How Nevis Brands Built a Finance Operation That Holds Up to a National Audit without Hiring Finance In-House
“Working with Analyst House has been, and I don’t overuse this term, transformative for us as a business.”
Summary
The challenge.
Nevis Brands — the U.S. operating arm of a publicly traded, multi-state cannabis and hemp-derived THC business — had outgrown a local accounting firm just as new states, new sales channels, and the scrutiny of a public-company audit were multiplying its financial complexity.
The solution.
Analyst House took over the full finance operation: invoicing and accounts receivable, inventory and cost of goods tracked by product, state, and quarter, quarterly consolidation with the public parent, and annual audit support rigorous enough to satisfy a national audit firm. Beyond the books, the team delivers periodic reporting on the health of each market — much of it unprompted — so the CEO can see where the business is winning and where it can improve.
The outcome.
John Kueber reclaimed 10 to 15 hours a month and, more importantly, gained numbers he trusts and can defend in a boardroom or an audit — freeing him to focus on running and growing the business.
The Challenge
A local firm couldn’t keep pace with multi-state growth or a public company’s audit
When John Kueber went looking for a new accounting firm in late 2024, Nevis Brands’ U.S. operating business was already more complicated than its books could comfortably carry. The company was running about five product licenses — one major line and four newer, growing ones — across state lines, working with ten or eleven partners. A referral from a trusted connection, Joe Baldwin, brought Kueber to Analyst House. The local Seattle firm he’d been using had real deficiencies, and his ambition at the outset was modest: get the books in order and run them more efficiently.
The complexity did not wait. Almost immediately, the business took on new layers: a new partner that would add four or five states, the hemp-derived THC opportunity, direct-to-consumer platforms launching on Shopify, and distributor arrangements that went well beyond simple licensing. Each one added its own wrinkle to billing and inventory. Over the course of the engagement, Nevis roughly doubled the number of partners and customers it worked with — not by doubling revenue, but by multiplying the relationships, SKUs, and states the finance function had to keep straight.
Underneath all of it sat a harder constraint. Nevis’s operating business rolls up into a publicly traded parent, which means the operating financials have to sync cleanly with the public company every quarter. Once a year, a large national audit firm spends roughly three months going through everything — inventory, partner reporting, the accounting treatment of every wrinkle. For a company growing 10 to 20% a year, that is a heavy burden to carry, and the cost of getting it wrong is not hypothetical.
“If our U.S. operating business isn’t being run properly from an accounting standpoint, that’s going to create a lot of challenges.” — John Kueber, CEO, Nevis Brands
The Solution
A full finance function: market-level margins, audit-ready books, and reporting nobody had to ask for
Kueber hired Analyst House to get the books in order and run them more efficiently. What he describes getting is something larger: a finance function that does the operational work, sits in the room when it counts, and surfaces things he didn’t know to ask for.
“What we’ve inherited is a team that goes beyond basic bookkeeping duties and is a really important partner for us to understand the financial operations of our business.” — John Kueber, CEO, Nevis Brands
Invoicing and AR that scaled with every new state and channel
Before Analyst House, Kueber could lose a half-day — sometimes two — personally making sure every invoice was correct and out the door. As Nevis added partners, launched direct-to-consumer on Shopify, and moved into new distributor arrangements, the billing only got more involved. Analyst House took it over, and scaled with it: “you’ve been able to relatively easily scale as we’ve added on those new customers.” Because Nevis’s terms are firm, cash still lands on roughly the same schedule — but the accuracy is now something Kueber can trust, and the time is his again.
“I get to focus on running the business, working with partners, and I’m not spending a half day or two making sure every invoice is correct and accurate and sent out properly,” he says — which is the point. He is not paid to be the company’s bookkeeper.
