Fractional controller services

Your bookkeeper records what happened. A controller is answerable for whether the month is right, and in a business your size that comes down to a handful of jobs.

• Close the books every month. Closing means finishing the month's entries, checking them and locking the period so the reports stop changing. Then you get your profit and loss and balance sheet for the month.
• Reconcile the accounts. Every bank account, credit card and loan gets matched to the statement from the bank or lender, and what customers owe you and what you owe vendors gets checked against the detail behind it.
• Show which jobs or departments make money. Costs get coded to the job, location or department they belong to, so you see margin on each one instead of one number for the whole company.
• Put controls around the money. A bill gets a second set of eyes before it's paid, and where your staffing allows, the person who pays the bills isn't the same person who reconciles the bank account.
• Report on cash. What's in the bank, what customers are about to pay you and what's going out to vendors and payroll, so a tight month doesn't catch you by surprise.
• Get you ready for the bank and the tax preparer. If your loan requires financial statements on a schedule, they come from reconciled books, so getting them to the bank isn't a scramble. At year end, your tax preparer gets reconciled books instead of a cleanup project.

Controller work matters most in specialty trades and construction, because of job costing and work in progress. A work-in-progress schedule compares each open job's cost so far with its estimated total cost to see how far along it is, then compares that with what you've billed, which tells you whether you're billing ahead of the work or behind it. If that isn't done every month, the profit on your statements can drift a long way from what your jobs are actually earning.

• Your financial statements show up weeks after month end, if they show up
• The numbers change after you've already made a decision with them
• Last quarter's profit is one number, and nobody can break it out by job, customer or location
• One person enters bills, pays them and reconciles the bank, and nobody checks that work
• The bank asks for financial statements and getting them out takes a scramble
• Your tax preparer starts every year by cleaning up the books
• You've added a second entity or location and the books haven't kept up

The way to tell which you need is where the trouble shows up. If the close is late or the numbers keep shifting, that's a controller gap, and it needs fixing before you pay for strategy, because every forecast and pricing decision sits on those numbers. If the books are already clean and the next big decision still feels like a guess, that's CFO work.

We go deeper on this in Fractional controller vs CFO.

You pay for the controller work your business needs, not a salary and benefits for a full-time seat. We work month to month, with no long-term contract and no fee to end it. If you already have a bookkeeper or an internal team, we work alongside them.

The software side has changed what a small team can handle. Once bank activity, receipts and bill approvals come in through connected apps, the accounting department at a smaller company can be a controller and maybe one admin person. That has put controller help within reach of businesses that couldn't have justified it before. If you're still on QuickBooks Desktop, our QuickBooks Desktop to Online page covers the move.

1. Assess and align. We review your books, systems and reporting and give you a written assessment with priorities and scope.
2. Build the foundation. We clean up the books, tighten the monthly close and set up management reports you can run the business on, along with the systems and process work behind them and written playbooks so the steps don't live in one person's head.
3. Lead alongside you. Recurring meetings on the numbers, and we're on call between them.

One of our clients is a multi-entity industrial fabrication business. We moved them off older desktop accounting software, tested it before cutover and tied the data back to their historical numbers, and we've run their close every month since. More on how we work is on our process page.

Because one CPA does both, moving from controller work to CFO work isn't a handoff to someone new. Once the close is reliable, the same numbers can carry a cash forecast, job pricing and the call on opening a second location or taking on a bigger loan. You add CFO work when the decisions call for it, and our fractional CFO cost page lays out what that looks like. If you outgrow us and need someone in-house full time, we'll help you recruit that person and hand the work over.

We work with owner-operators of businesses doing roughly $1M to $15M who are past bookkeeping but not ready for a full-time CFO, in skilled trades and construction, industrial and specialty construction, healthcare, nonprofits and foundations, associations and membership organizations and wealth management and financial services. If you're in the Miami Valley, see our Dayton and west-central Ohio page.

How much does a fractional controller cost?

Our controller engagements start at $36K a year, compared with $145K to $195K a year for a full-time controller. Most of our engagements fall between $2,500 and $10,000 a month, depending on scope, how often you need us and how complex the business is. More detail is on our FAQ.

Who is higher, CFO or controller?

In most companies, the CFO. The controller usually runs the accounting and the close and reports to the CFO, who handles planning, financing and the big decisions. In a business your size there often isn't a CFO, so the controller reports straight to the owner.

What is a financial controller role?

The controller is responsible for the accounting side of the business, meaning the monthly close, account reconciliations, the controls over who can spend and pay, and financial statements that are right and on time.

What does a fractional CFO do?

A fractional CFO takes numbers you can rely on and helps you use them, with cash forecasts, pricing, hiring and borrowing decisions and planning for growth or a sale, for part of the month instead of as a full-time hire. Ours start at $60K a year, compared with $235K to $315K for a full-time CFO.

Is a part time or outsourced controller the same thing?

For the most part, yes. Owners use fractional, part time and outsourced to mean an experienced controller who works for you for part of the month instead of as a full-time employee.

Can you work with my current bookkeeper?

Yes. We can work alongside an internal bookkeeper or team.

If your financial statements are late or you don't fully trust them, tell us a little about your business and we'll set up a 30-minute call.