Three Locations. One Set of Books. No Way to Tell Which Was Working.

Company

Gleco Plating, Inc.

Founded

1979 — 47 years

Locations

Rowlett & McAllen, Texas

Operations

Two plating, one paint & powder

Engagement

Fractional CFO alongside in-house bookkeeper

Focus

Location P&Ls, cash, ERP, succession

The Challenge

Gleco Plating has been finishing metal since 1979. From plants in Rowlett and McAllen, Texas, it runs 13 plating lines and more than 150 finishing professionals — electroplating, anodizing, passivation, powder coating and industrial paint — to AS9100D, ISO 9001:2015, ITAR and DFARS. Customers include Lockheed Martin and Safran.

It grew quickly, and it grew by adding locations. That created a problem the financials weren't built to answer.

The reporting had been designed when there was one plant. As the company expanded to three operations — two plating and one paint and powder coating — everything still rolled into a single consolidated picture. Leadership could see how the business was doing. They could not see how any part of it was doing, which meant they couldn't tell a plant that was ramping from a plant that was losing money.

At the same time, growth was creating a cash problem that the profit figures flatly contradicted. And the systems running the operation had reached their limit.

There was one more thing, less visible than the rest. Ownership and operations had been with Gleco for essentially its whole history. That continuity is an asset most companies never get — but it also means the people making decisions had no outside reference point for whether their way was a good way.

What We Found

Consolidated financials hide exactly what a multi-plant operator needs to know. A strong location subsidizes a weak one and the average looks acceptable. Shared overhead sits in a corporate pool nobody can attribute. And the two Texas plants aren't running the same business: Rowlett sits in the DFW industrial and aerospace corridor, McAllen sits on the border serving a different customer base entirely. Different mix, different labor market, different margins — averaged into one number.

The paint and powder operation compounded it. Plating and powder coating look adjacent and behave differently on a P&L — different material costs, capital intensity, throughput constraints, and rework economics. Treating the third operation as more of the same guarantees you misjudge all three.

They were profitable every month and short of cash every month. Both were true.

The cash paradox had a mechanical explanation. Growth grows receivables — and in aerospace, defense, and automotive supply, the customers are primes and OEMs who pay on their terms, not yours. Payables grow too, but never enough to close the gap, because a plating shop makes weekly payroll for 150 people and buys chemistry long before the invoice it supports gets collected.

So every additional dollar of revenue quietly consumed cash. Nothing was wrong with the business; the growth simply had a funding requirement nobody had quantified.

What We Did

1. Rebuilt the financials by location

We restructured the reporting so each operation produces its own P&L, with shared and corporate costs allocated on a defensible basis rather than pooled where nobody owns them. For the first time, each plant could be judged on its own performance.

2. Separated plating economics from paint and powder

The two processes now report as what they are: distinct businesses with distinct cost structures and margin profiles, rather than one blended finishing number.

3. Made the cost of growth visible

We modeled how receivables, payables, and work in process move together as volume rises, so leadership can see what the next increment of revenue costs in cash before committing to it.

4. Helped them select and implement an ERP

The company had outgrown running QuickBooks alongside a shop-floor system. We helped evaluate the options, choose a fit, and implement it — so the office and the plant floor finally describe the same reality.

5. Brought an outside perspective to the strategic calls

Continuity produces knowledge no advisor can replicate. It also produces one unavoidable blind spot: if you've only ever worked here, you have nothing to compare here to.

That's the part we add that isn't accounting. We work across a lot of manufacturers, so we've seen what works and what doesn't at companies facing the same decisions — not benchmarks from a database, but judgment from having been in the room when other owners made the same call.

6. Worked through the debt and the company's structure

We helped the owners think through their debt in the context of where the business is going rather than where it has been, and how the company should be structured to support growth across multiple operations.

7. Worked with their bookkeeper rather than replacing them

Gleco had a capable in-house bookkeeper. Our job wasn't to displace that person but to build on top of them: the bookkeeper still owns the day-to-day, and we layer the close and the CFO function above it. Institutional knowledge in a 47-year-old business is worth protecting, and the person recording its transactions holds a lot of it.

8. Took on the month-end close and the CFO seat

A defined close producing consistent statements on a schedule — plus the interpretation layer above it: what the numbers mean and what to do next.

9. Worked with the family on what succession could look like

With the business moving toward a third generation, we work directly with the family to model what a transition could look like — raising the questions, attaching numbers to the alternatives, and putting structure around a discussion that's difficult to have entirely inside a family.

The Outcome

Gleco now manages three operations as three operations. Each has its own financial picture, so investment, pricing, and capacity decisions get made with the specific plant's economics in view rather than an average that describes none of them.

Growth has a known cash cost now, planned for rather than absorbed. The ERP gives the office and the plant floor one version of events. And the day-to-day accounting stayed with the person who already knew the business.

Underneath all of it is the succession question — and this is the part worth noticing. Location-level reporting, a real ERP, a documented close: those are management tools, but they're also what makes a business transferable. A company whose numbers live in a system can be handed to the next generation. A company whose numbers live in the founders' heads cannot.

Which is why this stopped being a CFO engagement somewhere along the way. The statements and the close are the deliverables. What the owners use us for is a second opinion from people who have watched other manufacturers face the same decisions — on debt, on structure, on where to grow, and on how to hand a 47-year-old business to their children.

The Takeaway

If you've added locations, your financials almost certainly haven't kept up — most reporting is built for the company that existed when it was designed. Consolidated statements will tell you the business is fine long after one part of it has stopped being fine.

And if you're growing while cash feels tighter than profit suggests, that isn't a contradiction to explain away. Growth consumes working capital by design; the question is whether you've quantified it before the next expansion.

If everyone in your leadership has spent their career at your company, that's a real strength with one real cost: depth without breadth. You can tell whether this year beat last year. You can't tell whether the way you do something is the way it's done well — that comparison has to come from outside.

One last thing, for the owner-led companies: bringing in outside financial help doesn't have to mean replacing the people who've been loyal to you. The better structure is usually to keep what works and build the missing layer on top of it.