Full-charge accounting, CFO-led with a controller built in.

CFO-led means a CFO designs your financial reports and reviews them with you. Controller built-in means someone senior is accountable for it being right before it ever reaches you.

For mission-driven companies with revenue they can count on , often $500K to $5M, where the business is growing beyond their current accounting setup.

The Problem…

You've built a real company. Revenue is growing, the team is bigger, and there's more moving through the books every month than there was two years ago - more products, more entities, more inventory, more funders who want reports.

Your accounting was set up to do one job well : produce a tax return.

So that's what it does.

Revenue arrives as one line. Payroll as another. Overhead in a lump.

At best it's accurate, it's compliant, but you can't tell which product actually makes money, whether that program covers its own costs, or why gross margin slipped three points last quarter.

Financial reports show up in week three or week four, after the decision they were supposed to inform has already been made by feel.

Solid accounting isn't about staying compliant. It's about books and financial reports that carry real, useful information - the kind you can make decisions with.

That's a different job than tax prep, and it takes a different level of ownership: full-charge accounting with a controller accountable for the whole thing, and a CFO who reviews it with you.

It's also the first of our three pillars, and the one everything else depends on:

Meaningful Numbers you can trust.

CFO-Led means all three layers

Bookkeeping

the work gets recorded ← where most firms stop
Transactions coded, bank feeds managed, bills paid, payroll processed, reconciliations run. Sometimes this only gets done in time to file taxes. 

Controllership

the work gets verified ← built in at every tier
Someone senior reviews the close before it reaches you. Balance sheet accounts substantiated. Coding corrected, not just accepted. Cut-off enforced so the month actually closes within a few days of the end of month. Problems flagged the week or month they happen, not the following March.  We make sure your financial reports are consistent, and they accurately tell you the story of what is actually happening in your business.

CFO

the work informs decisions ← leads the engagement
A CFO reads your financials, tells you what changed and why, and helps you decide what to do about it.

At Managed and above, we own all three. At Oversight, you keep the bookkeeping in-house and we own everything else.

Most accounting firms sell you the first layer and call it accounting. The second is where correct books become useful ones. The third is where useful books turn into decisions, and it's why a CFO leads every engagement here, at every tier.

What CFO-Led accounting does differently

Rebuilds the chart of accounts around your decisions. Most charts of accounts grew by accretion - someone added a line whenever they needed one, and the result answers the tax return's questions instead of yours. We rebuild yours so the P&L shows which product lines, which programs, and which locations carry their own weight.

• Designs the reporting package you'll actually read. Not a stack of statements. The three or four views that tell you what changed and where the money went, in the same format every month, so patterns are visible instead of buried.

• Reviews the close before you see it. A senior accountant checks the month against the balance sheet - not a spot check, a substantiation. Every account has a reason for its balance.

• Owns the calendar. The close has a due date and hits it. Same date every month, so you can build a decision rhythm around it.

• Escalates early. Sales tax exposure, a customer trending toward bad debt, margin slipping on one line, a covenant getting tight - surfaced while you can still act on it.

• Hands your CPA a clean year. We don't prepare your tax return. We make it a short, boring engagement - no catch-up, no restatements, no April surprises.

Mission-driven differentiation

Built for how mission-driven companies are actually put together

Values alignment is easy to claim. Here's what it looks like in the ledger.

Program, class, project, and location tracking that works. Not bolted on at year end. Built into the chart of accounts so you can see which programs and which lines of business cover their costs — and which ones the profitable work is subsidizing.

Impact metrics in the same system as the money. Jobs created, pounds diverted, acres transitioned, patients reached — tracked alongside the financials instead of reconstructed in a separate spreadsheet every time somebody asks.

Worker-owned and cooperative structures. Patronage allocations, member equity accounts, internal capital accounts. Understanding this is in our DNA.

Multi-entity and consolidations. Nonprofit plus operating LLC, fiscally sponsored programs, a holding structure, related-party activity. Consolidated statements that hold up. We’ve done it all.

Lender and funder reporting. Covenant reporting for CDFIs and impact loan funds, grant budgets and drawdown schedules, restricted fund tracking, reports that arrive in the format the fund actually asked for.

Inventory and true COGS. For food, beverage, and product companies, where a gross margin number is either useful or fiction, depending on whether anyone is doing the work behind it.

Three ways to work together

Oversight - Starting at $750/month

You have a bookkeeper you like. We add the layer above them.

You handle: day-to-day bookkeeping and bank feeds, bill payments, payroll, inventory counts, sales tax collection.

We handle:

• Bookkeeper oversight and support

• Monthly review and adjusting entries

• Monthly balance sheet reconciliation and substantiation

• Sales tax review

• Issues flagged as they arise, with workflow fixes recommended

• Monthly financial statements delivered by day 20, stored in your client portal

• Quarterly CFO review — a recorded walkthrough of trends, risks, and opportunities

Response time: 3 business days. Email and client portal.

Managed - From $1,250/month

We run the accounting function end to end.

Everything in Oversight, plus:

• Monthly bookkeeping — transactions coded, categorized, and reconciled by our team

• Month-end close managed on a published calendar

• Statements delivered by day 15

• AR tracking and AP organization so cash flow stops being a guessing game

• Quarterly financial statement analysis with KPI review

• Sales tax filings prepared

• Quarterly live CFO session — 1:1, on your numbers

• Payroll and inventory support available, priced to scale

Response time: 2 business days. Dedicated staff accountant, controller oversight.

Managed + Monthly CFO - From $2,500/month

A CFO in the room every month — reading the numbers with you, before you're ready for a deeply engaged CFO.

