Property management firm Sequoia needed a better way to staff accounting and deliver reports on time. With outsourced accounting support, company leaders can now focus on growth.
Sequoia Equities is a multi-family real estate owner and operator that manages more than 60 properties across the western United States.
Persistent turnover, complex processes and limited internal capacity made it difficult to meet reporting deadlines and maintain consistency.
Armanino took on the monthly close, reconciliations and reporting, working closely with Sequoia’s finance team.
Reporting timelines were cut from more than 20 days to within 10–15 days, freeing company leaders to focus on strategic growth.
Sequoia Equities has spent decades building a diverse real estate portfolio across California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Colorado. With more than 60 rental properties and a complex ownership structure, its finance function plays a critical role in keeping reporting consistent and stakeholders informed.
Each month, the accounting team is responsible for producing detailed financial packages for every property. These reports support internal decision-making, investor updates and lender requirements. And they depend on clear handoffs and tight timelines.
“There’s a lot of back-and-forth,” said Melinda Pedersen, CFO and partner at Sequoia. “Multiple levels of review, adjustments and fixing how items were categorized. It’s not just producing a report. It’s making sure everything makes sense across the board.”
Sequoia’s unique accounting setup added another layer of complexity as the company used its own internal reporting logic.
“You have to understand how we do things,” Pedersen said. “And that doesn’t always match how accountants are trained to think.”
That nuance made the work challenging to standardize and even more difficult to staff.
“The biggest issue was staffing,” Pedersen explained. “We’d hire accountants, train them and within one to two years they’d leave.”
The challenge wasn’t a lack of talent. It was the limits of what a small team could realistically sustain as the portfolio grew. Each departure meant restarting a lengthy onboarding process. And because Sequoia’s processes required both technical skill and institutional knowledge, even experienced hires struggled to ramp up quickly.
At the same time, the demands of the close process never slowed down. When positions went unfilled or new hires weren’t yet up to speed, the pressure shifted to the remaining employees.
In some cases, discrepancies had lingered unresolved because the team simply did not have the capacity to track them down and clear them.
Before long, financial packages that were meant to be completed by mid-month were being delivered after the 20th. Sometimes, delays stretched to month end, creating ripple effects across the business and raising questions with investors.
“When reporting is late, decision-making is impacted,” said Pedersen. “You’re either making decisions without the full picture or you’re making them too late.”
Sequoia had a choice: continue rebuilding its internal accounting team or rethink the model entirely.
After years of hiring challenges, leadership recognized that adding more people wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem. That’s when outsourcing entered the conversation.
Leadership understood there would be tradeoffs involved. The shift to outsourcing came with upfront effort and costs — mainly due to the one-time onboarding process. The long-term return, however, would come through turnover, missed deadlines and inconsistent output.
Sequoia evaluated a number of providers. One factor mattered most: trust. The company had worked with Armanino for more than a decade on tax and audit services, creating a strong foundation before outsourcing was ever considered.
But the deciding factor wasn’t just the relationship. It was the approach. Armanino offered a unique way to transition Sequoia’s existing accounting staff into the outsourced model, bringing Sequoia’s employees in as key staff members of the Armanino team. This preserved their knowledge while removing the burden of internal management.
“It was a hard decision to move away from an internal team,” Pedersen said. “But knowing those same people could continue working on our account made all the difference. I’m very proud of the people that went over to Armanino’s outsourced accounting team and what they’re doing.”
That continuity turned a difficult decision into a positive path forward — both for the organization and employee careers.
The transition to outsourcing started with getting the details right.
Armanino began with a deep understanding of Sequoia’s systems: how reports were structured, where discrepancies typically occurred and what made each property unique. The first few closes are usually the toughest; it usually takes three monthly reporting cycles to get everything working the way it should.
As the engagement evolved, Armanino’s role expanded. The team took ownership of the full close process — from pre-close activities through final, investor-ready reporting — supporting financial package delivery across 54 entities. Armanino worked side by side with Sequoia, digging into unresolved discrepancies and handling bank reconciliations the company hadn’t been able to close.
The new model also required discipline. Dedicated coordination between Sequoia’s internal team and Armanino made sure that information flowed cleanly, requests were addressed quickly and reporting stayed on track.
“There were definitely challenges at the beginning,” Pedersen said. “But we addressed them. We communicated. And we saw improvements quickly.”
The outsourced team is now fully embedded in Sequoia’s finance function as an extension of the organization.
Prior to outsourcing, Sequoia grappled with producing financial packages before the 20th of the month. Today, preliminary reports are delivered before the 15th, with a clear path toward a 10-day close.
That improvement extends beyond internal operations. Lender reporting deadlines that once required last-minute scrambles are now met comfortably, while investors receive finalized financial information weeks earlier than before.
And with multiple layers of review built into the process, accuracy has improved.
“You’re not questioning every line item anymore,” the CFO added. “You trust the numbers.”
As operational pressure lifted, Sequoia’s internal team began to evolve. Instead of focusing on transaction-level work, team members were able to step into more strategic roles.
That shift extended to leadership as well. With reliable, timely financial data in hand, decision-making has become more proactive.
For Pedersen, a big lesson from the experience is how outsourcing is often misunderstood.
“There’s a misconception that you just hand work off and hope for the best,” she said. “That’s not how it works.”
Outsourcing still requires involvement. It works best when both sides communicate often and adjust quickly when something isn’t working.
“You can’t operate the same way you did when everything was in-house,” she explains. “You have to think differently. And you have to be active in the transition.”
Today, Sequoia’s finance function operates with a level of consistency and confidence that simply wasn’t possible before.
Where the team once relied on a small group of individuals to carry a heavy operational burden, they now have a repeatable close process that can support growth. Reporting is now predictable, measurable and dependable.
Instead of chasing timelines and resolving discrepancies, the team is working ahead: reviewing, planning and making decisions with timely, reliable data in hand.
To people on the outside, it looks like nothing has changed. Internally, the difference is clear. What began as a response to staffing challenges is now a steady close process Sequoia can rely on as the portfolio grows.
“It’s allowed our team to grow, focus on what matters, and operate in a completely different way than before,” Pedersen said.
When you don’t need to stay on top of the details of your accounting processes, you have more time to plan for the future. Learn how our outsourced accounting team can help you simplify work, resolve old discrepancies and get more predictable, timely closes.
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