When to call Aligned.

Business Owners

The numbers stopped being something you could rely on

You are making decisions against financials you quietly do not trust. Maybe cash and profit have stopped agreeing. Maybe the balance sheet carries figures no one can account for. The books exist — the confidence in them does not.

Why it creates risk

Decisions get made on numbers nobody has verified, and the gap between the records and reality widens every month it goes unexamined.

What gets investigated

Where the reported balances came from, which of them can be tied to something external, and which have simply been carried forward untested.

Construction & Trades

Job-level accounting that never quite ties to the financials

Contractors, restoration firms, and developers carry accounting most businesses never touch: job costing, retainage, progress billing, work in progress, equipment, and often several entities at once.

Why it creates risk

When job cost and the general ledger disagree, both the job margins and the financial statements are unreliable — and the error usually compounds across every open job.

What gets investigated

Job cost to general ledger reconciliation, retainage receivable and payable, work in progress and over/under billings, equipment and depreciation, and intercompany activity between entities.

Preparing to Sell

Financials that are about to be examined properly

A sale is usually the first time anyone outside the business reads the financials closely. Buyers, their advisors, and their lenders ask questions the books have never had to answer.

Why it creates risk

Unexplained balances and inconsistent history erode confidence at exactly the moment it is most expensive, and diligence questions arrive on someone else’s timetable.

What gets investigated

Balance sheet composition and support, consistency of treatment across periods, related-party and owner activity, and anything that would not survive a diligence request.

Bonding & Lending

Statements that have to hold up to a surety or a bank

Sureties and lenders ask for accrual-basis statements, supporting schedules, and explanations for anything unusual. They read the balance sheet more carefully than most owners ever have.

Why it creates risk

A statement that cannot be supported line by line stalls the application — and the request usually arrives with a deadline attached.

What gets investigated

Whether accrual treatment is genuinely maintained rather than reported, reconciliation of the accounts behind the statements, and the supporting schedules that sit underneath them.

CPAs & Referral Partners

The work that does not fit inside a monthly engagement

CPAs, bookkeeping firms, fractional CFOs, tax preparers, and advisors run into the same thing: a client whose books need reconstruction well beyond what anyone wants to absorb internally.

Why it creates risk

Absorbing a reconstruction inside a busy season means it competes with everything else — and the client is usually the one who waits.

What gets investigated

Whatever the file requires. The engagement is scoped as a project with a defined end, the ongoing bookkeeping stays where it is, and every correction is documented so your review does not start from scratch.