Company News

CPA Practice Advisor Honors FloQast’s CEO as a 20 Under 40 Vendor Superstar

Oct 8, 2018 Blake Oliver

CPA Practice Advisor, one of the accounting industry’s leading publications, identifies young leaders in the accounting profession each year. We’re proud that FloQast CEO and co-founder Mike Whitmire made the “20 Under 40 Vendor Superstars” list for 2018!

When software succeeds, it’s thanks to the many talented people who developed it from conception to execution. Products, especially business software, must constantly change to adapt to changing market conditions. It’s the visionaries at companies who can identify and evolve a product to meet customer demands. At FloQast, we wouldn’t be where we are without the dedicated team and strong leadership of thinkers who understand our industry’s pain points, and how to solve real problems for our customers. We’re honored that our peers in the accounting profession have recognized one of our very own in their industry-wide acknowledgements.

CPA Practice Advisor, one of the accounting industry’s leading publications, identifies young leaders in the accounting profession each year. We’re more than a little enthusiastic to share with you that FloQast CEO and co-founder Mike Whitmire made the list for 2018, especially since it’s a short list of 20 individuals that recognizes not only development of technology that serves our profession, but also one that recognizes talent based on achievements early in one’s career.

Say what? It’s true — CPA Practice Advisor’s 20 Under 40 Vendor Superstars program honors those who are developing new processes and technology for productivity, efficiency and profitability, but also honors those doing it under the age of 40. “We are fortunate to be surrounded by so many young professionals who are sharing their ideas, skills, and enthusiasm with the goal of making the accounting profession a better place. Change is occurring rapidly in our profession and this year’s award winners are embracing and welcoming the changes,” said CPA Practice Advisor’s Editor-in-Chief Gail Perry, CPA. “They are strong, dedicated, spirited leaders and we are proud to recognize these professionals as the 2018 ’40 Under 40 in the Accounting Profession’ and the ’20 Under 40 Vendor Superstars.’”

We can sense Mike laughing sheepishly.

So who is this guy that’s co-steering the FloQast ship?

He’s a former CPA who spent three years of his career in audit at Ernst & Young in the same city that FloQast was founded — Los Angeles. There, he performed public company audits, opening balance sheet audits, cash to GAAP restatements, merger and acquisition audits, and SOX compliance testing.  After cutting his teeth at E&Y, he joined Cornerstone onDemand as the fifth member of its pre-IPO accounting team, before rapidly growing its member base to over 40 in order to take it public. It was in this role that Mike experienced the pain firsthand of the cumbersome, manual close process and came up with the idea for FloQast.

Today, Mike, along with his co-founders, Chris Sluty (also a former accountant and CPA) and Cullen Zandstra and the rest of FloQast team are strategically coming up with new ways to ease the month-end close process and compliance changes across all industries. For example, with the ASC 606 compliance deadline looming for private companies on January 1, 2019, FloQast just debuted its multi book accounting capability to help with the dual reporting that is now required to comply with the updated revenue recognition standard.

The team also created new organizational tools for accounting teams that may have data across different locations. Perm Docs is a new feature built into FloQast’s award-winning close management software to centralize the storage of important supporting documentation needed for any given close or subsequent audit, but not tied to just one time period. Perm Docs provides a single, centralized repository for critical accounting documents that is fully configurable and automatically viewable and accessible from within FloQast to help improve organization and team efficiency. It’s this type of simple, yet time-savings packed capability that makes life easier for accounting teams–and it’s due to Mike’s and many of the numerous former accountants employed at FloQast’s heritage that recognize and prioritize development of these kind of capabilities.

The team is now focused on tackling other technology challenges. Rest assured the innovation train is not slowing and you’ll will continue to see new capabilities and solutions that will make accounting teams more efficient and their lives less stressful.

And Mike? Congratulations, but can you at least give us a heads up as to what’s coming up next?

You can read more about the 20 Under 40 and Mike on CPA Practice Advisor, and more about our recent product announcements here.