Ok, so after the exam I went over to a coworker's house that recently joined our team.

The day before I talked to our CFO about additional opportunities to move further towards accounting.

Well, at the coworker's house I discovered that she discovered an affiliate fraud ring within the customer service department and thats how she progressed so quickly.

And I kept thinking about this... WE (as a company) should have caught that sooner. Why did we not?

The answer came to me today. We already have "accounting roles" but we are so separated throughout the company that the right hand isn't talking to the left.

When she started seeing chargebacks go up, we should have also been seeing that in our department (which is similar to purchasing because we make the contracts and spend the money). We also look at profitability anaylsis... so we should have been seeing delinquency rates per advertising partner. But we don't see that, delinquencies are the customer service side of things.

I also help with the budget to help our treasurer project cash flows.

Seems to me that what is currently being done in customer service is receivables, my department is purchasing/payables, and then the CFO and Treasurer are the executive management.

SO I emailed the CFO today (he wanted to know how I felt about the test) and I told him, what if we were able to create an official internal accounting department to enhance our communication, focus, and be able to detect frauds sooner, reduce the redundancy, and probably create further progress through this improved communication?

Its a shot. But I think thats the problem, I just hope the CFO is receptive to the idea that we really could have our own department without taking away from the people who actually receive the invoices and sign the checks. There is so much we could improve on that could still be done virtually.. improving our internal controls, budget planning, and purchasing functions.

I have been jaded the past few years cause I was continuously told "No, we don't have the resources" or "I don't want to take anything away from the payables people we already have." But maybe we don't have to take away from them... they can keep doing what they are doing & we can become better organized to help management?

It just took someone "new" to the team to re-inspire me to present these ideas again.