A closed set of books, delivered on a date you can count on, with a short read on what the numbers actually mean for the month ahead.
Most owners we talk to aren't missing reports. They're getting them six weeks late, with numbers that shift after the fact. By the time the March financials show up, May is half gone and the decision has already been made. A reporting package is only worth something if it arrives while you can still do something about it.
Baum's Accounting Services has spent 18 years running closes at the controller and CFO level, including years at a mortgage bank where the reporting calendar wasn't negotiable. That discipline is what a growing company in Lexington usually needs first. Not a redesigned chart of accounts, not a new system. A repeatable close, a fixed delivery date, and someone who reads the statements before you do and flags what changed. Everything else builds on that.
The core set is a balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows, all tied out rather than printed straight from the accounting file. Accounts get reconciled. Accruals get booked. Prepaids and deferrals land in the right period so a big annual insurance payment doesn't crater one month and flatter the next eleven. Where it helps, the income statement breaks out by job, location, or department so you can see which parts of the business are carrying the rest. The package comes with a short written summary in plain English: what moved, why it moved, and what to watch. No one should have to interpret a variance column on their own.
The close runs on a schedule, not on whoever gets to it. We agree on a delivery date up front, work backward to figure out what has to happen and by when, and then hold to it. Vendor bills in by a certain day. Payroll posted by another. Bank feeds current. Most of the delay in a late close isn't accounting work at all, it's waiting on documents nobody assigned to anyone. Once the calendar exists and someone owns each piece, the close stops being a monthly scramble. Your lender knows when statements arrive. Your management team knows when to schedule the review. That predictability changes how the whole company operates.
A company doing $4M doesn't need what a $40M company needs, and dressing up a small business in enterprise reporting wastes everyone's time. We start with the decisions you're making right now. If you're bidding work and want to know which jobs are worth chasing, the package leans toward margin by job. If you're carrying debt, it leans toward covenant math and cash coverage. If you're weighing a second location, it separates the units so you can see them side by side. The reporting grows as the company grows. What you get in year one shouldn't be what you get in year three.
There's no requirement to switch platforms. We work in QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Sage, and NetSuite, and in most cases the fastest path to better reporting is fixing how your current system is being used rather than moving off it. That usually means cleaning up the chart of accounts, setting consistent coding rules, and closing periods so history stops changing after the fact. The firm's partners are QuickBooks ProAdvisors, and Baum's Accounting Services has inherited plenty of messy files over the years. Most of them didn't need replacing. They needed someone to impose a little order and then keep it that way.
It depends on how clean the starting point is, but the goal is always a fixed date you can plan around rather than a moving target. Once the close calendar is in place and everyone knows what they owe and when, the close settles into a rhythm instead of running late by default. We set a realistic date together and then hold it.
Often not. Plenty of companies have someone handling day-to-day entry perfectly well and what's missing is the layer above it: reconciliations, accruals, a real close, and someone reading the results. We can work alongside your existing bookkeeper or handle the whole function. The right answer depends on what your current setup already does well.
Internal monthly reporting is built for you and your management team first. When a lender needs something more formal, we prepare compiled financial statements separately for that purpose. The two are related but different, and it's worth being clear which one your bank is asking for. Book a consultation and we can sort that out quickly.
Other work in this area that tends to come up in the same conversation.
A forward look at what's coming in and going out, so payroll, tax payments, and big purchases stop colliding in the same week.
Read moreAn annual plan built from your history and your goals, broken down by month so it's something you can measure against.
Read moreWhere you landed against the plan, line by line, with the variances that matter explained rather than just highlighted in red.
Read moreBook a consultation and we will walk through the work, the timing, and who does what.
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