HomeBy stage
By stage

What you need from finance
depends on where you are

A company at $600K and a company at $12M both need their books to be right. Almost nothing else about the two jobs is the same. Find the row that sounds like you.

Four stages

The job changes as the business grows

Each stage below has what usually breaks at that size, what we run, and roughly what it costs. Every price links to the estimator with your size already filled in.

Stage 1 · up to about $1M

Getting started

You are keeping the books yourself, or a part-time bookkeeper is. The chart of accounts is whatever QuickBooks suggested on setup. Nothing is wrong yet, and that is exactly why this is the cheapest stage at which to get it right.

What usually breaks
Books are on cash basis, and the first investor or lender asks for accrual.
Personal and business spending are still mixed in places.
Nobody owns the close, so it happens when somebody remembers.
You cannot answer "what did we spend on that" without opening the bank.
What we run at this stage
  • A chart of accounts built for your model, not the default one
  • Monthly bookkeeping and a close that lands on a date
  • Clean records from the start, so there is no cleanup to buy later
  • Financial statements a CPA can file from without questions
$400 to $800a month, typical
Ready for the next stage when the close lands every month without you chasing it, and the statements are accrual.
Stage 2 · $1M to $5M

Growing

The books are handled. You have a bookkeeper, probably a CPA, and the reports arrive. What you do not have is anyone whose job is to read them and tell you what to do next, so that part is still yours, usually at night. This is the most common place we are brought in. How we work alongside your accountant →

What usually breaks
Reports land on time and nothing gets decided from them.
The forecast is a spreadsheet only you know how to update.
Pricing has not moved in two years because nobody modelled what a rise would do.
A hire keeps getting postponed because nobody can say whether the business carries it.
You know last month's cash. You do not know March's.
What we run at this stage
  • A rolling forecast that is actually maintained against what happened
  • The decision in front of you, modelled: the hire, the price, the contract
  • A reviewed close, so the numbers you decide on have had a second pair of eyes
  • Board, bank and investor reporting, built once and kept current
  • A monthly call where somebody senior says what they would do
$2,500 to $7,500a month, typical
Ready for the next stage when you are deciding from a forecast rather than from the bank balance.
Stage 3 · $5M to $20M

Scaling

More people touch money, there may be more than one entity, and you are probably filing in more states than you meant to. A board, a lender or an acquirer is asking questions on their schedule rather than yours.

What usually breaks
The close takes three weeks, so the numbers are old before they are read.
Everyone approves everything, which means nobody does.
Multi-entity consolidation is done by hand in a spreadsheet each month.
A diligence request turns into a two-week project.
What we run at this stage
  • A reviewed close on a fixed calendar, with sign-off
  • Approval workflows and controls that survive an auditor asking
  • Consolidation across entities, and the states you actually owe
  • Management reporting with variance commentary, not just statements
  • The systems and process work underneath all of it
$4,500 to $12,000a month, typical
Ready for the next stage when a lender or a board question is answered in a day, not a fortnight.
Stage 4 · $20M and up

Established, and what comes after

You either have a finance function or you are about to need one. An audit, a raise, an acquisition or an exit is close enough that the quality of your records stops being an internal matter and becomes somebody else's diligence.

What usually breaks
Audit preparation eats a quarter that was meant for the business.
Historic records are fine for you and will not survive a buyer's review.
The model a buyer wants is not the model you run the company on.
The finance team you have is good and stretched past what it can cover.
What we run at this stage
  • Audit-ready records, and the schedules an auditor will ask for
  • Diligence support, so a data room is assembled once and kept current
  • Scenario modelling for a raise, an acquisition or an exit
  • Capacity beside your own team rather than instead of it
Scoped to the workevery engagement at this size is
You are where you want to be when a buyer's diligence list is a download rather than a project.
The other way in

Not sure which row is you?

Two other routes to the same answer, neither of which needs you to know what a controller does.

Take the health score

Two minutes, eleven questions, a score and the two or three things to fix first.

Look by industry

SaaS, startups, e-commerce and service firms each break in their own way.

Build an estimate

Pick the services and your size and see a range in about a minute.

Tell us where you are

We will tell you what the next stage asks for and what it would cost. We reply the same day, or by the next business day.

Get a tailored proposal → Request a 30-min call →
Request a callSee pricing