Fractional bookkeeping services for growing companies

Fractional bookkeeping means you get the bookkeeping your company needs, in the hours it needs, from people who already know how to do it, instead of hiring one full-time person and hoping they cover everything. A fractional bookkeeper works in your systems on a set schedule, keeps the books current through the month and closes them on a calendar you can plan around.

It sits between two familiar options. A full-time in-house bookkeeper is one person: when they are out, behind or gone, the books stop. Software on its own categorizes transactions, but nobody reconciles the accounts, asks why a balance moved or notices that payroll was booked twice. Fractional bookkeeping gives you a person who owns your books and a team behind that person.

People search for this a few different ways: fractional bookkeeping, a fractional bookkeeper, part-time bookkeeping, outsourced bookkeeping. The terms overlap. What matters is the result: books that are reconciled, closed on time and good enough to make decisions on, every month.

Our fractional bookkeeping clients are usually owner-led companies where the books have fallen a step behind the business. Typical situations:

• The books are always a month or two behind, so every decision is made on numbers that are already stale.
• A part-time bookkeeper or office manager is stretched across billing, payroll questions and vendor calls, and reconciliations keep slipping.
• The company has several entities, locations or bank accounts, and nobody closes them all the same way.
• A lender, investor or buyer is asking for financials and the current books will not hold up to the questions.
• The bookkeeper just left and took the know-how with them.

We work with companies across healthcare, real estate and property management, MCA and alternative finance, and venture-backed startups, along with other owner-led businesses. Much of the work is done remotely, so we serve clients nationwide from our base in Cedarhurst, New York.

Every engagement is set up around how your business runs, but the monthly rhythm looks like this:

Day-to-day bookkeeping

• Transactions coded to a chart of accounts that reports the way you think about the business.
• Vendor bills and customer invoices recorded, so payables and receivables match reality.
• Questions batched and sent to you once, not drip-fed through the month.

Reconciliations

• Every bank and credit card account reconciled on schedule.
• Loan, merchant processor and clearing accounts tied out, so the balance sheet holds up at any point in the year.
• Payroll recorded correctly from your provider, with accruals handled behind it.

The monthly close

• A close calendar with a fixed delivery date.
• A consistent package covering the P&L, balance sheet and cash flow.
• A short list of what changed and what needs your attention.

Year-end support

• Schedules and workpapers prepared for your outside CPA or auditors, so year-end is a hand-off rather than a scramble.

If you need more than the books, the same team can take on accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll and benefits.

Each option has a place. Here is how we would think about it if we were in your seat.

A full-time in-house bookkeeper

Makes sense when the volume truly fills a full-time role and you have someone senior to review the work. The risks are concentration and coverage: one person holds all the knowledge, and vacations, turnover and growth all land on them. The cost is also more than the salary once you add benefits, payroll taxes, software, training and the time it takes to hire. Our finance team cost calculator walks through it role by role.

Software alone

Bank feeds and auto-categorization save time on data entry, and we use them. But software does not reconcile a loan account, notice a missing deposit, accrue an expense or explain why margin dropped. Without a person reviewing it, automated books drift.

A fractional bookkeeper with a team behind them

You get the hours you need, a reviewer who checks the work, coverage when someone is out, and a path to controller and CFO support without changing firms. For most companies between "the owner does it at night" and "we need a full finance department," this is the practical middle.

Speed matters as much as accuracy. Books that close six weeks after month-end describe a business that has already moved on.

The same discipline applies to a single company with a handful of accounts: a fixed calendar, every account reconciled, and a package that lands on the same day each month. Our free monthly close checklist shows the day-by-day steps behind a ten-day close.

You don't need to switch software to work with us. We log into what you already run, including QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop and Enterprise, Xero, Sage Intacct, NetSuite and Zoho Books, and we work with the payroll provider you already have, such as ADP, Paychex, Gusto or Rippling. For property managers we work in AppFolio, Yardi and Buildium.

Our team follows your approval process rather than ours, and you keep ownership of your accounts and data.

Most companies come to us with books that are behind or only partly right. That's normal, and it isn't a reason to wait.

1. Review. We look at the current books, the bank and card accounts and how money moves through the business, and tell you plainly what is working, what is missing and what a lender or investor would ask about.
2. Catch-up and setup. We take over access, bring reconciliations current and clean up the chart of accounts so the reports make sense.
3. Monthly cadence. From there the books are kept current through the month and closed on a fixed date, with a short review of the package each month.

You can start the same way most of our clients do: a free review of last month's books, with no obligation.

Clean books are the foundation. Once they are reliable, most owners start asking bigger questions: how much cash will we have in three months, can we afford the next hire, what will the bank want to see. Because we are a CPA-led firm with controllers and CFOs on the same team, those questions don't need a new vendor.

Our fractional CFO services and fractional controller services build on the same books: budgets, 13-week cash forecasts, and lender and investor reporting. For a longer look at how bookkeeping and CFO work fit together, read fractional bookkeeping and fractional CFO services, explained.