Aaron the AI guy

Aaron Drasner · Finance Engineer

I'm a hands-on finance executive with 25 years of experience building and scaling finance functions — CFO, Controller, VP Finance, across VC-backed, PE-backed, and publicly held companies. I've been building things my entire career. With AI in the mix, this is what I was made to do.

Stop being the integration layer.

The hours don't drop because you found one magic tool. They drop when every system talks to every other system.

From a post that reached 82,702 people.

Highlights

25 years

        Close
        5 hour closeAn AI-powered close process — full financials plus the meals tax filing, with ~90% of entries preparing themselves.
      
        Built with AI
        16 skills, 3 appsRunning across two businesses with almost nothing operationally in common — a nine-location food operation and a digital agency.
      
        Turnaround
        $1M loss → $1M profitIn one year, by rebuilding the operations structure and the team behind it.
      
        Growth
        2× revenue and profitabilityBuilt the finance team and the systems that got it there.
      
        Fundraise
        Successful PE roundEnabled it by establishing departmental reporting, identifying where the profit actually was, and getting the books in shape ahead of the ERP implementation.
      
        Profitability
        First in company historyThrough operational efficiencies and changes to the business model.
      
        ERP
        4 platforms implementedNetSuite delivered in three months against a six-month plan. Dynamics 365 across three companies on three continents. Plus Sage Intacct and Deltek.
      
        Audit
        A dozen-plus auditsMost recently three straight years clean with zero recommendations, each completed within 60 days of calendar close.

Selected work

16 skills · 3 apps

Anatomy of a five-hour close

Step by step through a nine-location month-end — retail and food hall sales, cash, tips across two POS systems, card spend, payroll, deposits in transit, fixed assets, allocated reporting — and what runs each part of it now.

20 → 11 → 5 hrs Read the case study →

The month-end package that builds itself

A monthly financial workbook and a thirty-one slide partner deck that used to take three to four hours of hand-keying every month — rebuilt in six hours as something that produces itself, with four partner personas pressure-testing the deck before a partner sees it.

Paid back in 2 months Read the case study →

Apps I've built

Internal tools for a nine-location food business — demand forecasting and production planning, end-of-day cash deposits, and bi-weekly tip payouts across two POS systems. Each one replaced a manual process I was running myself.

3 in daily use Screenshots & detail →

The billing system a finance person is building

An agency billing every month out of one shared spreadsheet, with no real revenue subledger behind it. I'm building the replacement myself — a full billing platform with contract-term fee logic, retainer hour banks, and an audit trail on every decision. Still in progress, scored each month against what actually got invoiced.

In progress Read the case study →

Skills for the donut shop

The recurring finance work of a nine-location food business, written down once so it runs the same way every time — sales journal entries across two POS systems, tips, deposits in transit, payroll, fixed assets, and fully-loaded reporting by location.

10 in production See the skills →

Skills for the marketing agency

The same method on a business with almost nothing operationally in common — a digital agency's monthly partner package, revenue recognition off a billing sheet, payroll, the prepaid tie-out, and expense and revenue variance analysis.

6 in production See the skills →

Writing

1,959 followers on LinkedIn

I write about the finance function — what's actually changing in it, and what only looks like it's changing.

April's month-end close looked a little different

The old process: five separate Google Sheets, manually updated with lookup formulas and hand keying. Some figures linked into Slides, others copy-pasted as screenshots. Commentary and flux analysis written by hand. Three to four hours of production work every month.

The new process: one Excel file, a skill connected to QuickBooks that updates the file and the full deck — charts, graphs, commentary, all of it. Plus four partner personas built to pressure-test the deck before it ever hits a real partner's inbox.

The most interesting part isn't the time savings. It's that my job changed. I'm no longer buried in data production — I'm reviewing the output to make sure it tells the right story.

6 hours to build 2,147 impressions · 32 reactions

Most small businesses are overpaying for software they barely use

Paying a monthly subscription for a platform you use 10% of is a bad trade when you're small. Early-stage businesses run on workflows no generic product ever anticipated — so you bend your operation to fit the software instead of the software fitting you.

When you build the app, you build the guardrails in. The process stops being a document nobody reads and becomes something the tool enforces. Compliance by design.

Buy software when you're big and your processes are standardized. Build it when you're small and they're not.

1.5 hours to build 1,213 impressions

The D in EBITDA

Laptops. Three years, then I buy them again. How is that not operating? New location. Floors, coolers, hoods, counters. We can't unlock the door without any of it. How is that not operating?

I'll give you the timing argument. Everything else feels like we strip out the D because the number looks better without it.

15,338 impressions 14 comments

Simple solutions to complex problems

Usually that means taking a tangle of spreadsheets — different people, different purposes, different formats — and consolidating them into something that just works.

The frustrating formula work is automated, so I can focus on the design and the value of the output. It's the most fun I've had in my career.

1,271 impressions

Speaking

Building a Donut Forecasting App & 5-Second Treasury Sync

Rillet Close Club · Session 15 · 60 minutes

Walking through the demand forecasting app I built for a nine-location donut chain — and replacing $600 a month of software with a Square-to-QuickBooks skill that took ninety minutes to write.

$600/mo replaced Watch on YouTube →

The Close Club community film

Rillet · featured

Rillet's film about the Close Club community — CFOs, controllers, and finance practitioners working out what AI actually changes about the job. I'm one of the members featured.

Watch on rillet.com →

Building Your First Finance Tool

Rillet Vibe Academy · co-host

A session in Rillet's Vibe Academy — a curriculum subtitled "Built for the Finance Engineer," which is where the title I use comes from. Prompt, build, iterate, and walk away with something that actually works.

View the course →

Background

Happy Cog
Controller 2025 – present

Union Square Donuts
Fractional Controller · previously Financial Controller 2026 – present · 2019 – 21

Activate Marketing Services
Chief Financial Officer 2024 – 25

829 Studios
Chief Financial Officer · Director of Finance & Accounting 2020 – 24

Finomial
VP, Finance & Operations 2018

Locust Walk
VP, Finance & Operations 2017 – 18

Fuld & Company
Chief Financial Officer · VP Finance & Operations 2012 – 17

Earlier: Sparkline Digital, Grand Circle, Cambridge Systematics, Hydro-Scape. Consulting for Flowhub, Pemberton Farms, General Indemnity Group, and Everybody Fights. BBA in Accounting, Framingham State.