Fractional Controller & Advisory
Controller-level review of your books every month, for businesses that have outgrown bookkeeping alone but don’t need a full-time controller.
At some point the bookkeeping gets done on time, but nobody owns the accounting. No one reviews the close or asks why a balance moved before the statements go to you, the bank, or the CPA. A fractional controller does that, a few days a month, alongside the bookkeeper and CPA you already have.
What This Typically Involves
- Oversight of the month-end close
- Review of accruals and adjusting entries
- Variance and trend analysis each month
- Advisory on accounting systems and workflows
- Coordination with bookkeepers and outside CPAs
Signs This Is the Right Work
- The books get done, but no one reviews them before the owner sees them
- Financial statements arrive too late, or too unexplained, to run the business from
- A lender, surety, or CPA has started asking questions the business cannot answer quickly
- Year-end has become a cleanup project instead of a review of twelve closed months
- The business is at about $1 million in revenue or more and has outgrown bookkeeping alone, but a full-time controller would sit idle half the month
What You End Up With
- Financial statements the owner can act on, delivered on a schedule
- Schedules and support ready when the CPA, lender, or surety asks
It Starts With a Review
We start by looking at the books, the close, and the controls as they are today. That sets the scope for everything after.
- Review: the books, the close, and the controls, as they are now
- Correct: if the review finds problems, they get fixed first, as a defined project. If the books are sound, this step is skipped
- Oversee: from there, the close is reviewed every month, the numbers are explained, and the schedules are ready when a lender, surety, or CPA asks for them
What a Fractional Controller Owns
The bookkeeper records the transactions. The controller makes sure they’re right and turns them into something you can use. In practice:
- The month-end close, on a schedule you can count on
- The balance sheet: every account reconciled to something outside the software, and reviewed
- Financial statements checked at the account level before you see them, with the variances explained
- The handful of reports you decide with, produced the same way each close
- A cash view, so you know what’s coming before it arrives
- Accounting policies and internal controls sized to the business
- Guidance for the bookkeeper or accounting team, and a second set of eyes on their work
- Changes to the close and the workflows around it as the business grows
Above Bookkeeping, Not Instead of It
The bookkeeper keeps the books. The CPA does the tax work, and any audit or assurance work; Aligned is not a CPA firm. The controller sits in between: reviewing the close, keeping the controls working, and making sure what reaches you, the lender, or the CPA is right.
For a lot of clients, this is where a reconstruction or systems project leads. Once the accounting is right, someone has to keep it that way.
If your CPA or another advisor referred you, that relationship stays exactly as it is. How referrals work.
Fractional vs. Full-Time
A full-time controller makes sense once there’s enough accounting work to fill the job. Most businesses at $1 million in revenue and up won’t have that much for years, but they still need the review. A fractional controller covers it in part of the time, and the scope grows as the business does.
When This May Not Be Necessary
A business that does not yet have reliable bookkeeping needs that first; there is nothing for a controller to review until the transactions are recorded. A business whose statements are already reviewed by an in-house accountant needs process and controls work or automation, not another layer of review. And a business whose main need is forecasting, financing, or strategy needs a CFO, which this service is not.