David Richardson is a Senior Accounting Manager and has been working at Optima Office since 2021. He is a legacy accounting person, which he found out later is a family trade as well. David's dad before him was an accountant, his aunt, his cousins, and a few other members of his family were accountants before he even started his journey. David fell into accounting when he was in junior college and loved it. He was not aware of his rich family history after he passed his first three accounting classes with great ease. After college, he went into hospitality and ended his career as Assistant Controller at RBI. He was also a Task Force DOF where he traveled around the country, rehabbing hotels that needed to be in line with corporate standards. After hospitality, he worked in non-profit, bookkeeping/tax firms, property management, and so on. He enjoys helping small companies that earn anywhere from 2 – 75 million a year.
David likes working with small companies, which allows for a more personal relationship with the staff. This helps everyone to be more knowledgeable about their part in the financial process. David is a quick study and has used a myriad of accounting software over the years such as, Sage, QB, QBO, proprietary accounting software, Ajera, Great Plains, and a few more secondary accounting programs as well. He enjoys auditing first the books and then processes to ensure that when a problem is fixed it remains that way. Being able to create consistency allows for better budgeting, forecasting, and growth.
David loves being able to understand the tone at the top of companies and how it directly affects the accounting. He's also interested in how the operations generate the source documents that affect JEs. "Though that is only one part of the puzzle, understanding individual departments and the internal controls are what helps the entire process. This allows for cost saving practices, increased efficiencies, improvements in internal practices (reducing paper use), and ultimately more strategic growth of the accounting department/company," says David.
David is an event organizer for video game tournaments and has been doing that for 20 years. It’s a niche culture of video game players that have communities all over the world. He spends a large amount of his energy being a parent trying to make sure that his children can retire early! 😊 *fingers crossed*