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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/melmn2002 on 2024-08-10 11:35:18+00:00.

I am an account for a Software as a Service(SaaS) company that tends to have some…interesting ideas on how a business should be run.

(Yes, I am from Minnesota, why do you ask?)

We did ~30M in revenue when this issue came up, with myself as the only biller, issuing over 1k invoices every month, the bulk of which “needed” to be sent by business day 5.

I’d asked repeatedly for an assistant specifically for the billing process, and in turn got someone for collections(which I half-assedly had been doing by myself, and managed a 45 dso), for revenue posting(which wasn’t my purview anyway), and for payroll(which I was doing because we literally had no one else), but “no assistant budget could be found,” per the CFO. My supervisor, the controller, consistently tried to get me one, but was always denied every time she and I asked.

One lovely day, we get a new product: Adobe sign! Our clients can now send documents to their clients/talent for a low low price of exorbitant rate for tiered bundles. I was supposed to get a report of how many packages were signed, then compare to what they were being billed, and “float up” to a higher tier if they used more than they were contracted for 2 months in a row.

This worked…OK for the first few months, when only 100 or so clients used the product, AND I received a summary report of usage. But after those few months, the summary report stopped, and adoption exponentially grew. By April 2020, I was recieveing a 1 million(!) row spreadsheet, plus 2 other supplementary sheets that had 0(zero!!!) key identifiers, but no other instruction on how to complete my job.

I repeatedly told my supervisor that this wasn’t feasible in the long run, and I couldn’t figure out how to calculate floatups, but she was distracted with other things(hi, 2020!), and told me to “figure it out.” What I figured out is my need for an assistant was imperative now, and I literally couldn’t do my job as is, so I…didn’t. 0 floatups from April- October 2020.

Come October, sales, account management, and the c-suite finally figure out that Adobe revenue is lower than they expect based on usage.

I repeated my complaint that I couldn’t get everything done with the data they gave me(Adobe data was the least of the missing/incomplete data tbf) without losing in particular Adobe floatups, and EVERYTHING hit the fan. The CFO demanded a full documentation of the billing process because “finance can’t be losing so much revenue.” Read: why are you guys(and specifically me)fucking up?

I just smiled, nodded, and agreed to comply with an outside auditor documenting my billing process to find “my” holes.

In the 4(!) month process that took about two weeks out of every month, I described my process down to the nitty gritty detail, up to, and including the fact that:

A) I did not have a summarized user log. I got an 18k line user LISTING that I had to comb through for duplicates since 60% of our clients use 2 of our platforms and we didn’t(and still don’t) have single sign on(sso), and then pivot out and associate with each client manually via lookup against a non-key identifier manually entered into Sales Force(SFDC)

B) There was no db for which addon services our clients were using, and our Metadata platform(AMP) was just a manual check box for each client and each service upkept by the clients account manager

C) AMP had no reporting functionality to audit client usage verses contracted usage v billed usage.

D) There is more, but I think you get the picture.

When the outside consultant gave her report to my supervisor and the CFO, the call was quiet for a long bit, then the CFO said thank you, and disconnected.

About 15 minutes later, I get a direct teams video call from the CFO. “”, he said, “I want to apologize. The fact that is still a going concern at all is a testament to your hard work. What you have done with the shitty data you’ve been given is nothing short of amazing. Thank you.”

Slightly paraphrased, ofc, but that was the general gist(the going concern part, though? Direct quote)

The next business day, an ad was placed for an assistant for me, and for the SFDC deal desk manager.

I haven’t had to answer my phone, or dig in customer emails in 3+ years :)

I love my assistant and am so glad to have her. She makes my work life 1M times better.