Focus on your goals, we tend the books.

For two decades this firm has done one kind of work, well: senior-led accounting for organizations whose books actually matter — and the report you are reading is the plainest account of that work we know how to write.

There is, in this profession, a tendency to dress practice up. To advertise capability where one means availability; to advertise breadth where one means hope. The partners of this firm have made a different choice. We have kept the practice narrow on purpose, and we describe it here in the form it has always taken — chapter by chapter, with the schedules attached.

This report is issued each May to clients and prospective clients alike. It supersedes any brochure, deck or sales sheet that may have reached you under our name. Where the report and another document disagree, the report is governing.¹ Where the report is silent, we are not in the business.

The state of the practice, in its twentieth year, is the same as in its first: audit-ready · fund-compliant · senior-led. The work is done by partners, and we sign our names to the working papers we issue.²

In the chapters that follow, you will find the work described in the order it is done. Then, in two schedules — sectors served and articles of engagement — you will find the part of the practice we are willing to put in writing. The remainder of the report is correspondence: a journal of the year, and the means by which to write to us.

The work of the firm is organized in six departments, each owned by a senior partner. They are described here in the order they are performed, not as items in a catalogue.

Operational support — the daily ledger

The first department holds the books. Bookkeeping, bank and account reconciliations, accounts payable and receivable, payroll administration, expense management, fixed assets and intercompany accounting — performed daily, reconciled monthly, and tied out to a ten-day close. The work is ordinary in name and exacting in practice; it is the foundation on which every other department depends, and it is the work that, when neglected, makes the rest of the firm's effort moot.

Compliance support — the law and the funder

The second department keeps the firm's clients in good standing with the parties to whom they are accountable: the IRS, the state revenue authorities, the granting bodies, the auditors and the lenders. Grant and restricted-fund tracking, audit liaison held year-round rather than in the weeks before, functional-expense allocations defensible at audit, and tax compliance and filings prepared and signed by partners.¹

Strategic guidance — the board and the budget

The third department speaks at board meetings. Budget development and monitoring, cash-flow forecasting on a thirteen-week horizon, board financial presentations prepared by the partner who will present them, and long-term sustainability planning that includes the conversations no other adviser will start. The work is done in close partnership with the executive, never around them.

Forensic services — the difficult question

The fourth department asks the question the operating team cannot ask itself. Risk-focused forensic review, vendor and payment anomaly testing, internal-control walkthroughs and process-improvement consulting — engaged where a pattern is observed, where a control has weakened, or where management has reason to want a senior set of eyes. The work is confidential and, where required, communicated to the audit committee directly.

Systems work — the architecture

The fifth department changes the plumbing. ERP and ledger implementation, workflow automation, reporting infrastructure and the migrations between them. The firm declines systems engagements where the implementation will not be supported by an accounting practice — our own or another — for a period of at least twelve months after go-live.²

Leadership access — the standing invitation

The sixth department is not a service so much as a posture. A senior partner is named on every engagement and is reachable directly: no queue, no junior, no callback in forty-eight hours. The partner stands on calls with boards, with donors, with lenders and with auditors, and is heard in the room when it matters.