Three offers. No menu.
Everything we do fits in one of these. Each is scoped to the business in front of us, and we tell you how we price it before you commit to anything.
Operations & Finance Diagnostic
An 8–13 week rebuild of your numbers from source data, and a trace of how money moves through the business from first contact to cash in the bank.
We do not start from your reports. We start from orders, shipments, payouts, CRM records, phone logs and the general ledger, and we build the numbers up. That is how a reported loss turns out to be a profit, and how a 60% client leak turns up in a company that thought its problem was lead generation.
Best for: owners who know something is off but can't tell whether it's the books, the pricing, the channel mix, the vendors or the team.
Investment: fixed fee, quoted on the intro call based on data volume, systems and entities. Credited against the setup fee if you continue into a monthly engagement.
You get
- Findings report built from source data, with every figure stating its window and source
- Actual gross margin by product, channel or service line, and the real cash position
- Process map of every sales → delivery → finance handoff and where it breaks
- Ranked fix list by dollar impact and effort, with the first six changes ready to make
- A model you keep: cash flow, unit economics or acquisition cost, depending on the business
- A straight recommendation on whether a monthly engagement makes sense
Fractional CFO
One engagement that owns the whole finance function: the forward view, the reporting, the controls, the tax position, and the plumbing underneath it.
The cadence fits the business. A production company meets every two weeks. A manufacturer in peak season has a weekly bill-pay call and a daily cash check-in. Either way, the owner approves spending in a meeting with numbers in front of them instead of alone with a bank balance.
Best for: the delegators. Owners who largely understand their position and want to consolidate outsourced finance into one relationship and get their time back.
Investment: a monthly retainer scoped to the business, plus a setup fee for cleanup and catch-up. Priced on transaction volume, accounts and balances, inventory, entities, number of returns and schedules, and the state of the systems on day one.
Included every month
- Bookkeeping on the accrual basis, with every journal entry reviewed before it posts
- Management reports, budget vs. actual, margin by product or project
- Cash-flow reporting and rolling projections, including credit line planning
- Quarterly tax planning, reserves funded first, and all annual filings
- Standing owner meeting, biweekly to daily depending on the season
- Bill pay, invoicing and payroll oversight; vendor and contract review
- Ownership of the controls framework and chart of accounts
- Decision memos on the real questions: hires, pricing, capital, retirement plans, acquisitions
- Household and family-office finances, when relevant
Systems & Models
The financial infrastructure that makes good numbers possible, and the models that turn them into decisions. Usually the output of a Diagnostic, sometimes a standalone project.
This is where most of the engineering happens: a controls framework the whole company cites by section number, an inventory system that moves only by reviewed journal entry, a revenue model that matches every deposit to the penny, a data bridge across systems that were never meant to talk, or an operations hub a team runs its week from.
Best for: businesses with a capable bookkeeper or controller already in place who need the architecture, models and workflows designed properly, and companies whose growth has outrun their systems.
Investment: scoped per project after a Diagnostic or a paid discovery session.
Typical scope
- Financial Controls Framework and locked chart of accounts
- Inventory and COGS engine: standard costs, weekly relief, count true-ups, variance thresholds
- Payout-to-ledger revenue models for Shopify, marketplaces, Stripe and invoiced sales
- Cash-flow, unit-economics, pricing and acquisition-cost models you keep
- Data bridges across CRM, phone, ad platforms and the ledger; custom API tools when the connector fails
- Notion operations hub: projects with margin, receiving and counts, approvals, SOPs
- Bill pay, invoicing, progress billing and payroll workflows
- Automation where it helps, documented friction where it protects you
What's under the hood.
The capabilities that show up across all three offers. This is the part that is unusual for a CFO practice, and it is why the numbers end up true.
Financial modeling
Cash-flow projections through peak seasons and credit lines, channel and product profitability, per-unit economics, break-even pricing, cohort and fee-lag models, cost per acquired client by channel.
