Outsourced accounting and fractional controller pricing Clear scope. Published fees.
Millrace Finance Partners publishes its fees for small and mid-sized US companies and nonprofits: the accounting service starts from $2,000 a month, the fractional controller from $7,000 a month, and advising and planning projects are quoted as a fixed fee. We agree your scope and price before work begins.
Updated
Published fees
Either monthly line can be bought on its own; taking both is a separate conversation and a separate quote, not an addition. Monthly fees are billed monthly and either side can end the arrangement on thirty days’ notice. Project work is quoted as a fixed fee before it starts, never as an estimate that moves. What the controller line includes, and what drives its fee, is explained in fractional controller cost.
These services do not require a state licence, and we are not a CPA firm.
Why every monthly line says “starting from”
Because the fee scales with the work. The accounting service starts from $2,000 a month for a smaller set of books. At the $5,000 level it covers the work of roughly one staff accountant plus half an accounts payable clerk, the people you would otherwise employ. A larger finance function costs more, and we quote that number against your actual books after the read-only look, never as a range we invented before seeing them.
What the first month is
We take over the day-to-day and run the first close ourselves. The assessment gets written while we do the work, not instead of it. No separate fee, and you own the document whatever happens next.
Inside the monthly fee, or a separate project
| In the monthly fee | Separate project | |
|---|---|---|
| Day-to-day bookkeeping, payables and receivables | ✓ | no |
| The month-end close and the published calendar | ✓ | no |
| Multi-entity consolidation and intercompany | ✓ | no |
| The monthly reporting pack | ✓ | no |
| Reconciliation working papers, kept and reopenable | ✓ | no |
| A named senior reviewer before anything reaches you | ✓ | no |
| Budgets, forecasts and scenario modelling | no | ✓ |
| Systems set-up, migration and automation | no | ✓ |
| Written process and SOPs | no | ✓ |
| Cleaning up a backlog before we take over | no | ✓ |
In the monthly fee
- Day-to-day bookkeeping, payables and receivables
- The month-end close and the published calendar
- Multi-entity consolidation and intercompany
- The monthly reporting pack
- Reconciliation working papers, kept and reopenable
- A named senior reviewer before anything reaches you
Separate project
- Budgets, forecasts and scenario modelling
- Systems set-up, migration and automation
- Written process and SOPs
- Cleaning up a backlog before we take over
The date guarantee
We publish your close date after we have seen your books, not before. Then we hold ourselves to it. If we miss it and the cause is ours, we refund half that month’s fee.
The carve-out is real and we would rather state it than bury it: if we are waiting on something from you, such as a bank statement, an approval or a signed contract, that is not our miss, and the date moves. You will hear about it on the day it becomes likely, in writing, from the person running your account. You will never find out on day nine that day six was never going to happen.
We do not compare ourselves against other firms. We compare against the team you are otherwise paying for.
One comparison, matched to the fee that actually covers that much work: the $5,000 level of the accounting service against the smallest team it replaces. Setting that fee against a bigger team would flatter us, so we do not.
At the $5,000 level
One staff accountant plus half an accounts payable clerk costs about $140,676 a year employed in house, fully loaded; the same work from Millrace Finance Partners, at the $5,000-a-month level of its accounting service, costs $60,000 a year, or 43% of the in-house cost. What you would otherwise employ: one staff accountant, plus about half of a clerk’s seat.
$73,750 + $24,625 = $98,375. $98,375 × 1.43 = $140,676.25, shown rounded down to $140,676. Ours at that level is $5,000 × 12 = $60,000. The difference is $80,676 a year and you pay 43% of what the people would cost.
Salary midpoints throughout: Robert Half 2026 Salary Guide, national midpoints. Benefit load: 1.43×, for employer payroll taxes, insurance and paid leave, derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employer Costs for Employee Compensation series. inDinero’s 2026 analysis puts the defensible fully-loaded multiplier at 1.45 – 1.5×, so 1.43× is the conservative end and every comparison here understates itself on purpose.
Common questions
What does the accounting service include?
Accounts payable, accounts receivable, the month-end close, multi-entity consolidation, capital management and the credit card portal, for companies and nonprofits alike. The fee starts from $2,000 a month for a smaller set of books and scales with the volume, the number of entities and the complexity. At about $5,000 a month it covers the work of roughly one staff accountant plus half an accounts payable clerk. These services do not require a state licence, and we are not a CPA firm.
Why does it say “starting from” $2,000?
Because the fee scales with the work: $2,000 a month covers a smaller set of books, and the figure for your company is quoted after a read-only look at your books. We are not going to publish a number for your company before we have seen them. A bigger finance function costs more, and you are told which number you are before you sign, not after.
Can we buy the controller on its own?
Yes. The fractional controller can be bought on its own, starting from $7,000 a month, whether or not you take the accounting service. Plenty of companies have a competent bookkeeping team and no senior finance person, and that is exactly the gap this fills.
Why is there no hourly rate?
Because an hourly rate pays a firm for the close being slow. We bill a fixed monthly fee instead, never by the hour: from $2,000 a month for the accounting service and from $7,000 a month for the fractional controller, with project work quoted as a fixed fee before it starts. A fixed fee pays us for the close being fast, and it means you can plan the line in your budget. We do not bill for a phone call, an email, or the third version of a schedule.
What happens in the first month?
We take over the day-to-day work and run your first month-end close: from week one we are running payables, receivables, invoicing, cash and cards. Alongside doing it we write down what we found: where the close loses its days, which accounts have not reconciled, and what you cannot currently produce that a lender would ask for. You own that document whatever happens next.
Is the assessment charged separately?
No. Month one is billed at the ordinary monthly fee, and the assessment of your books happens inside it. There is no separate fee for it, no paid assessment product, and no clause crediting one thing against another.
Do you do budgets and forecasts?
Yes, under business planning support, quoted as a fixed-fee project rather than a monthly line. A budget is a piece of work with a beginning and an end, and charging a retainer for it every month whether or not it is being rebuilt is not honest pricing.
Are you a CPA firm?
No. Millrace Finance Partners is an outsourced accounting and fractional controller firm, and the services it sells do not require a state licence. We are not a CPA firm and we are not a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. We express no opinion on any financial statement, and nobody may rely on our reports as though we did.
Do you sign our tax return?
No. We do not prepare, sign or file tax returns. We give your tax preparer a clean trial balance and the schedules they ask for, which usually shortens their work and their bill. For a nonprofit’s Form 990, we prepare the financial information and schedules your tax preparer needs; we do not sign or file the return.
What if the work turns out to be bigger than the fee?
We review the fee against the work every quarter, and if your company has grown into a bigger number you are told in writing, with the reason, before it is billed. The review runs in both directions: if the work shrinks, so does the fee.
Nothing on this page changes on the call.
The schedule is the schedule. The call is for working out which line you need, at what scale, and whether you need us at all. Nonprofits pay the same fees: outsourced accounting for nonprofits shows what they cover, and our checklist for choosing a nonprofit accounting firm works for any firm, including us.
No lock-in: thirty days’ notice ends an engagement, and nothing is billed by the hour.