DexKo Global (Brookfield) Modernizes Financial Certifications and Internal Controls with Quickbase

The Solutions

Building a Controlled, Auditable Financial Certification Workflow

Quandary Consulting Group redesigns DexKo’s Quarterly Financial Certification System around the complete lifecycle of the certification process rather than treating each certification as a standalone digital form.

The platform connects each stage of the workflow: Certification Templates → Sites → Questions → Preparers → Responses → Reviewers → Exceptions → Send-backs → Resolution → Completion

Certifications are generated according to site status, while predefined question sets determine which questions apply to each certification. This architecture allows DexKo to standardize what must be certified across the organization while still accommodating differences between sites, certification types, and business requirements.

The result is more than a digitized questionnaire. It is a structured financial certification workflow that establishes clearer accountability, improves process consistency, and creates a stronger foundation for internal controls and audit readiness.

Automating Quarterly Financial Certification

One of the most important capabilities of the solution is the automated generation of quarterly certifications.

Instead of requiring administrators to manually create certifications and determine which questions belong to each one, the system generates certifications according to established site criteria and populates the appropriate questions from predefined question sets.

This embeds standardization directly into the application.

Each quarterly certification cycle begins from a defined framework rather than requiring administrators to reconstruct the process manually. That repeatability is particularly important for financial governance and internal controls because the process becomes less dependent on institutional knowledge or an individual administrator remembering every requirement.

Automation does not simply reduce administrative work. It helps make the certification process consistent by design.

Simplifying Financial Certification Across Multiple Sites

Enterprise financial certification becomes considerably more complex when preparers and reviewers are responsible for multiple locations.

DexKo’s certification platform addresses that complexity by allowing users to answer questions for individual sites or apply responses across multiple sites when the same answer is appropriate, thus creating an important balance between efficiency and control.

When the same response applies across several locations, users do not need to repeatedly enter identical information. However, when a location has different circumstances, the preparer can provide a site-specific response.

The model is simple: Bulk completion where appropriate. Site-specific responses where necessary.

For a distributed enterprise, this reduces repetitive quarter-end work without sacrificing the site-level accountability required for effective financial oversight.

Establishing Clear Preparer and Reviewer Controls

Strong financial controls depend on clearly defined responsibilities, particularly when one employee prepares information and another is responsible for reviewing it.

Quandary creates distinct experiences for preparers and reviewers, ensuring that users see the certifications, sites, and information relevant to their responsibilities.

• Preparers work with questions associated with their assigned sites and can complete responses individually or in bulk.
• Reviewers are similarly limited to their assigned sites, with their workflow focused on certifications that are ready for review.

This creates a digital separation between preparation and review; rather than relying on emails, informal handoffs, or individual employees to determine what happens next, the workflow reinforces responsibility at each stage of the certification process.

Turning Certification Send-backs Into a Controlled Remediation Process

Not every financial certification passes review the first time.

A reviewer may identify an incomplete response, inconsistent information, missing context, or another issue that requires the preparer’s attention. Instead of managing those exceptions outside the system, DexKo incorporates send-backs directly into the certification workflow.

Reviewers can return items for correction, preparers can modify the affected responses, and users can acknowledge when the issue has been addressed.

• That changes remediation from an informal communication process: Email → Follow-Up → Spreadsheet Note → Another Email → Status Check
• Into a controlled workflow: Review → Send-back → Correction → Acknowledgment → Completion

The difference is significant from a financial governance perspective. Exceptions become part of the system of record, giving DexKo greater visibility into what requires correction, who is responsible, what changes are made, and whether the issue reaches resolution.

Preventing Incomplete Financial Certifications

A well-designed financial certification system should do more than collect information, it needs to actively help users identify incomplete work before it moves forward.

DexKo’s enhanced workflow includes controls that warn users when required questions remain unanswered and visually highlight incomplete questions before submission.

These interface improvements have an important operational purpose; which means that instead of requiring users to manually review an entire certification to determine what they may have missed, the application directs attention to outstanding items.

This reflects a broader design principle behind the platform: The system handles more of the process checking so employees can spend more time applying financial judgment.

Consolidating Certification Notifications

Notifications are necessary for workflow management, but excessive notifications can create another administrative problem.

