Annie Willett-Thomas
Senior Controller
Annie runs the month-end close and monthly reporting for professional services and healthcare companies, including the technical work underneath it: revenue recognition by contract, acquisition accounting at closing, and the financial package owners and lenders review each month. She looks at everything first, then builds the checks that keep the numbers right.
Carlsbad, CA
Resources & News Featuring Annie Willett-Thomas
ARTICLE
How One Professional Services Firm Increased Profit by $600K Without Growing Revenue
Most professional services firms believe the same thing: if you want higher profit, you need more revenue. It’s a common assumption, especially for owners ...
About Annie
Annie Willett-Thomas is a highly skilled and experienced accounting, operations and financial leader with 15+ years of ensuring accurate financial reporting, maintaining compliance with GAAP standards across multiple business units in high-growth, high-volume industries, as well as, extensive experience in management and process improvement. She has a record of achieving financial targets across multiple industries and is an expert in cross-functional collaboration and data analysis.
At SPRCHRGR she owns the close and the reporting for a small group of clients at a time, and she handles the entries that take judgment: revenue recognition and accruals for work not yet billed, purchase accounting when a client buys a company, the cutoff when a client is sold, and the reconciliations that prove payroll, time tracking and the general ledger agree. Her reports pull straight from source data, so nothing in them depends on someone remembering to update a cell.
She’s currently working as the controller for a healthcare marketing consultancy that has been growing at >25% annually. She delivers the quarterly financial package and the monthly budget trackers its owners review, keeps its forecast, budget-versus-actual and working capital dashboards current, and recently built a report showing what it costs the firm to win new business. She also built a reconciliation that matches consultant hours in the time-tracking system to the general ledger, and while working through California's overtime rules she caught overtime that had gone unpaid. For a multi-entity, investor-owned advisory firm that reports to its lender every month, she owns revenue recognition, the schedule of contracts and the consolidating entries in the bank package. When that client acquired another firm, Annie booked the acquisition from the purchase agreement, traced the cash wires, and identified more than $5 million of shares that belonged on the balance sheet as a liability rather than equity. She also split the books at the closing date for a company sold to a strategic buyer in early 2026, putting roughly $3 million of transaction bonuses on the correct side of the close, and later in 2026 she took on a home health agency as its Senior Controller. On every account she keeps the same successful habits of proactive communication and accountability, so the client knows what's moving and who owns it.
Background
Annie has fostered a culture of innovation, accountability, and mentorship throughout her career to enhance team member productivity and satisfaction. She is a leader in optimizing operations, driving strategic initiatives, leveraging her business and financial acumen to implement innovative solutions to increase profitability and achieve business objectives.
In her first five years working for SPRCHRGR, Annie started as an individual contributor and grew to manage a team of accountants. Then she was recruited to work as VP of Operations and Healthcare Strategy for a multi-specialty medical practice where she led its clinical care and administrative teams through a 40% year-over-year increase in patient encounters. Annie used her own analysis of the practice's data to standardize and automate the processes behind that growth, which raised productivity 20%. SPRHCRGR welcomed Annie back onto our team in 2024 as a senior controller, where she gets involved in M&A transaction work and complex financial reporting.
Annie works hand in hand with Partner and CFO Patrick Sergott: he builds the forecasting and dashboard models, and she runs them each month, keeps the data underneath them clean, and walks clients through the results. She co-wrote our article on how a professional services firm added $600,000 to operating profit without growing revenue, where she made the case for fixing data before automating it. Departments that name things differently, and projects tracked one way in the CRM and another in accounting, will break an automated report every time. Clients notice the care. The owner of one healthcare consultancy told her the cost-of-new-business report she built was organized exactly the way he wanted it.
Education + certifications
- B.A., Communications, cum laude, California State University, Northridge
- QuickBooks Advanced ProAdvisor
- Continuing professional education: Lean Six Sigma; Business Management & Organization (Professional Services and Practice Management)
Off the clock
Annie is committed to raising a little human to be a happy, smart, upstanding societal contributor and good travel buddy, so she can continue her favorite hobby of traveling!
Favorite quotes: "A cluttered space is a sign of a cluttered mind" and "A clean house is a sign of a misspent life." Being inherently flexible, I go with the one that fits my week best!
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