CFO & Accounting · Controller
Outsourced Controller & Month-End Close in Raleigh, NC
Reconciled, reviewed financials delivered by Business Day 10 — or that month is free. Starting at $2,500/mo.
A controller is the financial operations layer most growing businesses skip straight past — they go from a bookkeeper who records transactions directly to wanting CFO-level strategy, without ever building the reliable close that strategy depends on. The result is predictable: forecasts built on numbers nobody actually trusts, and decisions made on a feeling instead of a financial statement.
Protea's outsourced controller service closes that gap. Every account reconciled, every accrual recorded, a complete GAAP-basis financial statement package in your hands by the 10th business day after month-end — in writing, every month, without fail.
"Outsourced" doesn't mean handed off to a rotating team overseas, and it doesn't mean a part-time bookkeeper with a controller title. It means one CPA, with controller-level training, running your close the way an in-house controller would — at a fraction of the cost of hiring one, and without the overhead of a full-time salary, benefits, and the risk of that one person leaving.
How It Works
From month-end to financials in 10 business days
Every step mapped, every month. No chasing, no guessing when your books will close.
BD 1
Month closes
Books are locked for the prior period.
BD 3
Records due to us
You deliver any outstanding docs. We get to work.
BD 5
Reconciliations done
All accounts reconciled. First-pass P&L ready.
BD 8
Review & adjustments
Final entries, accruals, and CPA review.
BD 10
Financials delivered
Complete package in your hands. Guaranteed.
The Guarantee
Miss Business Day 10 — and that month is free.
We commit to the close date in writing. Your financials are in your hands by Business Day 10 — every month. Miss it, and you don't pay for that month's close.
What's Included
What a Protea controller engagement covers
Reconciliations
Bank, credit card, and revenue accounts reconciled against live bank feeds — every account, every month.
Accruals
Revenue and expenses recorded in the period they actually happened, not when cash moved.
GAAP-Basis Financial Statements
P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statement prepared to a standard a lender or buyer can rely on.
Internal Controls
Basic safeguards against error and fraud — segregation of duties, approval workflows — scoped to a small business, not a Fortune 500 audit checklist.
AP/AR Management
Invoice processing, vendor payments, and receivables follow-up, kept current rather than triaged once a quarter.
Year-End Close & Tax-Prep Support
Clean year-end financials and organized workpapers, so your return is a formality instead of a scramble.
Who this is for
This is the right starting point for most growing businesses — anyone whose books are technically "done" but don't actually tell them anything useful, anyone who just lost a bookkeeper or controller and needs the backlog stabilized fast, or anyone who can't yet answer basic questions about their own numbers without waiting weeks.
A messy handoff is one of the most common reasons a business reaches out: a bookkeeper leaves, a part-time controller stops responding, or an in-house hire didn't work out, and suddenly three months of transactions are sitting unreconciled with no one accountable for them. Protea's first move in that situation isn't a long onboarding process — it's stabilizing the backlog so the business has a current, trustworthy number again, then putting the Business Day 10 process in place so it doesn't happen again.
Once the close is reliable, many clients add fractional CFO work on top — but the controller layer comes first, because forecasting and strategy built on numbers nobody trusts yet is just a more expensive guess.
How this connects to tax
Year-end close is also where a controller engagement pays off most visibly at tax time: instead of a CPA reconstructing a year of transactions from bank statements and receipts in February, the books are already closed, reconciled, and ready. The return becomes a matter of applying tax treatment to numbers that are already right, not a forensic exercise in figuring out what actually happened last year.
A clean monthly close is what makes a tax return accurate and on time instead of a scramble reconstructed from a shoebox every March. Controller clients who elect S-Corp status, for example, get S-Corp tax preparation from the same CPA who already has their books current — no re-explaining the business, no handoff, no surprises in April.
Controller Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What owners ask before hiring an outsourced controller.
Get a fixed-fee controller quote
Answer a few questions about your business. You'll have a tailored, fixed-fee quote from Andrew within one business day.