The newest member of the Boyer & Associates team grew up sailing in Rhode Island and goes by the nickname “Moose.” We are pleased to introduce Dynamics 365 Business Central consultant, Hans “Moose” Hardisty.
Hardisty, who goes by the childhood nickname his father gave him when he doubled in size so quickly as an infant, has 22 years of accounting experience and a decade of experience with Dynamics ERP.
A young man growing up in Rhode Island, Hardisty never really planned to be an accountant. Like most of his peers, his dream job involved a job on a sailboat.
“I grew up on an island so lots of sailing. Where I come from it’s sailing, swimming, surfing — Our lives revolve around the ocean,” he said.
Immediately out of high school he joined the HMS Rose, sailing around Europe for a year and participating in festivals and the occasional Hollywood movie — Stephen Spielberg’s 1997 movie Amistad and a promo for Muppet Treasure Island were both filmed on board when Hardisty was part of the crew.
When he returned home from his adventures at sea, he decided to help out with his uncle’s luxury travel business, Wimco. That’s where his knack for accounting became apparent, and he quickly found himself the company’s main bookkeeper, a job he held for 15 years.
“There is no gray area in accounting,” he said. “When you have everything all zeroed out, it’s a nice feeling.”
He could have stayed with his uncle’s company indefinitely, but the thirst for adventure hit him again when he visited his brother in the Twin Cities area.
“I was really comfortable. I wanted to not be comfortable for a little while,” he said.
Ready for a new adventure, he signed on as an accountant for Minneapolis-based PowerObjects, which at the time was a small startup in need of an accounting specialist. As the company grew, Hardisty gained more responsibilities, eventually becoming a manager and technical lead for their Dynamics SL system.
As a Dynamics SL client of Boyer & Associates, Hardisty worked with Colleen McCoshen and relied on Boyer whenever a system problem arose that he couldn’t handle.
In 2015, PowerObjects was acquired by a large firm. As the company continued to grow, Hardisty found himself doing more managing and less of the actual work with spreadsheets and problem solving that he enjoyed.
After 22 years as an accountant, Hardisty transitioned within the company to a customer-facing role as a Dynamics 365 Business Central consultant. He’s spent the last few years supporting users of Microsoft’s cloud ERP system.
“Consulting to me is more about relationships and dealing with people,” he said. “It’s the opposite of accounting.”
Hardisty saw more opportunity for growth in consulting and enjoyed the challenge of honing his communication skills.
“I do love working with customers. I like problem solving,” Hardisty said, adding that it’s a great feeling to be able to fix a problem and make someone’s job easier.
When he left PowerObjects, the company was still using Dynamics SL 2014 for its own system, a far cry from Dynamics 365 Business Central. Hardisty said he especially likes the personalization capabilities and ability to drill down that exist in the cloud ERP solution.
He chose to join the Boyer team in large part because he already knew the quality of work was excellent.
“I jumped at the opportunity to come back to a local business and to be able to work with those people that I knew were good because they’d been solving my problems for almost a decade,” Hardisty said.
Hardisty married his wife Jenny in June 2020, but because of COVID they pushed off their wedding celebration until August 2021. He joined Boyer shortly after the honeymoon. The couple lives in St. Paul and is expecting twin girls in February.
Hardisty rarely sails now, but he and Jenny do enjoy rock climbing, bouldering (climbing close to the ground without ropes) and hiking.
