Controller and CFO Support for Stoneham and Greater Boston Businesses
For owners making hiring, pricing, lease and borrowing decisions on instinct because the numbers arrive too late to help. Bookkeeping tells you what already happened. Controller and CFO support tells you what is coming: a budget, a rolling forecast and a cash runway, reviewed every month, with tax and cash looked at together, for businesses in Greater Boston and across the country.
Who this fits
A full-time CFO is a cost most small businesses cannot justify, and bookkeeping is backward looking by design. The space between the two is where a lot of owners end up making expensive decisions on instinct. Fractional controller and CFO support fills that space.
It fits owners with a decision in front of them: a hire, a lease, equipment, a loan, a price change, or a nagging doubt that the pricing covers the real costs. Revenue size matters less than the decisions. If the business is stable and simple, a lighter version focused on a reliable close and cash visibility is often enough.
Controller work is about accuracy and process: a real monthly close, a chart of accounts that reflects how you operate, numbers that arrive on time and can be trusted. CFO work is forward looking: budgets, forecasts, pricing, hiring, borrowing and the tradeoffs between them. The order matters. Forecasting on top of unreliable books produces confident nonsense, so Monthly Bookkeeping is the foundation and this sits on top of it.
How the work runs
We start with a diagnostic: how the books are produced, how long the close takes, whether the chart of accounts describes the business, and whether the numbers can support a decision. Whatever is broken there gets fixed first, because everything downstream depends on it.
Then a budget is built from real history and what you intend to do differently, and the forecast becomes its living version, updated as actual results land, so at any point you can see where the year is heading rather than where you hoped it would in January. A rolling weekly cash view, usually about a quarter out, turns cash from a surprise into a schedule. Scenarios are where it earns its keep: what the year looks like if your largest customer leaves, what two more people really cost including the months before they are productive, what rent does at renewal.
From there it settles into a rhythm: close, report and talk it through monthly, then go deeper each quarter on budget against actual, the forecast and cash going forward. The report is discussed, not just delivered. The number always matters less than the decision it leads to.
- Diagnostic of the close, the chart of accounts and the reporting
- Budget from real history; rolling forecast updated as results land
- Weekly cash view about a quarter out, with the levers named: collections, deposits, purchase timing, a credit line arranged while the numbers are strong
- A short list of measures tied to how you make money, defined once and reported the same way every month
- Monthly review, quarterly deep dive
What you get
A budget you will open again, a forecast that is current, a cash runway you can read at a glance, and a monthly report with the same definitions every month, so a trend means something. The measures depend on the business model:
- Contractors and trades: margin by job, backlog, work completed but not yet billed
- Restaurants and food service: food and labor as a share of sales, covers, sales by daypart
- Professional and service firms: utilization, effective hourly rate, revenue per employee
- Retail and e-commerce: margin by category, inventory turns, returns
- Any business with recurring revenue: retention, revenue per customer, cost to acquire one
Who leads it
Mike Isaac, EA, leads the work, and his first four years in this field were spent on the other side of the table, as a loan analyst at a commercial bank: credit risk, cash flow and financial statement analysis, credit memoranda and portfolio monitoring. That is still how he reads a set of books, not for what it says but for what he would doubt if his own money were at risk. It is a useful habit in the person building your forecast.
Because the same firm handles the tax work, the forecast and the tax projection are built from the same books in the same conversation. Owners who are not yet closing the books monthly start with Monthly Bookkeeping. Owners who want the tax side of each decision worked through use Tax Planning & Advisory alongside this.
What getting it wrong costs
Profit and cash are not the same thing, and profitable businesses run out of cash regularly. The reasons are structural: customers pay later than you invoice, inventory ties up money, loan principal never appears on the income statement, and tax payments and owner draws leave when they leave. A cash problem you see three weeks out has several solutions. The same problem on the day it arrives usually has one, and it is the expensive one.
Reporting fails the same way. Most dashboards show what is easy to pull rather than what drives the business. A long list nobody reads is decoration. The right short list looks different for a contractor than for a restaurant, and using someone else's is how reporting turns into noise.
Decisions made without the tax effect in view cost twice. A hire, an equipment purchase or a change in owner pay decided in June with the tax consequence known usually beats the same decision explained to you the following spring, which is why this work and Tax Planning & Advisory run in the same conversation.
What owners ask before this work starts.
I already have a bookkeeper. Do I need this too?
The roles are different rather than overlapping. A bookkeeper records transactions and keeps the ledger current. Controller and CFO support checks whether those records are accurate and structured usefully, then uses them for budgeting, forecasting, and decisions. Many clients keep their bookkeeper and add this layer on top of the work already being done.
How is this different from what my tax preparer does?
A tax return looks backward at a year that is already closed, and its job is compliance. CFO support is ongoing and forward looking, aimed at the decisions you have not made yet. The two work best together, because a decision made in June with the tax effect in mind usually beats the same decision explained to you the following spring.
My business is small. Is it too early for this?
It depends on the decisions in front of you, not on revenue. If you are hiring, signing a lease, buying equipment, borrowing, or unsure whether your pricing covers your real costs, structure helps right away. If the business is stable and simple, a lighter version focused on a reliable monthly close and cash visibility is often enough.
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Tax Preparation
For owners with a business return and a personal return that have to agree, and often a second state in the mix. Business and personal returns for clients in Massachusetts and across the country, checked against your IRS transcripts where you authorize it, and signed by an Enrolled Agent.
