities had mature SOPs across inward, QC, accounting, sales. Lifting those wholesale — and adapting only what was genuinely different — saved months.

3. Bank relationships matter more than facility size

A new entity has no credit history. Banks will ask for it. The shortcut: leverage the parent group's existing banker relationships. Don't shop for the cheapest rate in month one. Get a relationship banker who knows the group, and start with a working-capital facility you can grow into.

What I arranged in the first six months:

• Fresh working capital limit against existing security from the parent
• ECLGS 5.0 sanction — government-backed, lower cost than market rates
• Buyer's credit line for imports — sets up forex hedging later
• IBR spread negotiated down to 1 paise

The total fresh limit grew to ~₹125 Cr by month seven. None of it was about being aggressive on rate. All of it was about pre-existing trust.

4. Close cycle: the discipline forcing function

Nothing reveals broken processes faster than trying to close the books. By month two, I was running a structured month-end close — even if half the numbers were still estimates.

The pattern I'd recommend:

• T+0 / T+5 close cadence — pick one and commit.
• Closure checklist — every line item assigned to a person with a deadline.
• Variance vs budget — even if the budget is rough, the discipline of explaining variance teaches the team how to think about the business.

At Ami, the new entity reached T+5 close by month four — and that close fed directly into the live Power BI MIS that promoters and management consume in real time.

5. Audit-readiness is a side effect, not a goal

The temptation in month six is to start preparing for statutory audit as a separate workstream. Resist it. If you've done the previous four steps well — SOPs documented, ERP transactions clean, bank reconciliations daily, monthly close on cadence — audit readiness is mostly free.

What you'll need on top of the close:

• Fixed asset register reconciled to GL
• Inventory physical vs system reconciliation
• Statutory dues (GST, TDS, PF) up to date and reconciled
• Related-party transaction schedule

None of these are hard. They're just diligence.

What I'd do differently

Two things, in retrospect:

1. Hire the team earlier. I spent the first month doing too much directly. The right hire — one strong assistant — in month one would have compounded across all six remaining months.
2. Document the SOPs as you write them, not in batch later. I had to retrofit documentation in month six. Should have been continuous.

The principle

A greenfield finance function is mostly about sequencing. The work itself isn't novel — banking, ERP, SOPs, close, audit are all known crafts. What kills greenfield builds is doing them in the wrong order, or trying to do them in parallel before sequence becomes possible.

Cash first. Then SOPs. Then ERP. Then close. Then audit. The order matters more than the speed.