Most schools between $4M and $15M outsource bookkeeping and then consume it as controllership. Those are not the same service, and the difference is where every repeat audit finding, every disallowed grant cost, and every surprise deficit comes from.
Each does exactly what it was hired to do, and each stops at the edge of its engagement letter.
Posts the entries you hand over and produces the financial statements.
Runs payroll on the instructions it is given and files the taxes.
Tests a sample once a year, issues an opinion, and leaves.
It sits in the space between the three, and it is nobody's deliverable. That is not negligence. It is scope, and scope is fixable.
The school prepares its own payroll file and pays a PEO to process it. It codes its own invoices inside a platform it does not own. It runs its own meal counts while paying a program consultant. In each case the vendor is billing for the final step of work the school has already done itself.
Restricted federal dollars coded to the same lines as unrestricted money, with the restriction field unused. Nothing in the ledger proves a grant cost was spent on the grant, and allowable costs sit inside lump sums with unallowable ones, written off rather than claimed.
A deficit treated as overspending that turns out to be a revenue assumption. The budget was never tied back to the enrollment number it depends on, so the school cuts programs while the actual gap sits on the revenue side.
The annual budget divided into identical twelfths, so a September that looks over budget and a June that looks under both mean nothing. Real problems and ordinary seasonality become impossible to tell apart.
Transaction-level review of the ledger, the close process, the prior audit and management letter, grant coding, and your accounting firm's actual scope. You get a findings report ranked by severity, an open items tracker with owners and dates, and a remediation plan.
A review of what your outside vendors are contracted to deliver against what your staff is actually doing. Schools routinely prepare their own payroll files and pay a PEO to process them, code their own invoices in a platform they do not own, or run their own meal counts while paying a program consultant. This engagement finds the overlap and prices it. It is the fastest way to see whether the rest of this work pays for itself.
Close oversight, board reporting, grant compliance, and the full audit cycle. Priced in bands by school size and module selection, with a defined monthly hour range and an on-site commitment.
Budget build, audit remediation, grant year setup, chart of accounts rebuild, payroll implementation, or the financial sections of a renewal application.
For schools between business managers or between accounting providers. Includes stabilization of the close and a documented handoff to the permanent hire.
For schools in financial distress, under authorizer scrutiny, or carrying facilities debt and unresolved liens. Cash and payables triage, lender negotiation, and a stabilization plan.
For schools that have the capacity but want a second set of eyes on one specific question.
I have read these files from both sides of the desk. Engagements are scoped, led, and signed off by me. Where a school needs a specialist I do not carry, that person is brought in under my review rather than handed the relationship.
A conversation with you and your operations lead, followed by a written scope and fee proposal within five business days. If a diagnostic is not what your school needs, we will tell you that instead.