Baum's Accounting Services brings 18 years of controller, CFO, and advisory experience to growing companies that need better numbers, a real cash forecast, and someone to think through the next decision with.
Most companies hit a point where the bookkeeper is doing everything asked and it still isn't enough. The month closes late. Margins are a guess. Cash never quite matches what the income statement promised. That's the gap a fractional CFO fills, and it's the work our founder has been doing for 18 years.
Baum's Accounting Services works with companies from $5M to $50M in revenue, on site around Lexington and virtually everywhere else. Industries range from construction and senior health to environmental services, retail, and professional firms. The engagement is part-time by design: a senior finance mind in your business a few days a month, at the level of involvement the business actually needs, without adding an executive salary to the payroll.
The work starts with numbers you can rely on. Closing the month on a schedule, with a balance sheet that ties out and a P&L that reflects what actually happened. From there it turns forward-looking: a 13-week cash flow forecast updated every week, profitability broken out by job, department, location, or revenue stream, and a budget that gets compared against reality instead of filed away. Then the conversations that matter. Whether to take the contract. What a new hire really costs. Where price increases will and won't stick.
Different firms use different labels. Outsourced CFO, virtual CFO, part-time CFO, fractional CFO. They all describe the same arrangement: a senior finance executive who works for an outside firm and gets brought into your business on a defined schedule. We are never employees of your company. We are advisors you engage, which is exactly why the arrangement works. There's no severance conversation if the business changes direction, no recruiting cycle to fill the seat, and no pressure to build the role bigger than the company needs. Virtual means the work happens over video and shared systems. On-site visits happen too, particularly around Lexington.
Many Fractional CFO relationships begin with Controller Services. Once accurate reporting, internal controls, and forecasting are established, the focus shifts from understanding what has already happened to planning what the business should do next.
Not every company needs a CFO yet. The work scales with the business in four steps. Bookkeeping keeps the transactions clean and the close on time. Accounting and financial reporting turn those records into statements and reporting packages management can use. Controller services add ownership of the close itself, plus reconciliations, job costing, internal controls, and management of whoever is doing the day-to-day entry. Fractional CFO sits on top: forecasting, capital structure, pricing strategy, and the decisions that set the next two years. Plenty of clients start at controller and move up when the questions change. Some engage the CFO level and keep their existing bookkeeper in place. The right entry point comes out of the first conversation, not a package chosen in advance.
The fit is usually a company between $5M and $50M in revenue with a CEO or COO who has stopped trusting the monthly package. Revenue is climbing. Headcount is climbing. The reporting hasn't kept up, and nobody inside the building owns the forward view. Often there's a version of the same question in every leadership meeting: we hit the number, so where's the cash? Companies under $5M engage too, usually at the controller level, when the owner wants the systems right before the next stage of growth. Software isn't a barrier. QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Sage, and NetSuite are all in regular use here.
A full-time CFO is your employee, with a salary, benefits, and a job that has to stay full-size. We work as an outside advisor engaged by your company, at whatever cadence the business needs. You get 18 years of senior finance experience applied to the specific problems in front of you, and the scope moves up or down as things change.
No. Baum's Accounting Services doesn't prepare or file income tax returns. That work goes to an outside CPA firm, and part of the CFO role is making sure your preparer gets clean, closed books and clear answers when they ask questions. If you don't have a tax preparer yet, We can point you toward firms that handle work like yours.
It depends on the state of the books and what the business is trying to do. A company with a clean close and a clear question needs less time than one rebuilding its reporting from scratch. Most engagements settle into a regular monthly rhythm with a standing leadership meeting and availability in between. The first consultation sorts out what the right level looks like.
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Multi-year projections tied to what you're actually planning to do, with the cash and capital requirements each scenario would demand.
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Read moreBook a consultation and we will show you what the first ninety days would look like.
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