No. 05 — Finance & Back Office

Your finances are only as strong as the systems behind them.

Penalties no one appealed. Nexus obligations no one addressed. Receivables aging beyond collectibility. A close so slow, the numbers describe a quarter you can no longer change.

Books, not tax $0 upfront One area or all
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The Problem

Every other cost center leaks because someone marked it up. Finance leaks because nobody looked.

A filing missed. A credit unclaimed. An invoice never chased. It compounds monthly.

  • Your books close 30+ days out
  • Nexus triggered in states you never registered in
  • Penalties paid without anyone requesting abatement
  • Receivables past 90 days, chased by nobody
  • A CPA billing cleanup hours at advisory rates
  • Accounting, payroll, expense and AP tools overlapping
  • Payroll tax notices filed in a drawer
  • A chart of accounts too coarse to name your profitable line
30 days

Where a monthly close stops being a management tool and becomes a filing record. Past it you aren't steering. Most operators we open books with are well past it, and none of them chose to be.

The Arithmetic

Late isn't a scolding. It's a price.

These are the IRS's published rates. Not an estimate, and not something a vendor negotiates away.

Federal late-filing and late-payment penalties

Assessed per month or part of a month. They run concurrently. Interest accrues on top.

Failure to file
5%
of tax owed, every month the return is late.
Ceiling
25%
the maximum. Reached in five months — one busy season.
Failure to pay
0.5%
per month, to its own 25% cap. Doubles after a notice of intent to levy.
Floor · 60 days
$525
or 100% of tax owed, whichever is less. Applies even when you owe almost nothing.
IRS Topic no. 653. The $525 floor applies to returns required to be filed in 2026. State sales-tax penalties are separate and not included.
What We Audit

Six tracks. Start with one or run all of them.

Track 01

Close & Reporting

Speed and usefulness
  • Days-to-close measured, not estimated
  • Reconciliation gaps across bank, card, merchant
  • Chart of accounts rebuilt around how you decide
  • Statements you can read in five minutes
Track 02

Sales Tax & Nexus

Where you owe and didn't know
  • Economic nexus mapped state by state
  • Registration gaps and back-exposure priced
  • Filing calendar built and automated
  • Voluntary disclosure weighed before a state finds you
Track 03

Penalties & Notices

Assessed isn't owed
  • Open federal and state notices inventoried
  • First-time abatement eligibility checked
  • Reasonable-cause relief prepared where it applies
  • The recurrence cause fixed, not just the penalty
Track 04

Receivables & Cash

Booked but never banked
  • AR aging scored for collectibility
  • A structured follow-up sequence
  • Terms, deposits and late fees benchmarked
  • Cash conversion cycle measured end to end
Track 05

Finance Stack

Overlap and unused seats
  • Accounting, payroll, AP, expense and billing mapped
  • Duplicate scope identified
  • Integrations that end double entry
  • Migration cost modeled before we recommend it
Track 06

Cleanup & Catch-Up

Back to a defensible baseline
  • Prior-period reconciliation and correction
  • Opening balances rebuilt from source documents
  • Books made ready for a lender or a buyer
  • Your CPA handed records instead of billable hours
What You Get

A finding, the math, and someone to fix it.

25%

The federal penalty ceiling on a late return. The first thing we check is whether any of it is abatable.

2–3 wks

From a trial balance and twelve months of statements to documented findings. No system access to start.

$0

Upfront. The partner network funds the assessment, not you.

Right-Sizing

A ten-person studio and a two-hundred-person operator don't have the same problem.

Most finance firms sell one service to both. We route by size.

Under 50 people

You're still the finance department

Founder-led CPG, beverage, beauty and apparel, DTC and specialty product, agencies and studios. Mixed W-2 and contractors. No full-time finance hire.

  • Monthly close and statements you'll actually read
  • Cleanup of books that drifted while you were selling
  • Payroll and contractor payments on rails
  • Sales tax handled before it becomes a letter
  • Your accounting system set up, and training so you aren't dependent
50 and up

You have a finance team and still can't see clearly

Multi-site, multi-state, real inventory or real headcount. There's a controller and an outside CPA. The problem has moved from bookkeeping to visibility.

  • Close acceleration and month-end redesign
  • Multi-state and multi-entity exposure
  • Cost allocation by site, line or channel
  • Finance system consolidation
  • Lender, audit and diligence readiness
Delivery

Assessment from us. Delivery through a vetted partner network.

We are not your bookkeeper and not your CPA. We find it, price it, and bring in the firm that fixes it.

Bookkeeping

Monthly Close

  • Transaction categorization
  • Bank & card reconciliation
  • Monthly statements
  • Review call with a human
  • Historical cleanup
Payroll

Payroll Operations

  • Processing & filing
  • Contractor payments & 1099s
  • Platform integration
  • Notice response
  • Multi-state registration
Indirect Tax

Sales & Use Tax

  • Nexus determination
  • Registration & filing
  • Exemption certificates
  • Back-exposure remediation
  • Voluntary disclosure
Cash Ops

AR & AP

  • Receivables management
  • Collections outreach
  • Vendor payment scheduling
  • Terms negotiation
  • Cash flow forecasting
Systems

Finance Stack

  • Platform setup
  • Owner & team training
  • App stack rationalization
  • Data entry elimination
  • Reporting build-out
Advisory

Planning & Analysis

  • Budget & forecast
  • Scenario modeling
  • Unit economics by line
  • Lender & diligence packages
  • Quarterly review
How It Shows Up

Four patterns we see over and over.

Not case studies. We don't publish numbers we haven't delivered.

Pattern 01 · Nexus Drift

You started selling into other states and nobody re-checked the map

Revenue grows, channels multiply, nexus trips in states you never registered in. States assess back to the date the obligation began, not the date they found you.

The math: uncollected tax × months since the threshold, plus penalty and interest. Weighed against voluntary disclosure, which usually caps the lookback.
Pattern 02 · The Cleanup Premium

Your CPA is billing at advisory rates to do bookkeeping

Records arrive unreconciled, so the first hours of a tax engagement go to fixing the year rather than filing it. The most expensive rate in your vendor stack, doing the least expensive work in it.

The math: cleanup hours × CPA rate, against the same work done monthly at a bookkeeping rate.
Pattern 03 · Unappealed Penalties

A notice arrived, someone paid it, and nobody asked whether they had to

First-time abatement and reasonable-cause relief both exist. Both go unclaimed, because answering a notice feels like picking a fight. It's a form.

The math: penalties assessed in the lookback × the share meeting a relief standard. The recurrence cause gets fixed at the same time.
Pattern 04 · Aged Receivables

The revenue is on your P&L and not in your account

Invoices past 90 days with no follow-up, because chasing money from a client you like is nobody's favorite job and so becomes nobody's job.

The math: each aging bucket × realistic recovery. Then terms, deposits and a sequence that doesn't depend on how you feel that week.
Ready?

Your close calendar is trying to tell you something.

One assessment. We come back with the math, or we tell you you're running clean.

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Free · 30 minutes · No obligation
Keep Going

Finance is rarely the only one.

No. 01 — HR

HR & Workforce

PEO, payroll, workers' comp, HRIS, benefits.
No. 02 — IT

IT & Infrastructure

ERP, SaaS sprawl, integrations, renewals nobody re-read.
No. 03 — Supply Chain

Supply Chain

Packaging, merch, displays, freight. The buy side, benchmarked.