Everything in Managed, plus:

• Weekly transaction coding — books current every week, not every month

• Statements delivered by day 10

• Monthly live CFO session — we read the month with you, name what changed, and decide what to watch next

• A KPI dashboard we maintain, so the same numbers show up the same way every month

• Your budget and annual plan reviewed and pressure-tested — you build it, we stress it

• Proactive analysis — trends and anomalies brought to you before you ask

• Priority access and response prioritization

Response time: 1 business day. Dedicated manager, named CFO.

Where the CFO role stops - at every accounting tier. We don't build financial models, own your forecast, run a capital raise, negotiate with your lender, or sit in leadership meetings between sessions.

The CFO here designs your reporting and reads it with you. When the work becomes building the model and owning the plan, that's Scale-Ready CFO - the Managed + Monthly CFO is the on-ramp to deeper CFO services.

Terms line: All tiers are annual agreements, billed monthly. If your books need catch-up or cleanup to reach a reliable starting point, that's a separate one-time project quoted up front, and completed before monthly service begins.

Who's doing the work

CFO on Speeddial is a small, senior team. Between us, we've served more than 200 businesses as CFO, controller, coach, or advisor.

Founder Christine Rico has spent more than 30 years at the intersection of business growth strategy, social enterprise, and impact investing. She's also a training expert in Project Equity's Employee Ownership module for CFOs.

The team includes CPAs with accounting firm backgrounds and CFOs who've held the seat inside nonprofits, food and beverage companies, health and wellness businesses, and impact loan funds.

We served as ongoing CFO to a $20M community-controlled loan fund for three years, and supported a worker-owned solar company for more than 7 years from $2.7M through $10M+ in revenue - including the worker-ownership transition.

Complicated structures aren't an exception here. They're most of our client list.

Onboarding

Month one, your reports arrive on time.

That's the onboarding promise. Not a 90-day transformation plan - a close that lands on the calendar in your first month.

Days 1 - 7 : Transition. Systems access, document flow, who-does-what, and a published close calendar with your delivery date on it. We read your last two years of financials to learn how the business actually works.

Days 8 - 30 : Your first close, on time. We run it and deliver your reports when we said we would. Alongside it, you get a written assessment of your chart of accounts and reporting structure, with specific recommendations.

Then we improve it. Structural changes - chart of accounts rebuilds, new reporting packages, class and program tracking - get sequenced at a clean break point, usually the start of a quarter or fiscal year. 

The one exception. If your books need catch-up or cleanup first, we'll tell you in week one, quote it as a one-time project, and finish it before monthly service starts. We won't build a reporting rhythm on a foundation we don't trust, and we won't bury what it costs to get there.

Where this fits

Meaningful Numbers + Clear Decisions + Consistent Action = the Sweet Spot. That's where the Pure Magic happens.

CFO-Led Accounting owns the first pillar. Reliable, current, well-organized numbers you can trust. The foundation everything else stands on.

When the questions get bigger - should we take on debt, can we afford this hire, what do the next 18 months look like, is this the right capital for our structure and our mission - that's Scale-Ready CFO, our fractional CFO service. There, a CFO owns the forecast and does the work between meetings.

Managed + Monthly CFO is the deliberate step in between. A CFO in the room every month, at a price that works before a full fractional CFO engagement does. Plenty of clients start there and grow into Scale-Ready CFO once the questions outgrow the conversation - the moment you need a model built and a forecast owned, you've outgrown it, and that's by design.

FAQ’s

Do we have to fire our bookkeeper?
No. That's what the Oversight tier is for. If you've got someone good, keep them. We'll give them direction and check their work. If you'd rather hand the whole thing off, that's Managed.

• Is this really a CFO, or a CFO in name only?
  A real one, with a defined job. At every tier, a CFO designs your chart of accounts and reporting package and reads the numbers with you:

  - quarterly on a recording at Oversight,

  -quarterly live at Managed,

  -monthly live at Managed + Monthly CFO.

  What a CFO does not do at these tiers is build financial models, own your forecast, or run a capital raise. That's Scale-Ready CFO, and we'll tell you plainly when you've crossed into it.

• Do you do our taxes?
  No. We work alongside your CPA and hand them a clean, closed year. If you don't have a CPA, we'll help you find one.

• What if our books are behind?
  Then that's the first project, and it happens before monthly service starts. Before we start any accounting engagement we take a look at the state of your books to ensure we have a clean starting point. 

  We will tell you what catch-up costs before you commit to anything ongoing, and we won't start monthly work on a foundation we don't trust.

• Are we too small for this?
  Size matters less than steadiness. We work with companies under $500K whose structure is already complicated - multiple entities, restricted funds, inventory, program tracking.

  Where it doesn't fit well is pre-revenue start-ups, when what you actually need is a solid bookkeeper and a tax preparer. We'll tell you if that's you.

• What systems do you work in?
  QuickBooks Online is our default. We'll tell you honestly if your current stack is fine, needs one change, or needs rebuilding.

• Who actually touches our books?
  Day-to-day transaction work is handled by a dedicated bookkeeping team under our direct supervision. Every close is reviewed by a senior member of the CFO on Speeddial team before it reaches you, and you'll have direct contact with the people doing the work.

• Are you only for nonprofits and co-ops?
  No. We work with for-profit companies, co-ops, nonprofits, and hybrid structures. The common thread is a mission that's part of the business model, not an after-thought.

Let's look at your numbers together.

Bring us your last two months of financials and one question you can't currently answer from them. We'll tell you what's in the way.