Oil and gas accounting: frequently asked questions from the industry

Here are some issues that we encounter frequently:

• Backlog of non op joint interest billing and revenue data entry resulting in short cuts, workarounds, or just not keeping up with the monthly close.  There are often gains to be made with a combination of our offshore team and accounting leadership and/or incorporating business process automation to save money and reduce cycle time.
• Inability to produce meaningful and timely well profitability reports (WPR) or lease operating statements (LOS) that answer operational questions and add insight to managing the business.  You need to be able to both summarize WPR and LOS and drill into their details dynamically. The WPR and LOS need to be able to be grouped and subtotaled on a variety of attributes, such as the location, field, tank battery, route, play or acquisition, so you can see both trends, issues and errors as they are occurring not 30 to 60 days after the fact.

Outsourcing provides partial resource expertise on demand without having to hire, train or manage a team that may not have a clear career path within your organization. There are enormous hidden costs associated with retaining your own staff including overhead, benefits and the time and energy to manage, direct and maintain them. We provide a seasoned professional to interact with and manage the details for you.

Outsourcing is often considered when there is a force driving change, such as a loss of staff or leadership, a new acquisition or divestiture or a system change.  But, in any situation where you are not getting timely, actionable information to run your business, our team can assist.

 Remember, you don’t need to outsource everything. We work with clients and their existing staff and processes to determine the most productive and least costly solution – whether it is fully or partially outsourced. And, we strive to make a difference in the day-to-day management of our client’s organizations by equipping them with a solid set of financials and operational data using our agreed upon outsourcing mix.

Our team can be up and running within days, processing accounts payable invoices and running joint interest billing, among other services.  Our ability to hit the ground running with pre-built best practice system configurations and business processes enables our clients to make informed decisions about their policies and processes to best meet their requirements.  Spend a few hours with us, and we will craft a high-level plan and a clear or fixed monthly price model, so you can make an informed decision and compare costs clearly and quickly.

We can assess your existing accounting system and processes to help determine if you would be a good and candidate for us. Our team would ensure that there are potential improvements to be gained. If you’re questioning whether to work with us or not, here are some of the benefits our clients have realized:

•  Reduced headcount and infrastructure – lower your general and administrative (G&A) run rate
• Scalability – access to a broader and deeper resources as needed to manage changes in the business
• Fully shared and integrated oil and gas accounting system and automated business processes

1)     What does it cost?  

 We work with each client to determine a price model that is simple and aligned with their needs. We strive to adopt a fixed monthly fee, so the costs are easy to manage, and there is no long term commitment. 

2)     How do we work together? 

 We use a shared, web-based oil and gas accounting application with a shared file service. Our clients work in the same system and run reports or review the data out of the same database. We work together to customize our processes to define the hand offs and controls for treasury, AP workflow, revenue distribution and joint interest billing, etc.