Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Websites
Volunteer Experience
Timeline
Generic

Zain Qureshi

Mississauga,ON

Summary

Financial Leader with a proven track record of strategic enterprise transformation initiatives, analytics, M&A, governance synergies and integration. Exceptional at driving team performance through building collaboration, relationships and trust. Specializes in quantitative analysis, budgeting, accounting, reporting, forecasting, process improvements, and ERP implementation. In-depth understanding of Canadian, US GAAP and IFRS with international experience and global reach.

Overview

12
12
years of professional experience

Work History

Senior Consultant

Toronto Transit Commission (TTC)
01.2022 - 03.2025
  • Budget Management: Led the development of a 3-year, $100M IT operating budget, al
  • igning with strategic goals and actual expenditures.
  • Financial Reporting: Streamlined month-end close processes, reducing closing time by 20% through accurate journal entries and improved reporting.
  • Procurement Oversight: Reviewed and approved purchase authorizations, ensuring budget compliance and achieving a 10% reduction in operational costs.
  • Resource Planning: Managed headcount and labor budgets, improving resource allocation efficiency by 15%.
  • Budgeting Tool Implementation: Spearheaded the deployment of a new budgeting tool, enhancing non-finance managers' budget comprehension and improving forecasting accuracy by 25%.
  • Process Optimization: Redesigned the prepaids process, reducing processing time from 2 days to 2 hours, significantly increasing efficiency.
  • Data Analysis & Reporting: Utilized Power BI, Excel (advanced formulas, macros, pivot tables), Power Query, and DAX to create real-time financial dashboards, reducing manual reporting efforts by 30%.
  • Executive Presentations: Prepared and delivered monthly PowerPoint presentations to IT leadership, facilitating data-driven decision-making.

Director of Accounting and Corporate Controller

Notch Therapeutics Canada Inc
01.2020 - 01.2022
  • Established Finance Function: Built the finance department from the ground up, recruiting key hires and implementing accounting policies to ensure audit compliance.
  • Budgeting & Forecasting: Developed detailed software and hardware budgets for the IT department, facilitating accurate growth forecasts.
  • Expense Management Implementation: Sourced and led the implementation of Concur Travel, reducing the cost base and increasing expense reporting efficiency.
  • Procurement Optimization: Centralized procurement by implementing Prendio, a cloud-based e-procurement software tailored for biotech, resulting in a 30% reduction in lab supplies and equipment costs.
    Prendio
  • Series A Fundraising: Partnered with the CFO to successfully secure $85M USD in Series A funding, managing the process from term sheet negotiation to fund receipt within one month.
  • Payroll System Overhaul: Implemented Ceridian Powerpay for Canadian payroll, ensuring accurate and timely semi-monthly payments for 70+ employees. Also led the in-house implementation of ADP for US payroll, meeting tight turnaround timelines.
  • Team Building & IPO Readiness: Assembled a knowledgeable finance team with strong control capabilities, supporting 400% company growth and preparing for IPO readiness.
  • Financial Reporting: Created quarterly consolidated US GAAP financial statements across two entities and upgraded the accounting system to NetSuite within four months to support scalable decision-making.
  • Audit Management: Directed external audit processes, including the preparation of interim and year-end audit support materials and draft consolidated financial statements.
  • Tax Compliance: Oversaw the month-end close process and managed sales, income tax, and other remittances (SRED, HST/GST, US/Canadian filings, WSIB, etc.), ensuring timely submissions.
  • FP&A Leadership: Led financial planning and analysis, communicating key financial information to leadership, the board, and investors, and developed complex financial forecast models to guide strategic decisions.
  • Cash Flow Improvement: Enhanced cash flow by reducing the burn rate by 40% through extended payment terms and favorable financing deals with banking and debt partners.
  • Risk Management: Regularly reviewed insurance coverage and established a legal function to improve control procedures for new business relationships.
  • HR Collaboration: Partnered with HR to analyze and select an HRIS system within two months, improving company culture and processes.
  • Equity Management: Digitized option grants by implementing Share Works, leading to significant gains in productivity and efficiency.
  • Transfer Pricing: Established international transfer pricing policies and journal entry processes to ensure accuracy.

Director of Finance

MedCan Health Management Inc
01.2019 - 01.2020
  • ERP & HCM Systems Implementation: Led the successful deployment of SAP ERP and Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) systems within 8 months, ensuring rigorous data testing and accuracy, resulting in improved data management and financial statement precision.
  • Salesforce-SAP Integration: Directed the integration of Salesforce data into SAP, enhancing data accuracy, reducing manual entry, and streamlining cross-functional workflows, thereby improving decision-making processes.
  • Month-End Reporting Optimization: Streamlined month-end reporting by automating processes and delegating tasks effectively, reducing delivery time by 2 days.
  • Financial Reporting: Prepared quarterly financial statements to meet bank covenant requirements and authored the Management Discussion & Analysis (MD&A) for year-end audits, ensuring compliance and transparency.

Director of Finance

Lineman’s Laboratories of Canada
Mississauga
01.2018 - 01.2019
  • Department Leadership: Oversaw Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and Payroll departments, driving efficiency and implementing transformative change initiatives.
  • Payroll Cost Reduction: Implemented ADP payroll software, reducing payroll processing time by one week and achieving annual cost savings of $100K.
  • AP Digital Transformation: Led the implementation of a document management system to digitize the Accounts Payable process, resulting in $200K in annual savings and enhanced operational efficiency.
  • Cash Flow Improvement: Executed strategic initiatives to reduce past-due receivables by $1M within three months, significantly improving cash flow and reducing financing costs.
  • Profit Enhancement: Introduced cost-reduction strategies that improved net income by 50% over a six-month period.
  • Accelerated Financial Closing: Streamlined month-end procedures, reducing the closing cycle by 10 days to achieve a 7-day close.
  • Financial Reporting & Analysis: Delivered accurate and timely monthly, quarterly, and year-end financial analyses and reporting packages, providing actionable insights to senior management during routine operating reviews.