When every site, certification, review, exception, reminder, and status change generates a separate message, users must spend more time determining which communications actually require action.

DexKo addresses this challenge through a Consolidated Daily Notification System that brings certification and site-review activity into a more unified communication experience. The intended experience gives users a daily view of the sites requiring preparation or review instead of relying on numerous fragmented notifications.

The objective is not to generate more alerts, it is to make the right information easier to act on; and for the user, the system helps answer one practical question: What requires my attention today?

Creating an Accessible, Auditable Certification History

Financial governance continues after the certification period closes because organizations must be able to understand and reference historical activity. DexKo’s system preserves previous certifications for future reference while locking submitted certifications against subsequent edits.

This creates an important balance between accessibility and control.

Users can review prior certifications when they need historical context, but completed records remain protected from casual modification. This becomes especially valuable when responsibilities change because a new employee can understand how a site previously responded without relying on the memory of the person who originally completed the certification.

Over time, the certification history becomes institutional knowledge rather than information tied to individual employees.

Strengthening Exception and Memo Documentation

Exceptions often contain some of the most important information within a financial certification process because they explain where circumstances differ from expectations or require additional context.

Quandary enhances DexKo’s memo functionality by incorporating preparer and audience information, improving visibility into who provides the information and the business audience associated with it. Printable memos are also rebuilt and optimized as part of the platform’s continued development.

This makes exception documentation more valuable beyond the immediate workflow.

Supporting context remains connected to the certification record, creating a more complete picture of what happened, who documented it, and why the information matters.

Making the Certification Period Immediately Clear

Recurring financial processes require clear context; users should never have to question which reporting or certification period they are working in. DexKo therefore displays the certification quarter prominently within the user experience.

Although this is a relatively simple interface decision, it provides an important control benefit by reducing ambiguity between current certification activity and historical records.

Good financial workflow design does not rely on users to remember context, it makes that context visible.

Strengthening Role-Based Access and Financial Data Governance

Quarterly financial certifications contain sensitive business information, which means access cannot be treated as an afterthought.

The platform addresses unauthorized access while also removing default Quickbase links from notifications and reminders that could create unintended navigation paths.

This reflects a broader approach to financial data governance and application security.

Quandary considers not only what happens within the primary application interface, but also how employees enter the system, which records they can access, how different roles interact with information, and how workflow communications connect users back to the platform.

That is the difference between simply developing an application and designing a governed enterprise workflow.

Building Long-Term Administrative Independence

Enterprise applications create greater long-term value when internal teams understand how to manage and support them. For this reason, knowledge transfer is built into DexKo’s financial certification modernization. The solution includes administrator training, administrative guides, preparation instructions and checklists, application administration documentation, and dedicated materials for preparers and reviewers.

This documentation reduces dependence on institutional knowledge and gives DexKo’s internal stakeholders a stronger foundation for managing the application independently.

For a business process that repeats every quarter, that operational independence is critical.

Creating a Financial Certification Platform That Evolves With the Business

DexKo’s Quarterly Financial Certification System was never treated as a one-time software implementation.

The relationship progresses from restructuring the underlying certification architecture to rebuilding and expanding the platform, stabilizing the workflow, adding functionality, strengthening documentation, and supporting continued improvement.

The progression becomes: Restructure → Rebuild → Standardize → Stabilize → Enhance → Transfer Knowledge → Continuously Improve

That approach reflects an important reality of enterprise workflow modernization: the most valuable operational systems evolve alongside the organization.

As DexKo’s requirements change, the certification platform provides a structured foundation that can adapt with them while preserving the governance, accountability, auditability, and process consistency required of an enterprise financial control process.

Technology & Processes Used

Quickbase

Quickbase provides the core platform for certification records, question templates, site relationships, role-based experiences, workflow status, reporting, and administrative management.

Custom Development

Custom development supports functionality that extends beyond standard application behavior, including questionnaire generation and specialized user experiences.

The original architecture specifically calls for a script that creates certifications, retrieves template questions, creates the appropriate questionnaire for each site, and relates those questions back to the certification record.

Workflow Automation

Automation manages recurring certification creation, question assignment, review activity, sendbacks, notifications, and quarterly administration.

Role-Based Governance

Preparer, reviewer, and administrator experiences establish clearer boundaries around what users can see and what actions they can perform.