Full-service outsourced accounting

The core of the service is the general ledger and the monthly close built around it. That means transaction coding and reconciliation feeding into journal entries that get reviewed before posting, a standing close checklist followed the same way every period, and a full set of financial statements, profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow statement, produced at the end of it. Internal controls sit underneath all of it: documented approval limits, segregation of duties between who initiates a payment and who approves it, and a periodic review of who has access to what. You also get a named team assigned to your account rather than whoever happens to be available, and a recorded handover memo any time staffing on that team changes, so a new person on your file starts with context instead of a blank slate. None of this replaces a fractional CFO's forecasting or fundraising work, or an independent firm's audit, review, or compilation report. It is the accuracy layer those other functions depend on.

Onboarding starts with a review of your current books, whatever state they are actually in, plus your existing software access and what your lenders, investors, or board expect to see. We confirm the chart of accounts fits how the business actually operates, or rebuild it if it does not. The first month typically runs as a parallel or catch-up period while we tie out opening balances and confirm nothing material is missing from prior periods. From there, the monthly cycle repeats on a fixed schedule: transactions get coded and reconciled through the month, journal entries post with supporting documentation attached, the close checklist runs the same way every period, and financial statements go out with a short note on anything unusual. Most engagements settle into a rhythm within the first two closes, and we revisit the agreed scope in writing any time the business's transaction volume, entity count, or reporting needs change materially.

This fits a business that has outgrown a single bookkeeper working from a spreadsheet on the side. Common signals: more than one bank account or legal entity, a lender or investor now asking for real financial statements instead of a bank export, enough transaction volume that reconciliations slip a week behind and stay there, or a founder who is the only person who understands why last month's numbers looked the way they did. It also fits a business that already has bookkeeping running cleanly but has no one reviewing the ledger as a whole, closing it on schedule, or standing behind the resulting statements. It is not the right starting point for a business with under a hundred monthly transactions and one bank account; monthly bookkeeping alone usually covers that stage, and this service becomes the right move once the business outgrows it.

The most frequent one is a close that technically happens but nobody would want examined closely: transactions coded to whatever account was open on the screen, no reconciliation behind half the balance sheet, and a profit and loss statement that changes meaningfully every time someone looks at it a second time. The second is a single point of failure, one bookkeeper or one employee who built the whole system in their head and left no documentation, so the business is one resignation away from not knowing how its own books work. The third is statements that exist but were built for no particular reader, so when a lender or investor actually asks a specific question, the answer takes days to reconstruct instead of minutes. We fix these by rebuilding the close around a documented, repeatable process and substantiating every balance sheet account rather than trusting whatever the software's running total says.

We run the close inside the general ledger system you already use rather than migrating you to a proprietary platform. QuickBooks Online and Xero cover most businesses under roughly 200 monthly transactions across a handful of accounts; NetSuite and Sage Intacct fit multi-entity structures, revenue recognition complexity, or a board that expects consolidated reporting. Bill.com handles accounts payable approval workflows and vendor payments with the segregation of duties a controller review depends on. Where a business already runs Ramp, Brex, Gusto, ADP, or Rippling for spend management or payroll, we integrate the close around those feeds rather than asking you to re-enter the same data twice. If your business runs a system outside this list, we scope a short onboarding review before committing to ongoing work, so you know upfront whether we can support it well rather than finding out three months in.

Pricing depends on three things: transaction volume, how many legal entities are involved, and how much controller-level review the business actually needs on top of the base close. The published rate card starts at the Growth tier for businesses running payroll, contractors, and multiple accounts, and moves to a custom Scale quote once multi-entity consolidation or dedicated senior review enters the picture. Add-ons like sales tax filing support, payroll support, or a fractional CFO layer are priced separately so you are not paying for scope you do not need yet. Every engagement gets an exact quote in writing before work starts, scoped against your actual books rather than a generic template.

Two things get checked every period: whether the close finished on the agreed schedule, and whether every balance sheet account has a schedule or reconciliation behind it, not just a number that happens to tie to the bank feed. A senior reviewer looks at the close before it goes out, not just the final statements. If something does not tie out, it gets flagged in writing with the reason, not silently adjusted into the next period. Prior-period adjustments are tracked in a log rather than absorbed quietly, so a year-over-year comparison still means something a year later. That review discipline is the actual product here. The financial statements are the visible output, but the reason they can be trusted is the review layer standing behind them.

The single most common failure mode in outsourced accounting is not a bad number, it is a staffing change with no record of what the departing person knew. We treat the handover memo as a deliverable, not an afterthought: whenever anyone on your named pod changes, whoever is coming on writes down open items, unresolved reconciling differences, anything flagged but not yet closed out, and where the last close actually left off. You get a copy of it, not just the new team member. That single practice is why continuity on this service does not depend on any one person staying in the role forever, and it is worth asking any provider you compare us against whether they do the same thing.