The Agency Financial OS Audit
One month, four sessions, and a straight answer to the six questions that matterMost agency owners don't have a profit target. They have a revenue goal and a hope that something's left over.
The OS Audit is how every engagement starts. One month, three or four working sessions, and a roadmap you could hand to someone else and have them run it.
The six questions it answers
- How profitable am I really?
- How much should I pay myself?
- How much should I be spending on my team?
- Is each team member generating enough revenue?
- Can I hire right now, and who first?
- Which software is draining my margins?
What lands on your desk
| Deliverable | What's in it |
|---|---|
| 9-Module OS Scorecard | Nine modules of the Financial OS, scored against your actual numbers |
| Profit Leak Analysis | Every leak sized in annual dollars and ranked by recovery effort |
| Revenue-Band Benchmarking | Profit, owner pay, people cost and revenue per employee against your band and your peers |
| The Owner Pay Answer | Current compensation against benchmark, and what the gap costs you |
| The Hiring Gate Verdict | Three gates: capacity, the model, and the plan. A straight verdict |
| 12-Month Forecast & Roadmap | P&L and cash on hand, with milestones at month 3, 6 and 12 |
| 60-Minute CFO Debrief | A live walkthrough of all of it |
| Tech Stack Audit | Every tool and workflow: keep, consolidate, replace, or add |
| Team Debrief Session | The same findings, delivered to the people who have to act on them |
The scorecard covers nine modules. The published playbook has ten, and it's free, so read that first if you want to see the frameworks before you pay for anything.
How the month runs
Session 1: Access, goals and process
Systems access, what you're building toward, and how money moves today.
We set goals at 3, 6 and 12 months across three areas. Growth: what top-line number makes the next twelve months a win, and what you're adding. Team: what roles you want, and what you're covering yourself that you want off your plate. Owner pay: what you want to be taking home.
Two questions from this session do most of the work. "What would it take to trust the numbers without checking them yourself?" And: "If you had an extra $100K sitting in the account twelve months from now, what would you do with it?"
Then the mechanics. Entity and ownership, and whether it's been revisited since revenue grew. Who files your returns and how involved they are during the year. Cash or accrual, for how you actually make decisions. Who built the chart of accounts and how far back the books are clean. Any debt we should forecast around.
Money movement gets mapped in four groups: money in, money out, people, and the books. Every tool gets the same five questions, including the useful one: what would you replace tomorrow if switching cost nothing?
Session 2: Backwards
Your numbers, scored. What's working, what's leaking, and what it's costing you.
The scorecard, the benchmark comparison, the ranked leaks, the owner pay gap, the hiring verdict, and the keep-consolidate-replace-add call on every tool.
Session 3: Forward
Your forecast, your cash runway, and the roadmap.
We open the twelve-month forecast live and walk the shape of the year against the goals you set in session 1. Then two things get set. Your cash floor, which is the minimum buffer this business should never go below, plus the trigger that tells you to act before you hit it. And the roadmap, with every fix and system change sequenced across the next 90 days, months 4 to 6, and months 7 to 12, ordered by profit impact.
Session 4: Loose ends, only if we need it
Four things trigger a fourth session: the forecast needs a second pass after you've sat with it, access or data is still open, a structural decision is unresolved, or something big landed mid-month like a hire, a client loss or a pricing move.
Who owns what
| You | Us | Together |
|---|---|---|
| System access support across banks, cards and platforms. Invoicing, collections, payroll and tax filings stay in-house. Timely answers on flagged items. | Books kept current, close delivered monthly. The full audit, integration review and cleanup recommendation. Every account reconciled, every month. | Chart of accounts and mapping decisions, made live in working sessions. Roadmap priorities, sequenced by what moves profit first. |
What we need access to
Eight things, and you have 3 business days from signing to hand them over: accounting platform, business bank accounts, credit cards and spend platform, payroll system, merchant and payment processors, contractor payment platform, prior-period financials and tax returns, and your existing chart of accounts and reports.
How we work
- Decisions get written down. Every structural choice we make together is documented. Nothing lives in anyone's head.
- The books never stall. An open question never stops the close. You always have current numbers.
- Your time gets respected. Questions come to you batched and on a rhythm, never as a drip of one-off pings.
- Simple beats clever. Structures stay simple enough to stay accurate and detailed enough to run the business.
What it costs
Three ways in, and the cheapest one is the longest commitment.
| Option | Audit fee | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Audit only | $3,950 one-time | Take the roadmap and run with it yourself |
| Audit plus engagement | $3,000 one-time | The audit becomes your foundation month |
| 12-month engagement | Waived | Commit to the year and the entry fee disappears |
The deliverables add up to $9,750 priced separately. On a twelve-month engagement the audit is included at no charge and your monthly rate locks. If you leave before the twelve months are up for any reason other than our breach, the $3,000 becomes due. That's in section IV of the agreement, not buried in a footnote.
See the tier rates for what comes after the audit month.
Then the rhythm takes over
When the audit month closes, your tier's cadence starts: monthly financial statements after each close, a dashboard that updates with the close, financial health calls on your tier's schedule, forecast updates with each refresh, and the year-end close and CPA handoff.
Questions
The ones people actually ask on the first callHow long does the OS Audit take?
One month. It is delivered within the first 30 days of the engagement and runs as three sessions, plus a fourth only if the forecast needs a second pass, access is still open, a structural decision is unresolved, or something significant changed mid-month.
Can I buy the audit without signing up for ongoing work?
Yes. Audit only is $3,950 as a one-time fee and you keep the roadmap. Bundled with an engagement it drops to $3,000 and becomes your foundation month, and on a twelve-month commitment it is waived entirely.
What do you mean by sizing a profit leak?
Each leak is quantified in annual dollars and then ranked by how much effort recovery takes, so you work the list in order instead of arguing about which problem feels biggest.
What are the three hiring gates?
Capacity, the model, and the plan. All three have to clear before the answer is yes, and you get a straight verdict rather than a range of options.
Does the audit include a review of my software and tools?
Yes. The tech stack audit gives every tool and workflow one of four calls: keep, consolidate, replace, or add. Each tool gets the same five questions first, including what you would replace tomorrow if switching cost nothing.
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.