Bookkeeper vs CPA vs fractional CFO
Four layers, four horizons, and the one most agencies are missingFour layers own your numbers. Most agencies only have two.
The confusing part isn't the job titles. It's that all three roles look at your money and report back, so it's hard to see that they're looking at completely different periods of time.
Sort them by horizon and it gets simple.
The four layers
| Layer | Horizon | Who usually does it | What it owns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decides | Next quarter | Fractional CFO | Forecasting, pricing, owner pay, and the hiring gate |
| Closes | This month | Controller or fractional CFO | Monthly close, margin by client, cash position, surprises caught early |
| Records | Last month | Bookkeeper | Every transaction categorized, reconciled, and closed |
| Files | Last year | CPA | Files the return and keeps you compliant |
Two of these are backward-looking and two are forward-looking. The line falls between Closes and Records, which is exactly where most agencies stop paying for help.
What a bookkeeper does, and where it ends
A bookkeeper categorizes transactions, reconciles accounts, and closes the month. That's Records. Good bookkeeping is the floor for everything above it, and you cannot skip it.
What it doesn't produce is a decision. You can have perfectly categorized books and still not know whether you can afford your next hire, what to pay yourself, or which client is quietly unprofitable.
One agency owner described his previous setup as doing "the bare minimum," with a scope that technically included a balance sheet and P&L but delivered them inconsistently "despite prodding." His summary of what he actually wanted: "we want it to be even more ruthless and dialed in so that way we can make more informed decisions."
Owner, B2B video agency
What a CPA does, and where it ends
Your CPA files last year's return and keeps you compliant. That's Files, and nobody else should be doing it.
Tax work is a different discipline from management reporting, which is why we exclude it from every agreement in writing. No preparation, no filing, no planning, no advising. We also don't prepare audit schedules or represent you in an IRS or state audit.
The practical consequence: a CPA sees your business once a year, in arrears, through a tax lens. That's the right tool for the job it's for. It's the wrong tool for a pricing decision in May.
What a fractional CFO does
Decides, and usually Closes too. Forecasting on your real levers, pricing, owner pay, and the hiring gate. Margin by client. Cash position. Catching the surprise while it's still small.
The thing that makes it work is having the two layers underneath. A CFO who has to wait for someone else's books is forecasting on a file, not on numbers. More on how we run that layer.
How to tell which one you're missing
- Your books are late or you don't trust them: you have a Records problem.
- Your books are clean but you find out about a bad month in the following month: you have a Closes problem.
- You know your numbers and still can't answer "can I hire": you have a Decides problem.
- You're scrambling in April: you have a Files problem, and possibly a Records one.
The common case for an agency between $300K and $5M is Records plus Files, with nothing in between. Which is why the month closes, the return gets filed, and nobody can tell you what the next hire does to cash.
What one provider should and shouldn't cover
We cover Decides, Closes and Records. Your CPA keeps Files. We think that's the right seam, and we hold it even when clients would rather hand over everything.
We also don't touch accounts receivable, accounts payable or payroll processing. Those put a bookkeeper inside your client and vendor relationships, where a bookkeeper causes more friction than they remove. We'll build the report that shows who's late. Your team sends the email.
If you want the layers priced rather than described, the rates are on the pricing page, and the bookkeeping page covers what Records looks like month to month.
Questions
The ones people actually ask on the first callCan one person be my bookkeeper and my CFO?
Yes, and there is an argument for it: the forecast is stronger when the person building it closed the books themselves. What one provider should not also be is your tax preparer, because that is a separate discipline and a separate licence.
Is a controller the same thing as a fractional CFO?
Roughly, a controller owns the Closes layer and a CFO owns Decides. In a business doing $300K to $5M the same person usually does both, which is why the titles get used interchangeably.
Do I need a fractional CFO at $500K in revenue?
Not necessarily. Under about $500K the honest answer is usually clean books and a clean tax handoff, with a couple of calls a year. The Decides layer starts paying for itself once hiring and pricing decisions are big enough to hurt.
Should my CPA be doing my bookkeeping?
Some do, and it can work. The failure mode is that bookkeeping gets treated as preparation for the return rather than as a monthly management tool, so the books are accurate in April and stale in June.
Why do you refuse to handle payroll and bill pay?
Both are excluded in writing from every agreement. Payroll processing and payroll tax filing belong with a payroll provider, and bill pay puts us between you and your vendors. Payroll reaches the books as journal entries from your provider's summaries.
Next step
A 30-minute call, and you will know whether this fitsMonthly bookkeeping, a Fathom dashboard, and fractional CFO advisory for marketing and creative agencies doing $300K to $5M. Logan works every account.