How to Pick the Right Accounting Support (Without Overpaying or Underbuilding)

When you’re looking for accounting help, one of the biggest mistakes I see business owners make is trying to jump ahead of where they actually are.

And I get it, there’s a lot of noise out there. You’ve got $300-a-month bookkeepers on one end, $20K-a-month CPA firms on the other, and everything in between. So how do you know what’s right for your business?

Here’s a breakdown based on what stage you’re in and what you actually need.

Just Getting Started or Trying to Maintain

If your goal is to keep things steady, meaning nothing too complex, just staying compliant and not trying to grow then you probably don’t need a lot.

• You want someone to categorize transactions correctly
  
  
• Make sure sales tax is filed properly
  
  
• And ideally, they book things the right way for your accounting method (cash vs accrual)
  
  

If you’re a stable company doing under ~$750K in revenue, you can get away with a virtual bookkeeper for a few hundred bucks a month. Just know:

• If it’s that cheap, they’re working with a lot of clients
  
  
• Response time might not be great
  
  
• You’re not getting deep insights, and that’s okay at this stage
  
  

But if you’ve got lots of transactions, or things are starting to grow, you’ll need to spend a little more to get quality support or a bookkeeper with accounting experience.

In Growth Mode

Once you’re trying to actually grow meaning, you’re making decisions that affect margins, cash flow, and strategy that’s when the support needs to level up. Also if you are doing close to a $1m+.

Now it’s not just about being compliant. You need someone who can:

• Pull reports and analyze them
  
  
• Spot trends and suggest action plans
  
  
• Help you understand where your profit is going
  
  

That’s a different skill set than just doing taxes or saying this Amazon purchase should be under office supplies. And honestly, most CPAs aren’t wired for that kind of analysis. They’re great at tax strategy, reading the latest irs guidance but often too busy and too expensive to help you run your business. I won't mention names, but I have seen some charged upwards of $15k month for a business that just needed someone to book transactions.

In this case, you’re looking for someone with:

• Strong Excel skills and experience working with a lot of data
  
  
• Have analysis skills that transcend just accounting, think numbers person with business acumen
  
  
• And real-world experience putting into practice the insights they suggest
  
  

That might look like an in-house senior accountant, an accounting manager, or an outsourced partner like us who can plug in as needed.

Trying to Scale to 7 Figures and Beyond

Once you’re past $1M and trying to scale to $5M, $10M, etc., you probably need CFO-level guidance even if just part-time. Some start with just 5 hours a week and the before and after of their bank account shows.

That means someone who’s helping you:

• Think strategically about your margins, increase this or decrease this
  
  
• Build a financial model that makes decisions easier: if you hire this person how does it affect revenue how does it affect costs
  
  
• Find ways to improve cash flow, pricing, and structure
  
  

You don’t need a full-time hire right away. But you need a little more help.

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A fractional CFO can fill this gap really well especially if they’re used to working with owner-led businesses and can meet you where you are.

We’ve seen clients get a lot of value out of tying part of that CFO support to performance too if you don't have a lot of cash flow at the moment. For example:

• A small base retainer plus a percentage of revenue over an established threshold
• Or the same structure as above plus a percentage of increased profit, say you are usally 10% and they get you to 20%
  
  

It aligns incentives without putting a big strain on cash flow.

Quick Rule of Thumb

Your accounting + finance costs shouldn’t exceed 5-6% of revenue.

So if you’re at $1M, that’s around $50K-$60K a year. That can cover an average hire:

• Bookkeeping
  
  
• Some analysis
  
  
• Maybe a fractional CFO depending on your structure
  
  

Granted you can always pay more than average and a lot of time that does get you more than average results.

And honestly, if you’re paying $15K-$20K/month to a CPA firm and not getting clear insights or strategy? It might be time to rethink that.

Final Thought

Think of your accounting setup like your business’s health plan.

If you're not growing much, you just need regular checkups. Someone to say yup everything's good and you're not about to die.

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If you’re trying to run a marathon, you probably need a coach and someone who can interpret the data. Maybe even a couch to marathon plan too.

Wherever you are, just make sure the support you’re paying for matches the season you're in and you are getting an ROI. A lot of small business forget that you don't want to spend money just to spend it, you want to spend $20k to get $100k back.

At Walden Solutions Group, we help small businesses build smart, scalable systems for growth. Whether that means cleaning up the books, building a financial dashboard, or stepping in as your CFO — we’re here to help.

If you would like to sign up for 30 days free of bookkeeping, we typically throw in our CFO services too for our first 3 sign ups. Fill out the information below to get started.