Advisory

A controller owns the close. He reviews the reconciliations, puts the accruals in the right period, sends the statements out on a schedule, and can explain a variance without going back to the source documents.

Businesses reach for this when the bookkeeping is handled and the questions above it are not, such as how a lender's covenant was calculated, what belongs in the monthly package an investor expects, or which jobs actually made money last quarter.

You get a CPA in the seat, and the hours follow your month end rather than a full time schedule.

The fractional CPA role covers the judgment calls, such as how to account for a new contract type, what a lease or a revenue arrangement does to your statements, how to present a transaction the auditors have already asked about, and what a new standard means for your numbers.

Bill Borden is a CPA with an M.S. in Accounting from the University of Massachusetts Isenberg School of Management, and he spent 15+ years in audit, technical accounting, and financial reporting roles. That is the background this work draws on.

This is the right call when you have staff who can run the process and you need someone to settle the treatment.

Nonprofit accounting carries requirements a company's books do not. Restricted gifts have to stay identifiable from the day they arrive, grant conditions have to be tracked against what actually gets spent, and every expense needs a program, management, or fundraising home before the year closes.

Getting that right during the year keeps the annual reporting from turning into a rebuild in the fall. It also means your treasurer has an answer when a board member asks how much of the restricted money is still restricted.

Ask about the Form 990 in the same conversation. The return and the year end statements draw on the same numbers.

The work starts with what actually happens now, which means tracing who touches an invoice, where the approval sits, which reconciliations get done at month end, and where a number gets rekeyed from one system into another.

The fixes are ordinary and specific. They usually include a cutoff everybody follows, a reconciliation checklist with an owner and a due date, an approval that happens before the payment instead of after, and a close calendar that survives somebody taking a week off.

Bill Borden examined these processes from the outside for years as an auditor before advising on them from the inside, which shapes where he looks first.

A software vendor sets up the system. Whether the move works depends on the accounting underneath it, so that is where Blackforest Advisors spends the time.

A good move gives you a chart of accounts built for the reports you actually read, opening balances that tie to the last closed period, history brought over at a level you can still use, and a first close run in parallel so the gaps appear while the old system is still available.

Say what you want the new system to tell you before anyone maps a single account. That answer sets most of the structure.

The monthly work is ordinary. Blackforest Advisors codes the transactions consistently, reconciles the bank and credit card accounts, keeps receivables and payables current, and produces the financial statements on a schedule you can count on.

You feel the difference later. A tax return prepared from clean books costs less than one that starts with a cleanup, and you can answer a lender's question this week rather than next month.

A CPA reviews the output rather than only producing it, so he catches a treatment question during the year instead of in March.