Inventory and COGS by product, state, and quarter
Early on, Nevis managed inventory and the inputs that go into its products out of a single bucket. As the business expanded into states with different cost structures, that stopped working. Analyst House built the partitions — setting up separate tracking by location and showing how the pieces fit together — so the company now sees not just top-line performance by market, which it always had, but margin and cash flow by market. “We can now understand how each market is doing — not just from a top-line perspective, we knew that already, but from a margin perspective, a cash flow perspective,” Kueber says. The deeper payoff is trust in the consolidated numbers.
“The key thing for us is the confidence in the aggregate numbers, knowing that they’re driven by these different smaller buckets that we’re keeping a closer eye on.” — John Kueber, CEO, Nevis Brands
Quarterly consolidation and audit support that holds up to national scrutiny
As the operating arm of a public company, Nevis has to reconcile its financials with the parent every quarter and then survive an annual audit run by a large national firm — about three months of third-party scrutiny. Analyst House performs to that standard. Just as important, the team can sit in the audit conversations and defend how things are accounted for. The engagement is led by Roger, who spent years at Deloitte auditing large, complex enterprise environments, and the firm carries CPAs on staff — which is exactly the kind of bench that the audit table demands. For Kueber, this is where the line between a bookkeeper and a finance partner is sharpest: plenty of competent people simply can’t be in those meetings.
“There are a lot of bookkeeper-type folks we could be working with that wouldn’t be able to be in those meetings, because sometimes the discussions are beyond their level of expertise. We need a firm like Analyst House that can be at the table, contribute, defend us when needed, and articulate the wrinkles in how things are accounted for in a professional way.” — John Kueber, CEO, Nevis Brands
Reporting and insight nobody had to ask for
The part Kueber keeps returning to is the part he never requested. Analyst House sends periodic reports on the health of the business, flags where Nevis can improve, and points out what’s already going well. The team is also leaning into AI to handle the mechanical work — pulling the numbers for an invoice, for instance — so that human judgment goes to the calls that actually need it. Kueber reads that as a feature, not a threat: “I like that you’re embracing AI… it’s going to allow your firm to be even better at what you do.”
The Result
Numbers the CEO can defend, and the time and confidence to run the business
The cleanest number is time. Kueber estimates he is reclaiming 10 to 15 hours a month. But he is the first to say that is the wrong way to measure it — because even if he had spent 25 hours a month in QuickBooks himself, he wouldn’t have matched the accuracy or the confidence, and that work was never his job to do.
“I’m probably reclaiming 10 to 15 hours a month working with you, but to me that’s not the right metric… You’d be selling Analyst House short by only quantifying it around hours saved.” — John Kueber, CEO, Nevis Brands
What he values more is harder to put on a timesheet: numbers he trusts at the market level and in aggregate, books that withstand a national audit, and the ability to make decisions from insight rather than guesswork. “I need to know that we have a team that knows our financials better than I do, so that you can give me insight and I can make better decisions,” he says. Through new states, new channels, and new layers of complexity, the firm has scaled with Nevis without missing a step — which, for a public company facing a national audit every year, is the difference between a clean process and a crisis.
Why It Matters
For most growth-company CEOs, Kueber observes, accounting registers as a tax on their energy — something that pulls them away from the business they actually love. The shift, when it comes, is one they don’t see coming: the realization that a partner can take the stress off entirely and sharpen their decisions in the process. That takes a firm willing to look past the immediate administrative task to where the business is trying to go — and, for a regulated, multi-state, publicly traded operator, one that can hold its own under audit. Analyst House, in Kueber’s words, “does a really good job of understanding the mindset and the stresses of being a high-growth CEO.”
“You don’t know that someone can actually take all the stress away. Someone can actually help you make better decisions.” — John Kueber, CEO, Nevis Brands
For founders whose complexity has outrun their finance setup — a new state, a new channel, a public listing, an audit they have to answer for — Kueber’s verdict is unembellished. He calls Analyst House the last vendor he’d ever want to stop working with, and he traces it back to the referral that started it all.
“I told Joe many times: you don’t know what you recommended to us. It’s been awesome, amazing.” — John Kueber, CEO, Nevis Brands
