Fractional Controller Services
A fractional controller who understands accounting and your business.
“I need someone who actually understands accounting and my businesses, who can take this off my plate and do it right.”
What a month actually looks like.
Most firms describe deliverables. It is more useful to show the cadence, because what you are buying is a rhythm your business can plan around rather than a set of reports that arrive whenever they arrive.
Books, receivables, and payables
Transactions categorized and reconciled, receivables pursued, payables staged. Nothing waits until month end to be examined.
Weekly
Cash flow
Position updated and the forward view refreshed, so a payroll run or a large payable is never a surprise discovered in the week it lands.
Biweekly
Books closed
Every month, on a date you can build around. If you require it sooner than the 10th, that is available for an additional fee, quoted in advance.
Monthly
Dashboard and review meeting
The numbers, what changed, and what it means. Delivered as a dashboard and then discussed live, in plain language.
Monthly
The first ninety days, in five moves.
The objective is not to begin producing reports immediately. It is to establish the foundation correctly so that every month afterward is quiet.
Discovery
Every entity, account, system, and obligation mapped. What exists, what is missing, and what has not been examined in some time.
Week 1 to 2
Cleanup
Backlogs cleared, uncategorized transactions resolved, and accounts reconciled back to a baseline you can rely on.
Weeks 2 to 6
Optimization
Chart of accounts restructured, integrations connected properly, and manual steps automated where they should be.
Weeks 4 to 8
SOP development
The process documented, covering who does what, when, and how, so the function does not live in one person’s head. Including ours.
Weeks 6 to 10
Consistent close
The rhythm takes over: weekly books, biweekly cash, closed by the 10th, every month, without being chased.
Month 3 onward
Cleanup and catch-up are scoped and quoted separately where the backlog is significant. You will know the figure before any work begins. There are no surprise line items.
Where a controller engagement ends.
Titles get used loosely, which makes it difficult to know what you are buying. The distinction we work to is a simple one: how far out the question looks.
Everything up to ninety days out
- Are the books accurate and current?
- What is our cash position this week and next?
- Did we close on time, and does it tie out?
- Who owes us, and what do we owe?
- What changed this month, and why?
- Are the systems and controls working?
Long range planning beyond the quarter
- What does the multi-year model look like?
- Should we raise, and on what terms?
- How do we finance the next expansion?
- What is the exit or succession plan?
- How should the capital structure change?
- What are we building toward in three years?
How you reach us, and how quickly we answer.
Whichever is easiest for you
No ticket queue, no portal, and no support address that routes somewhere unknown. You make contact the way you would reach a colleague.
A response within 24 hours, and usually well inside that during office hours of 9:30 AM to 2:30 PM ET.
Coming from someone else
Most engagements begin with an outgoing bookkeeper or a departing in-house person. That handoff is where records are lost, so it is not left to chance.
We work directly with the outgoing party. Files, access, history, and open items are transferred deliberately rather than reconstructed later from whatever survived.
“But we would rather have someone forty hours a week.”
It is the most common hesitation we hear, and sometimes it is the right call.
Two things tend to get bundled together in that request, and they are worth separating: availability and hours.
Forty hours of presence is rarely forty hours of finance work. At most companies of this size, the controller function represents fifteen to twenty hours of actual work spread thinly across a week of being logged in. The salary purchases the spread rather than the substance.
What you are actually buying is the answer being available when you need it, so we commit to that directly: office hours of 9:30 AM to 2:30 PM ET, a response within 24 hours, a standing monthly review, and access by Slack, email, or text rather than a queue. You will know precisely when we are reachable, which is more than most in-house hires offer once you account for paid time off, sick days, and the three month gap after a resignation.
And if you genuinely require forty hours of finance work every week, whether through high transaction volume, heavy payables, or a large payroll, you do not need an outside firm. You need a hire, and we will tell you so.
What we do not do.
Naming the edges is more useful than claiming there are none. Below is where the engagement stops and someone else takes over.
Tax returns
Not ours
We do not prepare or file returns. We maintain the books that make them straightforward to prepare, and hand your CPA clean, reconciled support rather than a box of documents in March.
Your CPA relationship
Yours, either way
If you already have a CPA, we work with them directly and make their job easier. If you do not, we can recommend someone, with no obligation to engage them and nothing taken for the introduction.
Long range financial planning
Separate scope
Multi-year modeling, capital structure, and raise strategy sit beyond the ninety day horizon. That is a different engagement, and we will say so rather than improvise it inside this one.
Take it off your plate. Have it done right.
A 30 minute engagement review covering where your books stand today, what the rhythm should look like, and whether this is the right fit.