How much does a fractional controller cost? From $7,000 a month, about a day a week.

What does a fractional controller do?

A fractional controller is a part-time senior finance lead, brought in by a small or mid-sized company or nonprofit instead of a full-time hire. At Millrace Finance Partners your controller is a named person who works about a day a week: they own the month-end close and the controls, prepare the audit schedules, sit in your management meeting, own the number in front of the board, and are your auditor’s first point of contact and the person your lender calls.

• Ownership of the close and the controls
• Board and lender reporting
• Covenant and borrowing-base schedules
• Technical judgement calls, written down
• Audit readiness and the audit schedules
• Your auditor’s first point of contact
• Hiring and training your in-house team
• The call you make before you make a decision

Not included: a full-time employee, and any opinion on the statements. We will tell you when you have outgrown a fraction of a person.

How much do you charge for a fractional controller?

Millrace Finance Partners charges from $7,000 a month for a fractional controller, a fixed fee billed monthly with no hourly rate: $7,000 × 12 = $84,000 a year at the starting fee.

The controller can be bought on its own, whether or not you take the accounting service; taking both is a separate conversation and a separate quote, not an addition. Either side can end the arrangement on thirty days’ notice, and the fee is reviewed against the work every quarter, in both directions. Every line of work is on the published fee schedule.

What drives the cost of a fractional controller?

The cost depends on how many legal entities you consolidate, how mature your close is, how ready you are for your auditor, and the volume that moves through your books. Our fee starts from $7,000 a month and scales with them.

We quote the fee from read-only access, or a recent trial balance together with a walk through the close as it currently runs, never from a description of your books. What we look at:

• The number of legal entities you consolidateAnd whether the consolidation runs in the system or in a spreadsheet that one person understands.
• The date your books currently closeThe actual date, including the month that slipped, and which accounts have not reconciled.
• Who is waiting on the numbersA lender with a covenant, a board, an investor, a buyer, or your auditor with a deadline, and whether the audit schedules exist yet.
• The volumeHow many bills, invoices, bank accounts and cards pass through the books each month.
• The system you runQuickBooks, Sage Intacct, NetSuite, Xero or something older, and whether a migration is already under discussion.

How does a fractional controller compare with a full-time hire?

At the $7,000 starting fee our fractional controller costs $84,000 a year and works about a day a week. A full-time hire costs a salary plus the employer benefit load, which our pricing page puts at 1.43 times salary for payroll taxes, insurance and paid leave.

To compare the two, multiply the salary you would offer by 1.43 and set the result against $84,000 a year. The 1.43× load is derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employer Costs for Employee Compensation series. We have not sourced a controller salary figure, so the comparison uses the salary you would actually offer.

• CostFractional controller: from $7,000 a month, fixed, which is $84,000 a year at the starting fee. Full-time hire: a salary, plus an employer benefit load of about 1.43×.
• TimeFractional controller: about a day a week. Full-time hire: full time.
• NoticeFractional controller: thirty days, either side. Full-time hire: your employment terms.

When do you need a fractional controller?

When you have a competent bookkeeping team and no senior finance person, or a lender, a board, an investor or an auditor waiting on the numbers, several legal entities to consolidate, or a close date that slips.

If the day-to-day work also needs doing, the accounting service runs it, from $2,000 a month, and the controller can sit alongside it. Most companies need the accounting service and nothing else for the first year, and some need less than they were about to buy; we will say so. For nonprofits, outsourced accounting for nonprofits covers fund accounting, grant tracking and Form 990 support.