Outsourced Controller Services: The Whole Accounting Department, Run for You

It does not mean a portal and a ticket number. It means a named controller who owns your close and answers your phone, a checklist that says what happens on which day, and a monthly output that does not change shape. The entries are done by your bookkeeper, by ours, or by a mix. For most companies the split is your person on the daily transactions and our team on the reconciliations, the accruals, and the review.

Everything runs inside your accounting system and your bank. We do not move your data to a platform we control, and we do not hold your books hostage if you leave. The chart of accounts, the checklist, the reconciliation files, and the procedures are built in your environment and stay there.

The scope is written as a list of recurring tasks with owners. Bank and credit-card reconciliations. AR aging and the collections call list. AP entry, approval, and the payment run. Payroll review before it releases. Sales tax data assembled for whoever files it. Month-end accruals, prepaids, fixed assets, and loan schedules. Financial statements and commentary. Anything not on the list is either added to it or declined in writing.

Day one, cutoff. Revenue and cash are cut on the first business day, and nothing dated last month moves after that without a note. Days one to three, the bank, credit-card, loan, and merchant accounts are reconciled and any unexplained item is listed rather than plugged. Days three to six, the subledgers tie out: receivables to the aging, payables to the vendor statements, payroll liabilities to the register, inventory or job cost to its report, fixed assets to the register.

Days six to eight, the accruals and adjustments post from documented schedules, and the controller reviews every balance-sheet account against its support. Days eight to ten, the statements are produced, the variances are explained in a page, and the package goes to the owner. The same package goes to the bank and the CPA when they ask for it, because there is one set of books.

The first close under the new process is usually late by a few days while the reconciliations catch up. The second is on time. The third is uneventful, which is the whole point. By then the checklist has been corrected twice, the templates hold, and the owner's questions have shifted from whether the numbers are right to what they mean.

Cash collection is a controllership task, not a sales task. Every invoice goes out when the work is done. Every receivable over 30 days gets a name, a next action, and a date, and the list is worked every week. For contractors, retainage, pay applications, and lien deadlines are on the calendar, because the right to be paid expires on a schedule the customer does not announce.

Payables run on a weekly cycle: entered against a purchase order or an approval, matched to the vendor statement, and paid on the due date in one batch the owner sees before it releases. Duplicate vendors, duplicate invoices, and the recurring charge for software nobody uses get caught in month one. Payroll is reviewed by someone who did not enter it, with the register tied to the liabilities and the burden tied to the jobs.

These three routines are where an outsourced controller pays for itself. Days sales outstanding falls. Payables reach their terms instead of being paid the day they arrive. The line of credit goes back to funding growth rather than late invoicing, and the owner reviews one disbursement summary a week instead of signing whatever is on the desk at 6 p.m.

Most bookkeepers we meet are capable people who have never had a reviewer. They post what they are told and guess at the rest, because the alternative is interrupting the owner. Under an outsourced controller they get a checklist, a monthly review of their work, answers to the questions they stopped asking, and training on the parts of accounting nobody ever showed them: accruals, cutoff, job cost, fixed assets.

When there is no bookkeeper, or the one you have is leaving, our staff takes the entries under the same checklist. When the bookkeeper is the owner's spouse, the arrangement still works, and it tends to work better than anyone expected, because the review is about the process rather than the person.

'Financials FINAL v3' is not a version control system. It is a cry for help with a file extension.

Your CPA gets a reconciled trial balance with supporting schedules in January, and a controller to answer questions instead of an owner who has to look things up. Year-end adjusting entries shrink to a handful. Tax preparation takes less time and costs less. We do not give tax advice, and we do not pretend to. We make the person who does more effective.

Your bank gets financial statements that match the covenant calculation and an aging that ties to the borrowing base. If you have a CFO, fractional or full-time, they get numbers they do not have to rebuild before forecasting. Many clients pair this service with our outsourced or fractional CFO engagement. The controller owns the accuracy, the CFO owns the decisions, and the two run on one calendar.

Home-services and trade contractors are a large share of our controller work, because the combination of job cost, technician payroll, and a lender who wants a monthly package is exactly what a single bookkeeper cannot carry alone.