Tax Planning & Compliance
A clean close makes tax filing straightforward. Running both together means the return is built from reconciled numbers, not reconstructed ones.
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Service 01: Accounting
Accounting & bookkeeping
A disciplined month-end close that produces financial statements you can act on: reconciled, accrual-basis, and in your hands by business day seven. Not a shoebox reconciled once a year in April.
At a glance
- Close target: business day 5
- Reporting pack: business day 7
- Basis: GAAP accrual (cash where appropriate)
- Fee: fixed monthly, agreed in advance
- Onboarding: typically 4 to 6 weeks
Fit
Who this is for
- You close late or not at all. Month-end lands six weeks after the fact, and by then the numbers are history rather than information.
- You have outgrown a single bookkeeper. Transaction entry is fine; nobody is doing accruals, reconciliations or GAAP judgment above it.
- A lender or investor wants real statements. Cash-basis books will not survive the first serious diligence question.
- Your finance person is leaving. The process lives in their head and you need it written down before the handover, not after.
- You are behind. One, two or three years of unreconciled records that need rebuilding before anything else can happen.
Outcomes
What changes within a quarter
Three closes are usually enough to move a business from reactive to informed. These are the specific differences clients report.
Numbers arrive when needed
Statements by business day seven mean you are making July's decisions with June's actuals, not with a bank balance and an instinct.
Every balance is supported
Each balance sheet account carries a current reconciliation with documented support. Diligence and audit requests stop being fire drills.
Margin becomes visible
A chart of accounts built around how you actually make money shows gross margin by line, site or contract, usually for the first time.
Scope
What's included
Eight components, all covered by the fixed monthly fee. Nothing here is billed as an extra when it turns out to be needed.
01
Month-end close management
A documented close checklist with named owners and deadlines for every step: cut-off, accruals, prepayments, deferrals, depreciation, intercompany and review. Run to the same sequence every month, so a missed step is visible rather than discovered a quarter later.
02
Balance sheet reconciliations
Every balance sheet account reconciled monthly to independent support: bank and credit card, AR and AR aging, AP, inventory, fixed assets and accumulated depreciation, prepayments, accruals, payroll liabilities, debt and equity.
03
Accounts payable & receivable
Bill entry and coding, approval routing, payment run preparation, vendor statement reconciliation, customer invoicing, cash application and an aging review with a written commentary on anything past 60 days.
04
Payroll journals & accruals
Payroll imported and allocated to the right departments and jobs, with accrued wages, PTO liability, employer taxes and benefit accruals booked correctly. We do not run payroll itself. We make sure it lands correctly in the ledger.
05
GAAP-basis financial statements
A balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows prepared on an accrual basis under US GAAP, with comparatives and appropriate note disclosures where required for lender or board use.
06
Monthly reporting pack & commentary
Statements plus a short written narrative: what moved against budget and prior period, why, what it implies for the next quarter, and the two or three things we think you should look at. You should never have to reverse-engineer your own results.
07
Chart of accounts design
A structure built around how the business actually makes money (by revenue line, location, contract or program), so the reports answer management questions rather than merely satisfying the tax return.
08
Catch-up & clean-up
Where history needs rebuilding, we reconstruct the ledger period by period, reconcile forward, and flag anything that may require an amended filing. Scoped as a separate fixed-fee project before recurring work begins.
What this does not include
Payroll processing itself (we book it, your provider runs it), tax return preparation (see Tax Planning & Compliance), and any audit opinion on statements we prepared. Independence rules prohibit that, and we will say so at scoping rather than after.
Deliverables
What lands in your inbox
Every month, on the same schedule, in the same format. Predictability is most of the value.
- Balance sheet with comparatives
- Income statement vs budget and prior year
- Statement of cash flows
- AR and AP aging with commentary
- Full reconciliation binder
- Close checklist, signed off
- Written management commentary
- Quarterly review call with the partner
Engagement
How the engagement runs
Four stages from first call to steady state. Stages one and two typically take three weeks; you should expect a genuinely clean close by month three.
Stage 01
Assess
We review the ledger, the last three closes, the reconciliation set and the current chart of accounts, then issue a written findings memo ranking issues by exposure.
Stage 02
Design
We agree on the target chart of accounts, close calendar, reconciliation set, reporting pack format and the responsibility matrix, all documented before anything changes.
Stage 03
Execute
We clear the backlog, rebuild the ledger where needed, and run the first two closes alongside your team so the process is proven in practice rather than on paper.
Stage 04
Monitor
We manage the steady-state monthly close and reporting, with a quarterly partner review of what has changed in the business and what those changes mean for the year ahead.
Sectors
Where we do this most
Revenue recognition is the variable that changes everything about a close. These are the sectors whose recognition patterns we work in routinely.
Questions
Accounting & bookkeeping FAQ
Bookkeeping records transactions: entering bills, coding bank feeds, running payroll journals. Outsourced accounting adds the layer above: reconciling every balance sheet account, booking accruals, prepayments and deferrals, applying GAAP judgment, and issuing statements a lender or auditor would accept.
Put simply, a bookkeeper tells you what happened. Outsourced accounting tells you what it means, and stands behind the numbers.
Our standard commitment is a close completed by business day five, with the reporting pack issued by business day seven.
Getting there usually takes two to three cycles after onboarding, because the early months involve clearing backlog and rebuilding the reconciliation set. Businesses with heavy inventory, percentage-of-completion revenue or multi-entity consolidation may settle at business day eight, and we will say so at scoping rather than promise five and miss it.
Yes, and it is more common than you would think. Catch-up work is scoped as a separate fixed-fee project before any recurring engagement, because the effort depends on the state of the records rather than the size of the business.
We rebuild the ledger period by period, reconcile forward, and identify anything that may need an amended filing. The recurring monthly service starts only once the history is clean. Starting a close process on top of unreconciled history just produces faster wrong answers.
Either, and the split is genuinely your call. A very common structure: your bookkeeper continues day-to-day entry (bills, deposits, payroll runs) and we own the close, reconciliation review, accruals and financial statements.
That is usually the best value, because transaction entry does not need CPA-level rates. We document the split in a written responsibility matrix at the start so nothing falls into the gap between two teams.
We work in your existing system wherever it is fit for purpose: most commonly QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Sage Intacct and NetSuite, plus the AP, payroll and expense tools around them.
We recommend migrating only when the current system genuinely constrains the close or the reporting. When that is the case, the migration is scoped as separate project work with its own fee and timetable, never bundled in quietly.
Related services
Often engaged together
Regulatory Compliance & Internal Controls
A reliable close depends on controls that work. Most close failures we find trace back to a control gap rather than an accounting error.
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Outsourced CFO & Advisory
Once the numbers are reliable, the next question is what to do with them. Forecasting only works on a foundation of a trustworthy close.
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Next step
Send us your last three closes
Thirty minutes, no charge. We will tell you what a realistic close timetable looks like for your business, what it would take to get there, and whether you need us at all.