The close never really closes
Numbers keep moving for weeks after month-end, so nobody trusts them enough to make a decision on them.
Tax service
Outsourced accounting & CFO support
Good tax work needs good books underneath it. We run the close, produce reporting you can actually act on, and give you senior finance judgment without a full-time hire.
The problem
Where finance functions stall
The bookkeeping is adequate for recording history and inadequate for making decisions.
Reports nobody reads
A P&L exported from the accounting system is not management reporting. It shows what happened without explaining why or what to do next.
The gap above bookkeeping
You have outgrown a bookkeeper and cannot justify a controller or CFO. The judgment calls fall to the owner by default.
What we do
What we run
Scaled to what you need: from a monthly close through to standing CFO-level involvement.
- Monthly closeA defined calendar with reconciliations, accruals and sign-offs, closing within a set number of business days every month.
- Management reportingA monthly pack with commentary: what moved, why, and what it means, not just a trial balance in a different font.
- Cash flow forecastingA rolling 13-week cash forecast, which is the single most useful report most owner-managed businesses do not produce.
- Budgeting and variance analysisAn annual budget built bottom-up, then tracked monthly against actuals with variances explained rather than merely displayed.
- KPI and unit economicsThe handful of operational measures that actually drive your result, reported consistently alongside the financials.
- Systems and process designChart of accounts rebuilt for decision-making, accounting platform configured properly, and workflows documented for your team.
- CFO-level advisoryPricing, capital structure, lender and investor reporting, and the finance side of acquisitions, available as needed rather than salaried.
How it works
A process you can follow
Four stages, with a defined deliverable at each one. You always know where the work stands.
1
Assess
Current books, systems and reporting reviewed, with a clear statement of what is working and what is not.
2
Rebuild
Chart of accounts, opening balances and reconciliations put right before we start reporting from them.
3
Operate
The monthly close runs on a published calendar, with the reporting pack issued on a date you can plan around.
4
Advise
A monthly review of the numbers with someone who understands both the business and its tax position.
Who it's for
Who this suits
Businesses past the bookkeeper stage but not yet at the point of hiring a controller.
$2M–$50M revenue Growing headcount Multi-entity structures Businesses with lender covenants Companies preparing to sell Firms with finance turnover Owners spending nights in the books
Deliverables
What you get
- A monthly close completed on a published calendar
- A management reporting pack with written commentary
- A rolling 13-week cash flow forecast
- Budget versus actual with variances explained
- Direct access to senior finance judgment, without a senior salary
13-wk
Rolling cash forecast horizon
Monthly
Close on a published, repeatable calendar
1
Team for books, reporting and tax
Questions
Frequently asked
Not necessarily, and often we would rather you did not. A frequent arrangement is that your bookkeeper continues with day-to-day transaction processing while we own the close, the reconciliations, the reporting and the judgment calls. That is usually the most cost-effective structure, and it keeps someone who knows your business in place.
We work in whatever you already use: QuickBooks Online and Xero most commonly, along with several mid-market systems. We will tell you if the platform is genuinely holding you back, but we will not push a migration for its own sake. Migrations are disruptive and are only worth it when the current system is the actual constraint.
It overlaps, with one meaningful difference: we also own the underlying accounting and your tax position. A fractional CFO typically advises on numbers that someone else produced. Because we run the close and prepare the returns, the advice and the data come from the same place, which removes a lot of reconciliation and a lot of finger-pointing.
Typically thirty to sixty days, depending on the state of the books and where you are in the year. The first phase is cleanup and reconciliation, which occasionally surfaces things nobody expected. We would rather find those at the start than in the middle of a reporting cycle you are relying on.
Related
Often paired with
Internal Controls & Tax Risk
Auditor-built controls that keep every filing clean.
Learn moreBusiness Tax Returns
Forms 1120, 1120-S and 1065 filed accurately and on time.
Learn moreStrategic Tax Planning
Multi-year projections that lower the bill before year-end.
Learn more