Sierra Consulting Group's professionals provide professional services as liquidating trustee, claims agent and disbursing agent for a variety of clients. In a bankruptcy matter, we understand all of the stages of being a claims and disbursing agent. We recognize and can handle the complexities of receiving and properly recording all claims that are filed with the debtors. We also understand the process of thoroughly analyzing all of the proofs of claims that are filed in the case versus what the debtor has scheduled or believes the liabilities to be. We work closely with counsel and the debtor in analyzing all of the claims to see which claims have a legal and economic basis to be objected to. We can prepare all of the supporting exhibits to be including in the claims objection process and recommend to counsel and the debtor ways in which to streamline the claims objection process which may end up saving the estate money and time.

Sierra Consulting also has experience in proving fraudulent conveyance and other avoidance action support. We have testified in court in both prosecuting and defending alleged avoidance actions.

Examples of engagements in which the professionals of Sierra Consulting have served clients in this capacity include:

• AgriBioTech – Served as the financial advisor to the Unsecured Creditors’ Committee and was delegated the task to take over for the claims agent the responsibility of analyzing and reconciling all of the seed grower claims, generating variance reports to support claims objections, and prepared a specialized database for the trustee to process allowed claim payments. Total grower claims filed exceeded $100 million.
• USA Commercial Mortgage - Served as the financial advisor to the Unsecured Creditors' Committee of this commercial mortgage servicing debtor and was responsible for analyzing over 4,000 claims with over $600 million in alleged claim amounts.
• North American Deed Company - Served as the Chief Restructuring Officer and was responsible for all aspects of preparing the schedules of assets and liabilities as well as the statement of financial affairs, analyzing and reconciling all proofs of claims, preparing all claims objections and related exhibits, testifying in court to claims objections, settling disputes, prosecuted various avoidance actions and served as disbursing agent.
• Jade Summit - Served as the Debtor's Chief Restructuring Officer and Financial Advisor as was selected to serve as the post confirmation Liquidating Trustee. Responsible for all aspects of analyzing and reconciling claims, settling claims, pursuing avoidance actions and making creditor payments.
• Unison Healthcare – Served as the financial advisor to the debtor as well as court appointed claims agent to this multi-debtor case.

Sierra Consulting utilizes a highly sophisticated software program specifically designed to meet the needs of a claims and disbursing agent / liquidating trustee. The software package can be modified to handle the most complex cases and be individualized to a client's specific needs.

The software package that we use not only automates the pre and post confirmation case management tasks required in a Chapter 11 case, but also the tasks in receiverships, general claims and distribution administration, workout situations, assignments for the benefit of creditors, liquidations and disbursements. Additionally, it has the flexibility and functionality to meet the real world needs of managing an active business, real property, or property liquidation in a non-bankruptcy case environment.

• Relational database program that has been designed to manage a wide range of cases, both large and small, and will efficiently track tens of thousands of claims through multiple distributions, or just one claim.
• Allows users to track objections to claims as well as the resale and aggregation of claims.
• Has a comprehensive reporting capability that produces detailed administrative and financial reports including balance sheets, general ledger statements, and claim variance reports.
• Has a flexible claim categorization system allows users to customize claim sub-classification and grouping in an unlimited number of different ways. This flexibility makes for an effective tool under any plan distribution scenario.
• It comes with a powerful distribution engine that allows unlimited modeling of complex distribution scenarios with automatic reserves for unresolved claims. The engine also allows you to track and perform catch-up distributions at a later time for previously unresolved or mail returned claims.

Sierra Consulting can also assist a company and its counsel in preparing all of the required bankruptcy statements and schedules and ensure the data is properly loaded into the claims database for future reconciliation with the proof of claims as well as creditor distributions.