Senior Manager, Financial Planning and Analysis

Intuit Canada
Mississauga
01.2016 - 01.2018
  • Analytical Leadership: Provided strategic analytical support to business unit leaders by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to identify key trends, facilitating data-driven decision-making across finance, sales, marketing, product management, and customer care.
  • Data Management: Utilized Access database tools extensively to run queries and perform strategic analyses, enhancing data accuracy and operational efficiency.
  • Go-to-Market Support: Supported Go-to-Market teams through strategic business analysis and insightful reporting, strengthening overall business partnerships.
  • Performance Metrics: Developed scorecards, financial models, and SaaS operational metric reports, leading to a 20% improvement in team performance.
  • Revenue Recognition Expertise: Became a subject matter expert on ASC 606/IFRS 15 revenue recognition standards under GAAP, updating plans and forecast revenue models accordingly.
  • Subscription Growth: Aided the Accountant channel in executing key priorities and strategies, achieving 130% of the goal for Gross Net Subscriptions.
  • Executive Reporting: Delivered weekly formal presentations to senior leaders on current trends, performance, and opportunities, fostering a metric-driven reporting culture within teams.
  • Process Optimization: Led a cross-functional initiative to reduce financial forecasting process lead time by 29% through the elimination of legacy manual processes and the implementation of technology solutions and automation.

Group Financial Controller

Praxair Canada
Mississauga
01.2015 - 01.2016
  • Strategic Finance Partner: Reported to the VP of Finance, supporting four business units and advising the Canadian President and C-suite on key performance drivers through actionable insights and financial storytelling.
  • Team Leadership: Led a high-performing team of 20+ across AP, AR, payroll, and shared services—successfully mentoring several into internal promotions.
  • Working Capital Optimization: Improved working capital by 5% by renegotiating supplier payment terms, positively impacting bottom-line performance.
  • Audit & Compliance: Directed year-end audits, SOX compliance reviews, and managed foreign currency hedging strategies to mitigate financial risk.
  • Reporting Efficiency: Implemented best practices and streamlined reporting processes, reducing monthly reporting timelines by 5 days.
  • Capital Management: Managed a $300M fixed asset budget, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities and maximizing return on investment through stakeholder accountability.

Snr Finance Manager, Financial Operations & Pricing

Tim Hortons Donuts Ltd
Oakville
01.2013 - 01.2015
  • Master Data Oversight: Ensured integrity and accuracy of pricing, cost, materials, and vendor data in SAP master databases, supporting enterprise-wide decision-making.
  • Team Leadership: Recruited, coached, and led a team of four senior analysts—transforming them into key financial partners across multiple departments; chaired monthly team-building and performance meetings.
  • Department Transformation: Spearheaded a full team rebuild with a focus on professional development, coaching, and skills training, significantly boosting efficiency and internal client satisfaction.
  • Process Automation: Led the design and implementation of an automated SAP purchase order uploader, eliminating manual approvals and saving over $100K annually.
  • Performance Monitoring: Developed a financial scorecard that enhanced department performance tracking and improved operational effectiveness by 50%.

Education

Chartered Professional Accountant -

Canada (CPA, CMA Ontario)
01.2012

Bachelor Honors in Applied Business Management -

Imperial College London
UK
01.2007

Skills

  • MS Office- Advance
  • Sage 300 AccPac
  • Quickbooks for Accountants
  • ADP
  • JD Edwards
  • Oracle E-Business Suite
  • Hyperion
  • Great Plains
  • MS Dynamics
  • SutiExpense
  • TM1
  • Tableau
  • MS Nav
  • Vertica
  • Business objects
  • Deacom
  • Salesforce
  • SAP Concur expense
  • Concur Travel Management
  • Prendio
  • Harvest
  • Lucid Charts
  • Ceridian Powerpay
  • MS sharepoint
  • Xero
  • HUBDOC
  • Google Suite
  • SAP

Volunteer Experience

Humanity First, Vaughan, Strategic Finance Consultant, 01/01/13, 12/31/15, Worked with leadership team to set up charity status for Humanity first., Instrumental in identifying and reducing the cost base of the charity by 20%., Implemented QuickBooks accounting system to ensure that double book entry was correct.

Timeline

Senior Consultant

Toronto Transit Commission (TTC)
01.2022 - 03.2025

Director of Accounting and Corporate Controller

Notch Therapeutics Canada Inc
01.2020 - 01.2022

Director of Finance

MedCan Health Management Inc
01.2019 - 01.2020

Director of Finance

Lineman’s Laboratories of Canada
01.2018 - 01.2019

Senior Manager, Financial Planning and Analysis

Intuit Canada
01.2016 - 01.2018

Group Financial Controller

Praxair Canada
01.2015 - 01.2016

Snr Finance Manager, Financial Operations & Pricing

Tim Hortons Donuts Ltd
01.2013 - 01.2015

Chartered Professional Accountant -

Canada (CPA, CMA Ontario)

Bachelor Honors in Applied Business Management -

Imperial College London

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Zain Qureshi