Take over, build, run.
Three stages, in that order. We take the day-to-day off you in month one — we do not shadow you for a month first. A fixed fee quoted against a description of your books is a guess, and a guess that is wrong in our favour is how firms like this quietly become expensive.
These services do not require a state licence, and we are not a CPA firm.
Stage one · Month one. The assessment happens inside it.Take over
From week one we are doing the work, not watching it. Bills come in and get coded, invoices go out, collections start, cash and cards are posted, and the payment run is prepared for your release. That means real access on day one — your ledger, your bank, your card programme, your billing system — under named accounts of our own, least privilege, with a timestamp against every entry.
We learn your books the only way anyone learns books, which is by keeping them. The first month-end close is ours. There is no shadow month where you carry on doing the work while we watch and take notes.
You own what we write down, whatever happens next. While we run the month we record what we found: where the close loses its days, which accounts have not reconciled and for how long, what a lender or your auditor would ask for that you cannot currently produce, and what each of those costs to fix. Month one is billed at the ordinary monthly fee and the assessment happens inside it. There is no paid assessment product and no fee-credit clause.
- Working access on day one, under named accounts with a timestamp on every entry
- Payables, receivables, invoicing, cash and cards live from week one
- The first month-end close is run by us, not shadowed
- Whoever did this before stays reachable for that first close, if they are still with you
- A written findings document, with the arithmetic behind every claim
- A close calendar proposed, with a day number against every step
Stage two · Months two and three, usually.Build
The assessment becomes a build plan and we execute it while running the work. This is the part most firms skip, and it is why the close is still late a year later when they do.
- The close calendar goes live: dated steps, named owners, a fixed delivery day
- Reconciliations become standing working papers you can see
- Approval routing and a delegation of authority that matches how you decide
- Chart of accounts and entity mapping cleaned up, eliminations documented
- Everything written down — the test is whether it survives any one person leaving
Stage three · Month four onwards.Run
Steady state, on a published rhythm, so you always know what is happening this week and what lands when.
- Weekly: payment run prepared for your release, cash applied, forecast refreshed
- Monthly: the close on the calendar, reconciliations tied, the reporting package
- Quarterly: we review the fee against the work, in both directions
- Continuously: a named human and a timestamp against every entry
Five things that decide whether this actually works
Technology, communication, AI, care and verification — and what we have committed to on each. None of it is a promise you would have to take on trust; every line is something you would notice us breaking.
Technology
Everything runs in your systems, on your licences, in your tenancy. There is no Millrace platform, no proprietary portal, and nothing you lose access to on the day we stop working together.
- Your ERP: QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, NetSuite or Xero
- Bill-pay, expense and card tools of your choosing
- Close management and reconciliation tooling
- Document storage in your own folders
- Read-only access until you say otherwise
- Migration between systems is project work, not a lock-in
Communication
One named person, not a ticket queue and not a rotating cast. Speed happens in chat; anything that matters ends up written down somewhere you can find it in a year.
- Easy to find us: a shared Slack or Teams channel, a direct email, a phone answered
- No ticket queue and no support address — a person, a channel and a number
- A standing monthly call, and the close calendar published in advance
- Decisions and judgement calls recorded in writing, not just discussed
- You always know who is doing your work and how to reach them
- Bad news early. It is the only kind that is useful.
- We do our best work for people who read the variance note and argue with it
AI
We use it hard, because automation is how a fixed fee stays honest instead of quietly becoming a corner-cutting exercise. Three rules are contractual, not aspirational.
- Extraction, coding, classification, matching and drafting
- Rule one: zero data retention, agreed in writing by the vendor
- Rule two: a named human reviews anything before it reaches your ledger
- Rule three: no tool that cannot write as a named user with a timestamp
- This has cost us tools we liked, and we still enforce it
- Ask to see which vendor agreements we hold — we will show you
Care
Client experience is not a soft thing here — it is how a firm this size grows. The only marketing we will ever have is a client who would take the call from someone thinking about hiring us. So the commitments below are written in the form you can hold us to, not as a sentence about how much we value you.
- One named person owns your account, and you know who they are
- Easy to reach: a shared channel, a direct email, and a phone that is answered
- You are never explaining your situation to someone who has not heard it before
- Bad news reaches you early and in writing, before you find it yourself
- Your documents stay in your own systems, access-controlled and backed up
- We say no on the first call when we are not the right answer
- When we get something wrong: what happened, what it cost, what changed
- Miss a published close date because of us and half that month’s fee comes back
- Thirty days’ notice, your data, and a documented handover if you go
Verification
Nothing leaves here because it looked right. Every figure we publish is re-added by something that is not a pair of eyes, and that includes this website.
- Reconciliations tie to source, never to last month’s file
- The close carries a sign-off with a name and a date on it
- Every published total is re-footed from its own components
- Variances are explained with a cause and an owner, not restated
- Schedules are built so your auditor can follow them without us
- The figures on this site are re-added at build time, and the build refuses to publish if one does not foot
The first stage starts with a call.
Thirty minutes, free, and you will know by the end of it whether the shape of this fits the shape of your problem.
The call is free and there is no fee for it, ever. If we are not the right shape for you we will say so on the call.