Everything a finance department does.
Priced like it should be.
Your full outsourced finance department and back office — day-to-day administration (bill pay, invoicing & collections, payroll, 1099s, vendor & expense management) through bookkeeping, controller review, and CFO strategy — plus the projects in between: QoE prep, M&A support, systems integration, AI implementation. Every engagement runs on the same Lean discipline: standardize the process, sustain it monthly, measure the improvement. And every price below is anchored to the one number you already know — what the equivalent hire would cost you.
Three tiers. One compounding system.
Each tier contains the one below it. Start where the pain is; move up as the business grows — the books, systems, and close discipline carry forward.
- Transaction categorization & rules engine
- Bank & credit-card reconciliations, every account, every month
- A documented month-end close that lands on the same date, the same way
- Core financial statements (P&L, balance sheet, cash)
- 1099 tracking & filing
- Everything in Foundation, plus:
- AP & AR management with approval guardrails
- Payroll processing & payroll-close oversight
- Monthly reporting package — KPIs, margins by job/division, budget vs. actual
- Close by the 10th, reviewed by a controller
- Everything in Growth, plus:
- 13-week rolling cash forecast
- Board / investor / lender reporting pack
- Capital strategy, banking & financing support
- Monthly CFO strategy sessions — pricing, hiring, expansion, exit
| What's included | Foundationfrom $1,000/mo | Growth$3–6K/mo | Scale$4–8K/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bookkeeping, reconciliations & monthly close | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Core financial statements & 1099 filing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AP & AR management with approval guardrails | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Payroll processing & payroll-close oversight | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monthly reporting package — KPIs, margins, budget vs. actual | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Controller review — close by the 10th | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| 13-week rolling cash forecast | – | – | ✓ |
| Board / investor / lender reporting pack | – | – | ✓ |
| Monthly CFO strategy sessions — pricing, hiring, capital, exit | – | – | ✓ |
Each tier contains the one below it — start where the pain is, move up as the business grows. The books, systems, and close discipline carry forward at every step.
What the seat really costs — vs. buying the outcome
Hiring one more person into a broken process just adds capacity to produce waste faster. Before you commit to a salary, compare the fully-loaded cost of the seat against a team — bookkeeping, controller review, and CFO access — plus the systems that make the function stay fixed.
| The role you'd post | Base salary | Fully loaded (+~28%) | Per month | The Kaizen alternative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AP/AR clerk | $45K | ~$58K | ~$4,800/mo | AP/AR management, from $750/mo |
| Bookkeeper | $60K | ~$77K | ~$6,400/mo | Bookkeeping & close, $1–3K/mo |
| Senior accountant | $80K | ~$102K | ~$8,500/mo | Controller-lite cadence, $2–5K/mo |
| Controller | $110K | ~$141K | ~$11,700/mo | Fractional controller + CFO, $3–6K/mo |
| CFO | $150K+ | ~$192K | ~$16,000/mo | Fractional CFO, $4–8K/mo |
And the loaded number still understates it: recruiting time, a 3–6 month ramp, single-point-of-failure risk (one person means no coverage on vacation and no review of their own work), and turnover — the average of these seats churns in under two years.
Every service, à la carte
Need one thing, not a tier? Every capability below is available standalone — and each one links to a full page on what it is, why it matters, and how we run it.
Month 1: cleanup, reconciliations, first real close. Month 2: KPIs and cash visibility. Month 3: payroll & AP systems plus a forward forecast. The fastest path from messy books to a finance function.
Categorized transactions, reconciled accounts, and a documented close that repeats every month — the baseline every other decision depends on.
Bills captured at source, approvals with guardrails, invoices out on time and collected — cash flowing in both directions without the owner chasing it.
Payroll run on time, taxed correctly, and booked to the GL properly — job-costed where it matters, reconciled every cycle.
One monthly pack: P&L, cash, KPIs, margins by job or division, budget vs. actual — numbers an owner, board, or lender can act on at a glance.
Controller-grade outcomes and CFO-grade counsel, fractionally — the close by the 10th, the margins by division, the forecast, the bank package.
QuickBooks, Ramp, Gusto, field-service and job-management tools connected into one source of truth — manual reconciliation engineered out, not worked around.
TTM scan, Reported-to-Adjusted EBITDA bridge, add-back validation, data-room-ready closes. Every dollar of EBITDA a buyer can't verify costs 4–6 dollars of price.
Diligence support, data-room management, working-capital peg, and deal-team coordination when the PE call comes — with our banker network when you're ready to go to market.
AI applied to your back office the way we apply it to ours: automated categorization, close checks, reporting, and AI assistants connected safely to your accounting data.
Kaizen API — connect AI directly to QuickBooks
The same platform that powers our engagements, as a product. Paste one URL into Claude and your QuickBooks answers questions, runs reports, and (on higher tiers) writes transactions — with scoped keys, audit logging, and no data stored.
Not sure which one you need?
Start with a free 20-minute books assessment. We'll show you the five things we'd fix first — useful whether you engage us, hire, or do neither.
Or call us directly: +1 786 789 0969