Support for carve-outs, continuity gaps and cross-border complexity — where the reports must reconcile to group, to local statutory, and to tax. Six Western European jurisdictions populated. Fixed-fee engagements from €25,000.
The group reports under IFRS or US GAAP. The local entity reports under HGB, PCG, FRS 102, Swiss GAAP, BW 2 Title 9, or another.
The tax authority looks at the local accounts. The audit firm looks at both. The board expects one coherent answer.
Technical, evidential, and time-sensitive.
That is the point at which generic finance support stops being enough. Stirling Resources provides interim and fractional senior finance support for multi-GAAP situations: tightly scoped, fixed-fee where possible, and executed through a documented methodology.
This is not a generalist finance consultancy. It is one person, one focus, one operating model. A 90-minute scoping conversation is the first step; if there is no fit, both parties know inside the hour.
Different triggers, different timetables, different stakeholders — but the same underlying problem: where group reporting meets local statutory & tax reality, somebody has to bridge the two properly, and under time pressure.
The deal is done. The disruption is not. The Transition Service Agreement is ending or the integration is beginning, but the timetable does not pause. Reporting starts. Auditors arrive. Tax inspections can happen. Before the organisation is fully ready, someone has to make the first answer defensible.
High urgency · Fixed window · PE-owned platformsA senior controller leaves. The handover never happened. The close is mid-flight. The filing deadline has not moved. Somebody has to step in without losing audit confidence, missing a filing, or exposing the gap before the work is steady.
Acute timing · Continuity-led · Mid-cycle pickupThe function still works — until it doesn't. Processes are improvised. Methodology lives in heads, not files. Audit findings recur. New ownership, new leadership or regulatory change makes the current arrangement too fragile to defend. The task is to redesign it before the next cycle tests it.
Planned scope · Improvement-led · Documented handoverThe carve-out where the auditor's first PBC list arrives before the new finance team is functional. The bolt-on where statutory positions across two jurisdictions disagree, and the auditor finds it first. The retirement where the long-tenured controller walked out the door with the temp/perm differences in their head. These are the situations where the methodology earns its fee — and where the alternative is a finding nobody wants to explain to the board.
The trigger may differ. The work tends not to. Most engagements take one of three kinds: rebuild the function, run the cycle, or ready it for a clean handover.
Establish the finance function or rebuild it after a discontinuity. Set the calendar. Make the first close work. Hand over when the dust has settled.
The recurring cycle of close, consolidation, statutory accounts, and tax. Built once, documented properly, handed over to operate at lower cost.
Reporting cleanup for a transition — a sale process, a regulatory change, or a permanent CFO arriving. Documented, reviewable, defensible.
Six Western European jurisdictions are already populated. More are being added. Each one reviewed properly in engagement.
Fig 01 · Coverage matrix · jurisdictions × work types · filled = populated, dashed = in build Not promised. Populated. Not theoretical. Worked.
What matters is not simply having a method, but having one in a form that can actually support delivery. Fig 02 sets out the whole engagement on one page; the figures that follow drill into how it works.
Fig 02 · Scope of the engagement · what it looks at → what it does → what it produces → where Everything the project examines, and everything it delivers — on one page.
Fig 03 · The two-layer architecture · group reporting flows through the bridge into local statutory and local tax Three languages. One set of facts. All of them defensible.
Fig 04 · The four-domain library · what's actually built and documented Working files. Not slideware. Built to run the work, not to decorate it.
The work is technical, but the structure is simple: one process layer that travels across engagements, and one framework layer that changes jurisdiction by jurisdiction. New coverage extends the system without rewriting it. Fig 03 shows the principle. Fig 04 shows what is built and documented to execute it.
Each jurisdiction file documents the recurring temp/perm differences, the specific tax computation mechanics, the local statutory narrative requirements, and the audit-pack assembly approach. Each group GAAP file documents the consolidation mechanics — intercompany eliminations, FX translation, acquisition accounting, equity method, NCI.
The library is continuously extended. Italy and Luxembourg are next; Belgium, the Nordics, and central Europe follow. Each addition is built to the same two-layer pattern: the process layer needs no change; the new jurisdiction plugs in alongside the existing six.
Every jurisdiction file is first-pass methodology requiring final review by a locally qualified practitioner — a Wirtschaftsprüfer, an avocat fiscaliste, a chartered tax adviser, a Commissaire aux Comptes. This review is part of every engagement, not an afterthought. The proposition is honest about what one person can verify alone.
This methodology works alongside CCH Tagetik · OneStream · Workiva · LucaNet · SAP Group Reporting · Oracle Hyperion — and other corporate performance management platforms. It provides the multi-GAAP judgement layer that the platforms assume but do not themselves provide.
Pre-platform during the first 180 days, before implementation begins. Around-platform where the methodology gap is the binding constraint, not the software. Post-platform-but-pre-people when the senior controller who knew how to operate the system has departed.
This practice is built on finance work seen from several sides: operator, controller, external reporting lead, founder, analyst, engineer. That matters because multi-GAAP situations are rarely only technical. They are operational, evidential, commercial and time-sensitive at once.
One conversation. One scope. One answer: fit or no fit.
The first conversation is a 90-minute scoping session at no cost. If there is a fit, the next step is a written scope and fee. If there is not, both sides know quickly and cleanly.
A defined deliverable inside a defined window. The simplest contractual model and the most common entry point.
Ongoing fractional senior finance time. Two to four days per week, scoped per month. Suited to portfolio companies post-carve-out, or reporting functions in transition.
Full-time interim senior finance leadership. For acute situations: an unexpected departure, a stalled carve-out, a transaction running hot. Travel and on-site time at cost.
The proposition is narrower than finance consulting by design. It is not built to cover every finance need. It is built to solve a particular class of problem properly.
Not buy-side diligence. Not debt advisory. Not tax-only consulting. Not ERP implementation.
Alongside the multi-GAAP reporting practice, I publish independent strategy work. The Missing Move is a free methodology and growing case library for resolving business contradictions — the trade-offs where every obvious move makes something else worse.
Particularly useful for diligence and value-creation work in succession-driven SME acquisitions, where every target is a bundle of unresolved contradictions waiting to be made visible.
Bring the situation as it is: the deal, the departure, the damaged process, the drifting frameworks, the deadline. Leave with a clear view on whether this problem fits the proposition, and whether the proposition fits the problem.