Professional Services Controller Services

Outsourced controllers are similar to financial managers in that they take care of your company’s overarching financial health. Their role includes higher-level month-end tasks, from reviewing bookkeeping and handling complex reconciliations to managing the close process.

They’re responsible for ensuring your financials comply with governing regulations, including differing national and state-based regulations, as well as industry-specific requirements. For example, trust accounting for law firms and project accounting for consultants.

One of their primary functions is to ensure taxes comply with submission guidelines. This includes constant audit-readiness to avoid expensive penalties.

You benefit from insightful guidance and support to grow revenue, better allocate resources, enhance performance, and boost your bottom line.

Their accuracy and efficiency significantly reduce the burden on your staff, freeing them to focus on core activities and more strategic tasks.

Controllers, bookkeepers, and CFOs have very distinct roles. Each one of which is essential to the healthy financial functioning of your business.

Bookkeepers manage day-to-day tasks, including data entry and basic reconciliations.

Controllers level up to monitor and manage data to ensure accuracy across books and ledgers. They’re also responsible for checking that bookkeeping, reporting, and process documentation comply with regulatory requirements. Finally, they’re gatekeepers who only pass financials to CFOs when they pass muster.

CFOs (Chief Financial Officers) are strategizers who use the statements and reports provided by controllers to manage budgeting and forecasting. Their role includes data analysis and interpreting analytics metrics to secure sustainable financial health.

In essence, controllers are the bridge between bookkeepers and CFOs, connecting daily accounting processes and executive strategies, so all parties work from the same source of truth.

Controllers are almost the be-all and end-all of compliance. They manage every process, feature, function, report, and submission document that has specific regulatory requirements. When it comes to professional services providers, it includes things like grant reporting (non-profits), trust accounts (IOLTA for legal practices), and indirect rates.

Controllers are also responsible for cross-state registration and reporting, ensuring documentation is current for accurate financial processes. One of their most important compliance-related responsibilities is managing internal and external audits with clear audit trails.

Controllers’ compliance obligations ensure your financial records are always accurate, consistently completed on time, and constantly audit-ready, even when tax season is still months away.

Controllers have several priorities that they need to list in order so they can start with the absolute highest priority. This may differ according to your business’s specific requirements, but generally, the order is:

• Standardizing reconciliations and ensuring evidence is logged with each task. This provides the details required by reviewers in an easily accessible and digestible format.
• Embedding controls in approvals and access. This ensures the approval process meets transparency requirements and that data access is carefully managed.
• Ensuring cash, aging, and variance packs are shipped on schedule to leaders (heads of departments and the C-Suite). This gives them time to process information and prepare for upcoming meetings.
• Tackling the backlog of relatively easy fixes to deliver quick wins. Seeing benefits in action can build momentum and improve motivation and morale within the finance team.

Controllers improve the efficiency and accuracy of processes and operations, effectively reducing costs by mapping the true path for procure-to-pay and order-to-cash. This includes the identification of duplicate steps or entries, which are relatively common in old spreadsheet-based inputs.

New advanced software-based solutions make it easy to remove duplicates, creating a clean data flow that can be automated.

To successfully carry out this role, controllers use exception-based reviews, which enable them to remove staff from routine entries, so they can focus on outliers instead.

This aspect of their job requires the integration of key systems, which then facilitate smooth, consistent data flow. One of the biggest benefits is time saving due to less rekeying and fewer adjustments.

Controllers’ tasks include keeping intercompany rules consistent, which is vital to stability and ensures group reporting doesn’t break each quarter. Staff are free to focus on more productive work, improving performance and growing your margins.