Controls and close
Written controls frameworks, locked charts of accounts, journal-entry protocols with review before import, weekly and monthly close checklists, liability tie-outs, accrual books that a tax return can start from.
Inventory and COGS
Multi-account inventory from raw materials to finished goods, standard costing verified to invoices, weekly COGS by category, count cadences, variance thresholds that decide when to recount.
Revenue systems and marketing analytics
Payout-to-ledger revenue models, data bridges across phone, CRM, fee and ad platforms, attribution that ties spend to signed clients and cash, and root-cause analysis when a channel collapses.
Operations systems
Notion operations hubs with per-project margin, receiving and count workpapers, bill-pay and approval workflows, custom integrations and API tools when the off-the-shelf connector fails.
Tax strategy for owners
Quarterly planning inside the monthly engagement, S-corp compensation and distribution design, reserves funded first, trust and estate and fiduciary work for the families behind the business.
Questions we get on the intro call
Do you take bookkeeping-only or tax-only clients?
No. After-the-fact bookkeeping is largely automated now and there are many inexpensive options. One-off tax returns are the same. Annual tax engagements are reserved for trust and estate work, legacy clients, and highly complex planning situations.
What is actually included in the monthly Fractional CFO fee?
The bookkeeping, the tax filings and the tax planning are all inside the monthly fee. So are management reporting, cash-flow projections, budget vs. actual, a standing meeting cadence, and ownership of the controls framework. What changes the price is volume and complexity: transactions, accounts and balances, inventory, entities, number of returns and schedules, and how much the systems need rebuilt first.
How long does the Diagnostic take, and what do I get?
Eight to thirteen weeks depending on data volume and the number of systems. You get a written findings report built from source data (not from your existing reports), the real margin and cash position, a ranked fix list by dollar impact, and a recommendation on whether a monthly engagement makes sense. Recent diagnostics have processed 450,000+ orders and bridged five disconnected systems.
What does the setup fee cover?
Catch-up and cleanup from the start of the calendar year through the current month, plus the initial systems work. It is scoped to how far behind the books are and how much the systems need rebuilt before the monthly cadence can start. Diagnostic fees are credited against it.
Which software do you work in?
QuickBooks Online for the general ledger, on the accrual basis, with revenue and COGS arriving as reviewed journal-entry imports rather than app syncs. Notion for operations hubs, workpapers and documentation. Shopify, Stripe, Bill.com, Gusto, Avalara, Sumtracker and the usual ad platforms are all in current engagements. We are opinionated, but not tied to a stack, and we build the integration ourselves when the connector fails.
Do you do marketing analytics? That seems unusual for a CFO.
Yes. The seam between marketing spend and cash is the one nobody inside a company owns, and it is where we have found some of the largest leaks. We do this work both directly and in partnership with a marketing strategy agency, so the strategy and the numbers arrive together.
Can you handle trusts, estates and fiduciary accounting?
Yes. Fiduciary accounting and trust and estate tax are part of the practice, most often for the families behind the businesses we already serve.
Do you accept clients with foreign investments or foreign activity?
Yes, with a caveat. We first determine whether the reporting is inbound (foreign taxpayers doing business in the US) or outbound (US taxpayers doing business abroad). We have current experience with both, but in many situations the right answer includes specialized foreign tax counsel, and we will say so on the intro call.
Do you help with personal or household finances?
For business-owner clients, yes: household finances can be folded into the monthly engagement, and for some families that becomes a full family-office arrangement with their wealth advisor at the table. We do not take standalone personal-finance clients.
How do we start?
Book the 15-minute intro call. If it makes sense, the next step is usually the Diagnostic. Some clients go straight to a monthly engagement when the systems are already in decent shape.
Start with a 15-minute call.
No pitch deck. We talk about where your operations and your numbers stop agreeing with each other, and whether we are the right fit to fix it.