SPECIFIC EXPERTISE

• Over SIX years of experience as a Business Analyst in Finance/Accounting/Taxation domains and an in-depth understanding of the business process models underlying these domains.
• Experience working with diversified portfolios, due diligence scenarios, market interest rates and investment product risk factors.
• Experience in sales tax filing for several states [AR, NY, CT]
• Great understanding of e-Commerce, Commercial Lending, Real Estate, Retail and Insurance Industries
• Experience in creating “AS IS” and “To BE” business process.
• Extensive experience in analyzing and documenting business requirements and system functional specifications including Use Cases, Data and GAP Analysis.
• Good Knowledge and application of U.S. GAAP
• Experience in evaluating and documenting internal controls, preparing narratives, performing risk assessment and analysis. Experienced in Financial Budgeting, Analysis and Forecasting including expense report preparation.
• Experience in conducting Joint Application Development (JAD) and Rapid Application Development (RAD) sessions.
• Proficient in Microsoft suite of products including MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint and MS Visio.
• Expertise in the role of Scrum Master, facilitating/organizing daily scrum sessions, sprint planning meeting and sprint review meeting and preparing/analyzing burn down charts.
• Experience in conducting UI reviews of the prototype and the final end product.
• Effective in planning and executing business re-engineering solutions to take advantage of current market trends.
• Experience working on Excel Pivot tables, and Macros for Data Analysis.
• Good understanding of AGILE, RUP methodology.
• Sound knowledge about enterprise planning and budgeting, cost management.
• Good hands-on experience in QB, CCH (Tax), RIA Checkpoint, e-Commerce, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power-point, and Word Press (Website Management)
• Efficient work experience in Microsoft Office package, MS Project
• Outstanding interpersonal and communication skills with strong attention to detail. Flexible to new challenges and adaptable to changes
• Highly innovative, result-oriented and quick learner. Excellent team player and strong management skills

Tools used

Enterprise Architect, Microsoft Visio 2010. MS Visio, MS Project, MS Access, UML, Axure

Tax Software

H&R Block, Turbo tax, Great Tax, CCH (Tax), RIA Checkpoint SSCS (Service Station Computer Systems)

Financial Software

QuickBooks Enterprise

Office Software

MS Office 2010 (Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook)

Technologies

e-Commerce

Methodologies

Waterfall, Agile, SDLC ( Software Development Life Cycle)

Confidential,AR Jan’11 – Present
Financial Business Analyst

Goldline is a corporation that operates a chain of gasoline stations and convenience stores across the Southern United States. Goldline is a fast growing Oil &Gas Company with 15 branches working closely with the biggest refineries in the US with presence in North America and Asia

Responsibilities:

• Translated the business needs into system requirements, communicating with the business on a non-technical level, and with the System Analyst on a more technical level.
• Used Visio to carry out the Business Use Case Modeling and Business Object Modeling effort to develop the business architecture for rapid and controlled application development.
• Reconciling book and bank balances on a monthly/ yearly basis in QuickBooks
• Passing beginning of the year, month end and year ending Adjusting Journal Entries and Year End Journal Entries QuickBooks
• Creating Invoices and make payments as well as working on accounts receivable ledger on receiving payments as well as making adjustments with bad debts in QuickBooks
• Creating and analyzing financial reports along with working with the financial advisors with the Revenue Recognition principles stated in US GAAP
• Running payroll, recording and paying payroll liabilities along with generating and filing quarterly and annual payroll forms and with generating employee W-2 in QuickBooks
• Maintaining a documented system of accounting policies and procedures along with maintaining a system of controls over accounting transactions in SSCS (Service Station Computer Systems)
• Assisting in the production of annual company budget and financial forecast
• Automated the sales tax filing system along with generating and submitting monthly sales tax report for each location including tax exempt sales
• Calculating variances from the budget and report significant issues to the top management
• Worked towards integrating CRM solution to automate the payroll for employees worldwide along with paying payroll liabilities, filing quarterly and annual form
• Coordinating the provision of information to the Financial Firm for tax reporting purpose
• Provided recommendations to senior management to dissolve the problems. Identified and escalated problems to senior management.

Confidential,New York, NY Dec 09 - Jan 11
Business Systems Analyst

National Securities Corporation is an Asset & Wealth Management Company engaged in principal and agency trading of fixed income products, equities, futures and options, Hedge Funds, derivatives, listed securities and over-the-counter securities for institutional clients, proprietary trading and retail brokerage. The Trading and Portfolio Management Application system project was to create a new and improved design to make buying and selling based on closing pricing for trading and post-trading analysis even easier. This system enables brokers with a wide range of business practices to efficiently service their clients.

