Outsourced controller services in Atlanta. Your books closed by the fifth business day.

What does an outsourced controller do?

An outsourced controller checks the books, closes each month on a fixed date, and puts controls on who can spend and move money, on a monthly retainer instead of a salary. The bookkeeper enters the month. The controller makes sure it is right, then reads it for margin and cost problems.

A typical month

Both returns get filed from closed books.

• Business day 1: Bank, card, and loan accounts reconciled
• Business day 2: Bills and invoices cut off, payroll tied to the payroll reports
• Business day 3: Every balance sheet account matched to a statement or schedule
• Business day 4: Accruals booked, margin by job or location reviewed
• Business day 5: Statements and a one-page KPI report in your inbox
• The 15th: Georgia withholding due for monthly filers
• The 20th: Georgia sales and use tax return due

If last month’s numbers show up around the 20th, read on.

New clients usually reach us closing somewhere between the 15th and the 20th of the following month. By then September’s statements are describing a quarter that is half over, and any decision made from them is made late.

The usual reason is not a bad bookkeeper. It is volume that grew while nobody was assigned to check the work, close the period, and say the numbers are final.

• A good fit: Owner-led, $1M to $20M in revenue
• A good fit: On QuickBooks Online or Xero, or on Desktop and ready to leave it
• A good fit: Statements come late, or change after you have seen them
• A good fit: Deliveries into several metro counties, or jobs with retainage and change orders
• A good fit: You still approve every bill because nobody else checks them
• Not a fit: You need an audit opinion. That is a CPA firm’s job.
• Not a fit: You mostly need forecasting, pricing, and capital work. That is our fractional CFO service.
• Not a fit: Low volume, where clean bookkeeping alone is enough

Six things the retainer covers, every month.

Numbered in the order they happen. Each one is part of the flat fee.

• The close, by the fifth business day. We set the date with you and hold it. Statements, a balance sheet that ties, and a one-page KPI report arrive by the fifth business day, every month, once the cleanup is behind us.
• Every balance sheet account tied out. Bank, cards, loans, payroll liabilities, sales tax payable, customer deposits. Each one matched to a statement or schedule from outside the books. Old mistakes live in the accounts nobody reconciles.
• Georgia tax kept in step with the books. Sales tax collected by county, matched to the monthly return. Withholding and state unemployment tied to payroll. Your CPA still files the income tax return, from books that support it.
• Margin by job, product, or location. For a contractor that means retainage, change orders, and a work-in-progress schedule. For a distributor it means freight matched to the order it shipped with. Either way you see which work pays.
• Approval limits and a monthly cost review. Who can approve a bill, up to what amount, and who can move cash. Then every cost line read once a month, so a vendor price increase gets caught the month it starts instead of at year end.
• The bookkeeping underneath. Bills, invoices, collections follow-up, and payroll entries. One firm owns the books from entry to close. If your bookkeeper does good work, we review and manage their work instead.

One metro, at least five sales tax rates.

Georgia charges sales tax where the customer takes delivery, not where you ship from. A company in Marietta delivering to a customer in Midtown charges the Atlanta rate, not the Cobb rate. These are general rates from the Georgia Department of Revenue chart for October through December 2026:

Sales and use tax rates, October 1 to December 31, 2026

• Cobb County: 6%
• Gwinnett County: 6%
• Cherokee County: 7%
• Fulton County, outside Atlanta, Hapeville, College Park, and East Point: 7.75%
• DeKalb County, outside Atlanta: 8%
• Henry County: 8%
• City of Atlanta, in Fulton and DeKalb: 8.9%

Where we work

Cherokee, where we are based, was 6% on the January 2026 chart and 7% on the October one. An invoicing system that never got the new rate has collected 1% too little on every Cherokee delivery since. Georgia still wants the full 7%, so the difference comes out of your margin.

The return is due on the 20th, and monthly withholding on the 15th. A close by the fifth business day puts reconciled numbers in hand before both, so the returns are filed from the books instead of from the invoice log.

Walden is based in Canton, in Cherokee County. We serve companies inside and outside the Perimeter: Canton, Woodstock, Alpharetta, Roswell, Cumming, Marietta, Kennesaw, Sandy Springs, Buckhead, Midtown, Decatur, and points south. The work runs in shared systems, and we meet in person when it helps.

One metro Atlanta file, from six months behind to closed in five days.

An $8 million equipment company in metro Atlanta came to us six months behind on reconciliations. Its previous CFO firm had left partway through an ERP integration, and the owner was paying about $2,000 a month for software nobody was maintaining.

The first reconciliations turned up problems going back 24 months, not six. We rebuilt all 24 in about 90 days, moved the file from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online, and connected the job management system so invoices stopped being retyped. Mistakes in years already filed went to a new CPA, who amended those returns.

The cleanup is where the money turned up. Retainage had been billed in the job system but never recorded in the books: $273,000 the company was owed. It was collected. We negotiated the company out of the ERP contract and rebuilt the reporting inside QuickBooks. The statements now arrive within five business days of month end.

• 24 months: of books rebuilt in about 90 days.
• $273K: in retainage billed but never booked, found and collected.
• 5 days: from month end to statements, every month since the cleanup.
• $2,000/mo: ERP contract ended with a negotiated settlement.

$3,500–$7,500/month, flat.

One fee covers the close, the tie-outs, the Georgia tax work, margin reporting, controls, and the bookkeeping. Where you land in the range depends on how many entities, locations, and bank accounts you run, and whether you carry inventory.

It does not move with hours. A Control file takes us 40 to 70 hours a month, and a flat fee makes the hours our problem. Cleanup of past months is quoted once, before it starts.

• Walden Control, low end: $42,000 a year
• Walden Control, high end: $90,000 a year
• Full-time controller: about $203,000 a year in salary, payroll taxes, and benefits

Frequently asked questions