Accounting Needs Assessment

The assessment scores nine answers, the same nine things we establish in the first ten minutes of a real consultation: revenue, entity structure, transaction volume, payroll, the current condition of your books, who maintains them, tax complexity, growth plans, and what you actually want from an accountant.

Each answer carries a weight. Low weights describe simplicity (a sole proprietor with 40 transactions a month and no payroll). High weights describe complexity (multiple entities, a team on payroll, multi-state filings). The total maps to one of four engagement levels, from DIY through fractional CFO.

Arithmetic alone is not judgment, so a few answers override the score. If you said your goal is forecasting and strategic finance, the tool recommends CFO-level help regardless of how simple your books are, because no bookkeeping package delivers forecasting. If your revenue has crossed $1M, the floor rises to bookkeeping plus tax planning, because at that profit level planning decisions move more money than bookkeeping costs. And if your books are months behind, whatever level you land on gets a "catch-up first" flag, because every monthly engagement assumes accurate starting balances.

DIY with a safety net. You keep your own books in accounting software, keep business and personal money strictly separate, and have a CPA review things annually at tax time. Defensible for sole proprietors and single-member LLCs with modest volume and no payroll. The moment any of those conditions changes, so should the answer.

Professional monthly bookkeeping. A provider categorizes transactions, reconciles every account, and delivers monthly financial statements: profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow. This is the right level when volume, payroll, or an entity return has made DIY error-prone, but your tax picture is still straightforward. Pricing details and scope are on our outsourced bookkeeping page.

Bookkeeping plus tax planning. The same monthly books, maintained by a team that also plans and prepares your taxes. Categorization decisions get made with the return in mind, quarterly estimates get managed instead of guessed, and planning moves (entity elections, retirement contributions, income timing) happen before December 31 while they still count. This is our full-stack accounting service, and it is the most common landing spot for profitable businesses between roughly $300K and $5M of revenue.

Fractional CFO. Everything above, plus forward-looking finance: cash-flow forecasting, budgets and variance review, KPIs, pricing and hiring analysis, and support for lenders or investors. You buy a senior finance executive by the slice instead of the $200K+ salary. See fractional CFO services for the engagement model.

Treat the recommendation as a starting hypothesis, not a verdict. The tool sees nine answers; a scoping call sees your actual books, your margins, and the tax positions already on your returns. Both matter.

If the tool recommended a level above where you are today, the reasoning bullets tell you which specific facts drove it. Read them skeptically. If the bullet says payroll compliance is the issue and you are about to shut down payroll, the recommendation softens. If it says you told us you want tax planning, no amount of bargain-hunting on bookkeeping will scratch that itch.

If the tool told you to stay DIY, believe it, and take the safety net seriously: one annual professional review catches the miscategorizations and missed deductions that quietly accumulate in self-kept books. The cheapest engagement we offer is the one that confirms you do not need us yet.

Take a hypothetical consulting firm owner: $450,000 of annual revenue, taxed as an S corporation, about 120 transactions a month, payroll for herself and two employees. Her books are current but she is not confident they are right, a freelance bookkeeper maintains them, she files an 1120-S in one state, growth is steady, and what she wants is proactive tax savings.

The arithmetic lands her at 12 of 26 points: revenue in the $300K to $1M band, an S corporation, moderate volume, a small team on payroll, and a tax-savings goal. That is one point past the line between professional bookkeeping and bookkeeping plus tax planning. Two overrides back up the call. Her stated goal is tax savings, which on its own sets a floor at bookkeeping plus tax planning. And her S corporation status independently sets a floor at professional bookkeeping, because reasonable compensation and payroll compliance are not DIY territory.

Why the planning layer matters at her size: at roughly $200,000 of profit, the open questions are her salary-to-distribution split, whether a retirement plan (solo 401(k) or a small-firm 401(k)) should shelter a meaningful slice of income, and how the qualified business income deduction interacts with her salary decision. Her freelance bookkeeper keeps clean records of what happened. None of those forward-looking questions are in a bookkeeper's job description, and each one can move four or five figures of tax.