Welding & Gas CFO club recap October 2026

Thanks to those that joined us for the CFO Club meeting this week, where we welcomed three new members.

Internal controls – best practices

• Background checks and credit checks
• AP and AR people switch on and off
• Limited number of people that can authorize money movement – typically limited to Owners and CFO
• 2 levels – authorizes (CFO and owners) and approvals, everything requires 2, example
  • Every automated ACH and Wire
  • Check runs are very minor – 85% ACH
  • Multi-level approvals – up to $100k, more people, $100-200k 6 people, $200-500k 4, $500k+ 2 owners only
• No vendors added without 3 people taking a look at it
• Minimum vacation time required for those in a financial position
• Dual authorization for ACH
• Positive pay – more bounced check from customers when they forget to submit theirs
• Audited financials vs review
• Cylinder cycle counting – check when there’s an issue or a big sales opportunity to check to see if they have everything on hand
• Track vendor owned cylinders for specialty mixes
  • Manually
  • Separately rented codes for others cylinders
• Open pick tickets – ordered, but never shipped, open order report

Automated expense reporting

• Rolling out a module that does automated AP matching with PO’s and receivers
• Claude bot to read expense reports – portable phone app, trying to build their own phone app
• Banks are giving free limited AP automation tool/expense reporting tool

Forecasting

• Likes setting expectations – what to the expect
• Getting true reflections from salespeople on business after the typical puffery is calibrated
• Data centers have been huge for distributors with them in their backyard
• Defense related work has also helped
• Growth across the country – Low single digits without, with data centers 10-20%+
• Initiatives
  • E-commerce – B2C, getting away from Amazon, takes too big of a cut
    • One looking to get it
    • Two looking to get out
  • Adding a new location – doing things remotely
  • Inventory of rebate programs from our vendors – purchasing and sales people not taking advantage of – figuring out true cost of product
    • Incentive purchasing team and share the rebate with them
    • Being more efficient – larger orders vs smaller – helped everything AP, etc.

Potential future topics

• Dead stock
• Educating employees on products and gases
• CRM – what are people using, how in depth, one repository
• Rebate program tracking

Future meetings

• December 16, 2026
• February 17, 2027

As always, if you have ideas on topics for future meetings, please let me know.