Client Success Stories

Laying the Foundation for Restoring Lives 

Started over a decade ago, John Grace Restoration & Construction (John Grace), a Michigan-based property restoration and repair business, evolved from its early days of repairing dishwasher leaks to the full restoration business it is today. Working both residential and commercial insurance claims, John Grace brings the necessary expertise to help businesses and individuals manage the claim process and overcome property challenges – from small repairs and painting to extensive fire loss clean-up and full rebuilds. Putting customer care at the heart of its mission has afforded the locally owned business to expand its impact across the entire West Michigan coast.

A Pivotal Point

With the continued enhancements of service offerings and growing geographic reach, John Grace’s CEO Julie Cnossen realized a need to strengthen its financial acumen to help the company move forward toward its strategic goals. Already working with Doeren Mayhew for payroll and traditional tax services, the team recognized they could rely on the expertise of the firm’s Outsourced Accounting Group to gain insights into their current financial position. With client referrals providing five-star ratings across the board, outsourcing to Doeren Mayhew seemed like a win-win situation in Cnossen’s mind. It allowed John Grace to keep its services bundled with a provider who was invested in its success, while freeing up its internal team to focus on doing right by customers.

Multi-Entity Structuring, Improved Reporting and More

Priming John Grace to optimize its financial function required Doeren Mayhew to take a deep dive into understanding the business and the financial processes of the organization. The team quickly realized consolidating the books and bringing automation to the table would be a game-changer for John Grace. 

Making this happen required roadmaps of data inputs to be explored, data workflows to be put into place and the books to be built out to match the three locations with a multi-entity reporting structure. Doing so provided more insight to manage projects and gain more knowledge on the operations of each individual location, putting into place a better process of checks and balances, and positioning them to scale locations appropriately. 

With a multi-entity structure in place, processes and automation could be standardized. Doeren Mayhew’s accounting pros stepped in and took over monthly financial reporting, created a KPI scorecard, integrated a new expense system and streamlined reporting with weekly automated real-time insights. 

Bringing this all together has allowed Cnossen and her team to see a holistic picture of the business to analyze and operationalize it – from the highest level to the most granular restoration service areas.

Forward Focus

With a strong foundation to match their vision for the future, John Grace now has the insights necessary to act quickly on market changes, rectify issues at hand, make informed decisions with a consolidated package of insightful financial data and scale finance operations with the business as it grows.

“Doeren Mayhew has brought a fresh perspective to our financials, with data readily available to help us evaluate the business,” says Julie Cnossen, John Grace’s CEO. “Lisa, and her team, have been a real asset to John Grace. Acting as an extension of our internal team, we have a lot of trust in Lisa’s judgment and appreciate her bringing ideas to the table to continue positioning us for success.”