How a PE-backed waste company built one reporting package that its team, its investors, and its banks all work from

Whitecap Waste Holdings, LLC collects and disposes of waste across southern West Virginia, serving more than 31,000 customers from yards in Beckley and Princeton. The work is curbside residential pickup, commercial routes, roll-off containers, and commercial cardboard recycling. It is a route business, which means revenue is fairly predictable and the real financial discipline sits on the cost side.

CEO & President, Michael Schmidt, oversees it from an office just outside Philadelphia, going on site three or four days a month to make sure the operation is running the way it should. The rest of the month he runs the business on the numbers, and reports them to a private equity investor group and a bank group that expect the same package on the same cadence.

That only works if the numbers are trustworthy, current, and structured the way investors and lenders expect to see them. Getting there used to be the hard part

The challenge: a budget that never lined up with the P&L

Whitecap's budgeting process is top down. Michael builds the first pass with his team, pushes it out for input on revenue and expense assumptions, then shares the finished plan with the investor group. Revenue in a solid waste collection business is fairly predictable, so the plan itself is not the problem.

The problem was everything that happened after the plan was set.

Each month the P&L came out of the ERP at full chart of accounts detail. The budget did not. It was built at summary level, which meant the two never sat side by side cleanly. Totals would tie at the top and then break the moment anyone looked one layer down.

“Our budget and our P&L never spoke the same language. Now they are built on the same chart of accounts, so there is nothing left to reconcile.”

That reconciliation work landed on the person with the least time for it. Every month, before he could tell his team, his investors, or his banks anything useful about performance, he first had to spend hours working out where the variance was actually coming from.

The solution: a plan built on the same chart of accounts as the ledger

Whitecap runs Centage against its Acumatica instance, with the budget structured on the live chart of accounts rather than a summarized version of it. Analytics Maestro then builds the monthly reporting package directly in Excel, pulling actuals and plan from the same account structure.

That single design decision removed the reconciliation step rather than speeding it up.

"The Centage Analytics Maestro tool is very helpful. I love the fact that it ties directly into our chart of accounts."

Today, the package Michael produces each month includes a trailing twelve month P&L with budget and prior year comparisons, a trailing twelve month balance sheet, and a summary flash report he built himself for the investor group, which pulls from the underlying Analytics Maestro tabs rather than being maintained separately.

The results: one package, three audiences, every month

The same reporting package now goes to Whitecap's internal team, its private equity investors, and its banks on a monthly cycle. It is not three separate builds. It is one set of reports that holds up to three different kinds of scrutiny.

Variance analysis is a drill-down, not an investigation. Michael can go straight to the account that is off instead of starting from a revenue total and working backward.

"I do not go hunting for variances anymore. I go straight to the account that is off. Having it all here has been great."

The reports have become a credibility asset with investors. Michael's PE sponsor has singled the package out, and he has been clear with them about where it comes from.

"I love the reports Centage helps me put together. The same package goes to my team, my investors, and my banks every month. One set of numbers, and I am not rebuilding it three times."

The tool has earned his personal endorsement.

"I really love Centage. I love the software. I love what you guys have. So I'm a huge proponent of it. I tell everybody they gotta check it out."

What happens when you buy the next company

Whitecap acquired two businesses, Lusk Disposal and Empire Waste. Empire folded into Whitecap on the same chart of accounts and the same ERP instance. Lusk did not. It is a separate legal entity with its own hauling operation, two landfills, its own bank group, and its own investor group, which means it needs its own financial statements.

What Michael did not want was a second reporting process built from scratch, or a monthly exercise in manual addition and subtraction to show the investor group a combined view.

"I need to produce the same thing here for Lusk. I'd love to find a way to tie them together, because while they're two separate legal companies, our investors really look at it as one business."

Because Lusk is moving onto the same ERP with a chart of accounts that is close to line for line identical, the work is an additional integration against the existing plan rather than a new implementation. Nothing about Whitecap's current setup changes. The consolidated view the investor group wants is a structural question about how the two entities are connected, not a monthly spreadsheet chore.

Whitecap is also evaluating a third acquisition, an unrelated waste business in North Dakota.

"You guys are on my list of people to call about integration. I want to continue to use this tool. What you guys have provided, I think is fantastic."

The case he makes to other PE-backed operators

Michael's argument is not really about budgeting software. It is about what happens when every portfolio company in a fund reports differently.

“Every PE fund wants one standard report across every portfolio company. This is how a fund actually gets it, instead of a pile of spreadsheets that never line up.”

He has raised it directly with an analyst at Whitecap's sponsor, and he raised it with the prior ownership group before Whitecap was even acquired.

"I truly think it's a huge tool. I've been talking about it since before we even brought this on. Now everything's tied in and you can just look right at it, and boom, it's right there."

His proposed model: the fund holds the master account, each portfolio company sits underneath it on a shared chart of accounts, and standard reporting comes online as part of onboarding a new acquisition rather than as a project someone gets to later.

See what your own numbers look like in it

Whitecap’s problems were not unusual. They were just expensive. If you are running a multi-entity business on a spreadsheet-driven plan, some version of this list probably describes your month:

• Your budget lives at summary level and your P&L comes out of the ERP at full account detail, so the two never sit side by side cleanly
• Revenue ties at the top, then breaks the moment anyone looks one layer down
• You lose hours each month working out which account actually drove the variance before you can explain anything to anyone
• Board meetings get spent reviewing numbers everyone could have read beforehand, instead of deciding what to do next

Centage connects directly to your ERP and builds your plan on your live chart of accounts, so actuals and budget share one structure. Consolidation across entities becomes a setup decision rather than a monthly reconciliation, and variance analysis becomes a drill-down instead of an investigation.

Book a personalized demo and bring your current reporting package. We will show you how the same views get built against your chart of accounts, and what adding a second or third entity actually involves.