Responsibilities:

• Interviewed business users and various customers groups to gather business requirements, wants/ needs concerning the project and carefully recorded the requirements in a format that could be understood by both business and technical teams
• Gathered requirements and wrote functional specifications, use cases for fund systems and Front Office Trading Application for Equity, Derivatives, Futures & Options and Fixed Income trades
• Closely worked with Financial Advisors and Industry professionals for Revenue Recognition and Data Analysis according to US GAAP.
• Investigated, reviewed and analyzed existing system and Trading Life Cycle and post-trade execution life cycle to expand and track activities related to Securities trading, Customer Management and Broker Compliance
• Strong experience of pricing and analysis for securities also used various Security Pricing models.
• Strong knowledge of back office processes and hands-on experience with CMS
• Conducted user training at every release of enhancement package to the existing trading system

Confidential,NYC Jan 09 – Dec 09
Financial Business Analyst

Peter Advani CPA provides its customers with tax return preparation services and electronic filing. Through the use of their tax software, the company provides computerized federal income tax preparation, state income tax, and individual tax preparation services. They have been in business over 15 years and understand a small business much better than big accounting firms. Peter Advani CPA accounting firm was established to provide efficient, expert solutions to businesses and individuals. Peter Advani CPA’s primary services include accounting, taxation, and business consulting. We also offer a host of specialty services to cater to the unique needs of our clients. Peter Advani CPA’s partners and staff accountants serve a wide range of individuals, corporations, partnerships, and non-profit organizations and are experts in the accounting issues and tax laws that impact our clients.

Responsibilities:

• Entered and reconciled bank statements and credit cards for 53 companies in a monthly/ yearly/ weekly basis into QB
• Responsible to analyze results and provide financial observations to upper management.
• Mentored new hires with any accounting related questions
• Passed year end Adjusting Journal Entries and Closing Journal entries.
• Made adjustments with Revenue Recognition principles according to US GAAP
• Created financial (P&L, Balance Sheet) reports at year end and compared reports with previous year. If any discrepancies found then contacted and interrogated client (s) to find out reason for discrepancy.
• Worked towards automation of scheduling payroll (both direct deposits & manual checks) for clients on weekly/ bi-weekly/ monthly basis on a web based interface for time management system. Also accounting for 401-K deductions. Kept records of payroll liabilities and paid online to IRS and State (Promp Tax: NYS-45, NJ-927, WR-30 etc) on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. Filed quarterly and annual payroll forms.
• Automated the filing of monthly and quarterly sales tax for multiple states
• This job also included going to the client’s site and doing bookkeeping for them such as creating invoice, keeping track of the vendors, making bill payments on time, running payroll, entering and reconciling bank statements every month.
• Attended phone calls, communicated directly with clients and solved their accounting related issues according to their demand.

Confidential,, NY Jul 08 – Jan 09
Business Analyst

Wachovia is a diversified banking; financial and secondary mortgage company that provides a broad range of financial operations. The project was on Wachovia’s IOTPS (Integrated Online Transaction Processing System), which includes mortgage loan processing application features enhancement. The goal was to integrate the mortgage loan process inclusive of customer data, credit agencies, pricing and products to process the loan.

Responsibilities:

• Identified and validated high potential business opportunities for stakeholders and developed customized business strategies that are aligned with corporate strategic objectives.
• Coordinated work plan between project manager and business area with Microsoft Project.
• Worked on Agile methodology in the process of System Development Life Cycle.
• Prepared Business Process Models that includes modeling of all the activities of business from conceptual to procedural level.
• Provided analysis, understanding and business perspectives on many financial and operational issues.
• Gathered Business Requirements, analyzed data/workflows. Defined the scope, financial projections and Cost/benefit analysis. Progressed from Problem Statement to well-documented Designs.
• Actively involved in validating the requirements and applying the RUP framework throughout the SDLC.
• Defined and performed the test strategies and associated scripts for the verification and validation of all defined business requirements and associated functionality.
• Reviewed and analyzed the use cases and came up with system design and test plan templates.

Confidential,, IL Aug 06 – Jun 08
Business Systems Analyst

First National Bank is a mortgage lending institute that provides high quality financial services to the public like mortgage programs at the most competitive rates. The home loan program includes: purchase, refinance, debt consolidation, home equity loans, second mortgages, construction loans and home improvement loans tailored to customer’s unique situation. The project was to replace legacy system with Loan IQ and develop a Loan Origination System that automated the entire lending process. Worked on the application developed for the credit check and finance management. It provides financial services like online account decision, customers can apply for loans, view and download monthly statements, pay their bills, etc.

Responsibility:

• Analyzed the prior documentation and business processes for full understanding of the project. Interviewed area experts, asking detailed questions and carefully recording the requirements in a format that can be reviewed and understood by both business people and technical people
• Conducted cost-benefit analysis
• Involved in converting the business requirements into functional requirements and also created business process models from the requirement specifications.
• Facilitated questionnaire sessions to identify business rules, requirements and document them in a format that can be reviewed and understood by both the business professionals and technical team
• Created Use Case specifications, business flow diagrams, Use Case diagram and Sequence diagram using MS Visio, so the developers and other stake holders can understand the business process according to their perspective with possible alternate scenarios
• Conducted JAD sessions to allow different stakeholders to communicate their perspectives with each other, resolve any issues and come to an agreement quickly

Confidential,FL Dec 05 – Aug 06
Business Analyst
Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL). CCL is the world’s largest cruise line offering vacations to over 3 million guests from 22 ports to destinations across the Caribbean, Hawaii, North & South America and Europe. Carnival Cruise Lines online reservation system enables guests to create and manage online bookings. This project comprised of many small projects to enhance the reservation systems with features like booking shore excursions online prior to their vacation, create group bookings online, etc.

Responsibilities:

• Obtained a thorough grasp of the business process being followed.
• Involved in meetings and discussions with business users and client’s team to understand the scope, purpose and requirement of the enhancements.
• Developed system and defined metrics to evaluate performance in innovation, customer satisfaction employee participation.
• Gathered requirements during inception phase, documented and delivered business and functional specification documents.
• Developed use cases, workflow using MS Visio.