HIRING A CONTROLLER OR SENIOR ACCOUNTANTThe default answer, and often the right one at scale. For most growing companies it means one person carrying the close, AP, AR, tax and reporting alone, with a six-to-twelve-week hiring cycle, a salary and benefits line regardless of workload, and a single point of failure when they are sick, on holiday or leaving. Solvebooks delivers the same output on a fixed monthly scope, with a CPA accountable for it, and scales the work without adding to your payroll. Many clients hire later, into a function that already runs.
A BOOKKEEPING FIRMGood at transactions, rarely built for a finance leader. The close is monthly at best, often weeks late; tax is frequently a separate firm; controls, consolidation and forecasting are out of scope; and the person doing the work is usually not the person you can call. Solvebooks runs the whole function on one calendar, closes in two working days, and gives you a CPA who owns the account and looks at your numbers the way an owner would.
AN OUTSOURCED ACCOUNTING PLATFORMStandardized packages work well for simple, single-entity US businesses. They tend to struggle with Canadian tax, US–Canada groups, multi-entity consolidation and anything that needs judgement, and the relationship is with a queue rather than a person. Solvebooks is built for exactly those cases: cross-border, multi-entity, and run by a CPA who knows your business.
A FRACTIONAL CFOValuable for strategy, fundraising and board work, and not a substitute for the work underneath it. A fractional CFO needs a reliable close, a current forecast and a clean pack to be effective, and often ends up doing or supervising that work at a CFO's rate. Solvebooks does that work; many fractional CFOs work alongside us.
DOING IT YOURSELFThe honest option for a founder or a one-person finance team, until it is not. The signs are familiar: the close slips, the board pack is rebuilt by hand, sales tax registrations lag the business, and strategy happens at 11pm. Solvebooks takes the recurring work so the finance leader can be a finance leader.