Shawn built an AI-forward accounting and CFO firm.
Island Waters Accounting founder and CEO Shawn Elliott brings more than 23 years in high-growth finance, accounting, and operations to a practice serving technology, healthcare, biotech, pharma, and pharmacy companies. He uses NumbersGame with Claude across approved QuickBooks Online and Xero client data to review work, build custom reporting, and retain professional approval before a ledger change.
The biggest win is doing custom reporting.
The biggest win is doing custom reporting.
Accounting and CFO advisory for companies that have outgrown DIY finance.
Island Waters works with founders who need more than transaction coding. They need reliable financial answers, a close they can stand behind, and reporting that helps them make decisions.
- Accounting and controller support: bookkeeping, quarterly reporting, month-end controller close, cash-flow management, and bill pay.
- CFO advisory: KPIs, custom reporting, fundraising, due diligence, board meetings, and exit preparation.
- Operating context: a financial baseline management, investors, and boards can use to move from the P&L to better decisions.
Before launching Island Waters, Shawn rebuilt finance functions under pressure. In one earlier role, he says he helped take a company from about $50 million to $500 million in revenue, through a clean audit and a private-equity sale. He also helped build a pharmacy operation from idea stage to about $50 million in revenue, alongside seven years at a fractional accounting firm.
Learn more about Island Waters Accounting, Island Waters AI Consulting, and Shawn’s Island Waters AI YouTube channel.
The core accounting work still lived inside separate systems.
When Shawn launched his firm, AI was already helping with branding, website work, and firm operations. The harder problem was the core accounting work inside client QuickBooks Online and Xero environments.
A concentrated cleanup
Shawn recently completed a 32-month cleanup involving more than 10,000 transactions, including missing vendor names and reclassification work.
An urgent reporting need
He estimates the cleanup took roughly 80 hours over two concentrated weeks, ending with an overnight push before investors released funds.
A missing workflow layer
He needed approved client books in the same working context as accounting review, schedules, reporting, and CFO work.
It really didn’t help with the core of what I do, which is client accounting inside of QuickBooks Online and Xero.
The goal was not unattended ledger activity. It was to reduce manual retrieval and repetitive preparation while retaining professional review of what changed and why.
Put the ledger into the accounting conversation.
Shawn began with practical QuickBooks Online tests: a journal entry, a source-transaction change, and matching a supporting PDF to the relevant transaction.
He then mapped the recurring work of his firm: daily coding, payroll review, month-end close entries, custom reporting, KPIs, and board preparation. Shawn describes NumbersGame as the connector he needed for the QuickBooks Online and Xero workflows he had designed in Claude. This is Shawn’s account of his own implementation, not a generic promise about every deployment.
From transaction review to a board-ready financial narrative.
Shawn uses Claude with NumbersGame through the sequence behind his client deliverables.
1. Review the accounting detail
Review bank-feed and payroll activity to surface items that deserve attention, including possible fixed assets or prepaid expenses recorded in the P&L.
2. Prepare the month-end work
Prepare recurring close work, including prepaids and depreciation, then review it against the client’s books and accounting policies.
3. Build the report the client needs
Create reporting that moves from general-ledger line to vendor detail to underlying transactions, rather than relying only on a standard system report.
4. Move into KPIs and the board deck
Carry the reviewed reporting into KPI analysis and board preparation, focusing the time on the financial story and the next decision.
5. Make the process repeatable
Document review points in an SOP for a staff accountant and turn the workflow into a scheduled Claude skill on the third calendar day of each month.
A clearer answer than a standard P&L.
For a firm owner or fractional CFO, the useful report is often not the one that comes out of the accounting system by default.
Shawn wanted a 12-month Excel report with monthly columns and a collapsible group structure from general-ledger account to vendor to individual transaction detail. He says this is now a standard deliverable in his firm rather than an exceptional custom project.
I asked Claude to use NumbersGame to do exactly that. I didn’t want to give it an easy task of just one month. I wanted to see 12 months broken down by monthly columns and then collapsed by GL, vendor, detail using groups in Excel.
The report gives Island Waters a way to show clients both the headline and the support behind it when they need to understand a variance, a spending change, or a question before a board meeting.
Control is part of the workflow, not a final click.
Shawn’s view is that AI can accelerate preparation and analysis, but it does not remove the need for oversight.
I liken AI as a college educated intern. In accounting firms they don’t let interns loose without proper oversight, neither should you.
- Review and approval: the professional reviews evidence, decides the accounting treatment, and approves any proposed ledger change.
- Accountability remains human: the workflow can collect information, trace detail, and prepare proposed work, but it does not independently determine the right accounting treatment.
- Client communication: Shawn advises firms to disclose AI use, use an appropriate business plan for their chosen AI provider, and build review requirements into firm instructions and workflows.
Shawn also performed his own diligence on NumbersGame’s security approach and audit history before using it with client financial data. That evaluation reflects his experience and operating model.
More capacity for reporting, advisory, and consulting.
Shawn has not run a formal time study. His own estimate is that his day-to-day accounting-through-month-end-report process moved from roughly 10 to 15 hours per month to roughly one to two hours per month.
The more important change is what he can do with that recovered capacity: stronger reporting and insight for clients, plus a new AI-consulting line for other firms that have asked about the workflow. This is Shawn’s estimate for his solo-firm workflow, not an independently verified NumbersGame performance study.
I can still service my clients but give them much better reporting and insight into their business that wouldn’t have been as easy to produce as they are now.
A workflow that keeps evolving with the firm.
Shawn would like connections to systems such as Maxio and Tabs for clients with ASC 606 workflows. This is customer feedback, not a NumbersGame product-roadmap commitment.
The Island Waters workflow, explained.
See the workflow on your own books.
Bring a QuickBooks Online or Xero question, a close-review problem, or a reporting request to a NumbersGame walkthrough.