What the finance function shipped in July — the Rightsline termination, the tax extension, the retreat, and the systems that replaced the software we cancelled — and the three fronts carrying us through August. As of today, 10 August 2026.
Armanino, fiscal year ending 3/31. Revenue is tied out, the Freedom Games entity structure is documented, and the balance-sheet workpapers are through review. What remains is vouching the open platform JEs and the final schedule sign-offs. Sign-off is targeted for mid-August; the auditors have been quiet on flagged items, so chasing them is this week's job.
Rightsline — terminated · the year's biggest vendor decision
Six months in with no usable system while we double-paid legacy software. Terminated for cause, escalated to senior execs on both sides, legal memo to in-house counsel on the 14th. Stop-work issued.
The risk was never the $140,355 already spent — that's sunk. It's a three-year deal with Year 1 prepaid, so the real number is Years 2–3 at roughly $270K.
Hosting sold as fully-managed AWS, delivered as a VPN-published Windows desktop app. Plus billed internal meetings, post-sign-off requirements re-work, and questions we'd already answered twice in writing.
Issues & Billing Analysis, Legal Advisory Memo, a Mutual Termination & Release, and an external position memo addressed to their VP. All reviewed, none sent — that's an August call.
Audit, tax & the close · 4 items
Extension in, estimated payment calculated and funded, tie-out figures pulled straight from the audit workpapers so both sets of numbers agree.
Balance-sheet workpapers through review with Kristi prepping and me reviewing, all routed through Suralink. Revenue holds at $13,195,574.77 against the trial balance.
Revenue re-mapped into three rollups — retail, BD subscription (IndiPass + credits), and media. Credits ruled subscription revenue with a monthly use-it-or-lose-it cap, so nothing accrues into deferred.
Researched state economic-nexus thresholds for the new physical-product lines to size whether the Armanino sales-tax engagement is needed at all — and at what scale before agreeing to it.
Cash, forecast & July's book · 4 items
The bank feed that had been reading zero is live again, so total_cash and the runway view reflect real balances daily rather than a stale snapshot.
30-month horizon backtested against actuals rather than against itself, with rev-share modeled as lumpy instead of smooth. The 13-week and 24-month planner views run off the same feed.
July landed at 125% of the 30 June forecast — and 89% excluding Esports Manager and EPG. Method written down so the next month's variance is explainable, not argued.
Esports Manager 2026 on the 6th, City States: Medieval and Codename CURE II on the 24th, Graphite and Dwarf Delve on the 27th. July closed at roughly $1.4M gross.
The retreat · 22–23 July, delivered
Claude setup and memory hygiene, prompting and planning, sub-agents and loops. The bots.indie.io platform reviewed at roughly 70% functional after a month of live testing.
Kristi's and my in-house IP royalty tool presented as the evidence for the whole build-it-here thesis — the working answer to the software we'd just cancelled.
Developer credits as a partner-empowerment tool, media performance (wiki at 194 titles, 2.17M page views, revenue up 43% YoY), and a 15-arm IP monetization framework across the catalog.
Systems shipped · built in July, running now
Three fronts lead the month — closing the audit, landing the Rightsline exit, and making the game database the company's single source of truth. Three supporting workstreams carry underneath. Progress figures are working estimates, not measured completion.
Get Armanino to sign-off by mid-August, then retire QuickBooks — exporting everything first. This is the month's anchor and it gates the QBO decision.
Turn a terminated contract into a clean, penalty-free separation — no Years 2–3, no early-termination fee, data returned and the tenant deprovisioned.
306 records are live and rebuilding twice daily. The work now is org-wide adoption — announcing go-live and pointing every tool at it so the old copies stop being consulted.
Finish what the chart-of-accounts rebuild started: a real ledger behind developer credits so COGS and the auditors both have something to stand on.
Keep the forward view honest while receivables and payroll run close together — and settle the open media vendor dispute at exec level with the documentation delivered in advance.
The tools are built; now they have to be right. Forecast accuracy is the weak link — recalibrating it is the month's biggest engineering project on the finance side.