Between the Bookkeeper and the CPA.
An ongoing retainer engagement.
The owner already had a bookkeeper they trusted. They already had a CPA who'd handled the filings cleanly for years. What they didn't have was the seat in the middle — the financial leadership who keeps the close honest, the intercompany clean, the CPA informed, and the owner ahead of the numbers.
That's what fractional CFO work actually looks like.
The setup
Three legal entities under common ownership. A small-batch consumer goods portfolio with related brands sharing operations, inventory, and customers. An existing bookkeeper handling day-to-day transactions. An external CPA handling tax filings and year-end. And a gap in the middle — the work that neither role naturally owns but every business of this size needs.
What we do
- Reconcile intercompany transactions across all three entities and produce a consolidated picture
- Run monthly close on a calendar — accruals included, payroll posted from Paylocity, unearned revenue tracked through release
- File sales and use tax across the entities on the right schedule
- Handle the unglamorous compliance — insurance audits, business license renewals, annual filings
- Coordinate with the existing bookkeeper on flows we want changed, on a quarterly cadence
- Coordinate with the CPA on tax filings and year-end positioning, before they're under deadline
- Build adhoc reporting the owner needs for specific decisions — pricing, hiring, channel performance
- Sit with the owner on revenue trends, near-term and forward — what's working, what's slowing, what to plan for
What changed for the owner
The owner stopped being the person between the bookkeeper and the CPA — the role no operator should be carrying. Monthly numbers come in on a calendar nobody had to build. The intercompany matrix is reconciled across the three entities — so when the consolidated picture lands, the numbers behind it are honest. The CPA gets cleaner data, on time. The owner gets revenue conversations, not bookkeeping conversations.
What didn't have to change: nobody got fired. No accounting systems got swapped. No existing professional relationships got restructured. We built into the seat that was empty.