Fractional controller

Willis Law

Monthly closeCash forecastingLender and diligence

You've outgrown your bookkeeper and you don't need a CFO yet. The numbers land late, and nobody can say what cash looks like eight weeks out.

I fix the finance function, then I run it.

Why people call

By the time someone calls me, something has already gone wrong.

Cash is tight and nobody can say where it's going.

The person who ran finance just left.

A raise or a loan is moving and the books won't survive the questions.

The last few months never got closed and it's compounding.

What I do

Close, cash, collections, and whoever's asking questions.

CloseThe month closes on a schedule, and you stop checking the figures before you send them.

Payroll and filingsPayroll, GST, PST, WCB, state tax. They go out on time and you stop being the backstop.

CashA rolling forecast, updated weekly, built so your own team can feed it. You see payroll three weeks out, not the Friday before.

CollectionsStripe, the CRM and the ledger agreeing, and the aged invoices worked before they go bad.

DiligenceLenders, auditors and investors ask me, not you.

AutomationI automate the repetitive parts and use AI where it helps, then I check its work, because it's wrong often enough to matter.

SR&EDI pull the eligible costs out of your books and answer the accountants' questions before they file. Your technical lead writes the technical part and nothing else.

A second pair of handsDaily AP and AR isn't me. That's your staff, or someone I bring in, or automation. We scope it at the start rather than discovering it in month three, and I'll help you build the team underneath if that's the cheaper answer.

What I've fixed

I held the whole function alonewhen the finance team emptied out

The controller left, then the person doing AP. I took all of it from week one. Close, lender package, every government filing, out on time right through it.

They could borrow money they couldn't borrow beforebecause there was finally a model

Their first real three-year projection, built from scratch for a lender application, with every assumption written down where a lender could argue with it.

I overruled their accounting firmand told them to claim less

They'd put more than 95% of engineering time into an SR&ED claim. I called it an audit risk and cut it before it was booked. Your advisors don't carry that risk. You do.

Their own staff ran the cash forecastnot me, on purpose

I built it so the people already in the business could feed it every week. A model only the consultant can open is a model that dies the month you stop paying him.

How it starts

You can stop after any of it.

Step 01

A call

Half an hour. What's going on, how big the company is, what's actually broken.

Step 02

Read-only access

To the books and the bank. I read before I touch anything.

Step 03

A written summary

What's in there, what it takes to fix, what it costs to run once fixed.

Step 04

You decide

If it's a no, the summary is yours. You're out a couple of hours and a login.

1 week and you get a number in writing.
One price to run it monthly. Cleanup, if the books need it, is priced on its own, so you can say yes to one and no to the other. I take a small number of clients at a time.

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