Most owners come to us when they feel lost in their numbers. Revenue is coming in, bills are getting paid — but the financial picture feels fragmented, delayed, or unreliable. We close that gap.
A close you can trust. Every month. On a calendar.
A forward view of the business. Decisions made on data, not gut.
The plumbing that makes everything above possible.
The five to ten numbers that actually run your business.
If we're not a fit, we'll usually know within the first call — and we'll point you somewhere better. No hard feelings on either side.
Engagements start with a focused discovery — usually two weeks — to understand the books, the systems, and what leadership actually needs to see. From there, most engagements settle into a monthly retainer that scales with the work: heavier in the cleanup phase, lighter once the close is humming and we're spending most of our time on forward-looking analysis and decision support.
Bookkeepers record transactions and keep the books current. Controllers own the close, the balance sheet, the systems, and the reporting — the rigor that makes the books trustworthy. CFOs use those books to help leadership make decisions about cash, growth, pricing, and capital. Element Accounting plays the controller and CFO roles — we work alongside great bookkeepers and CPAs, we don't replace them.
Usually when revenue has outgrown the bookkeeping setup and the owner is making decisions without a clear financial picture. Common triggers: a messy multi-entity structure, a late or inconsistent monthly close, a lender or investor asking for reporting you don't have, or preparing the business for a sale, a raise, or a next-stage hire.
Engagements are scoped individually and priced on a monthly retainer. Discovery is a fixed fee. Ongoing retainers scale with the work — heavier in the cleanup phase, lighter once the close is humming. We can give you a ballpark after a 30-minute call.
Most clients stay with us on an ongoing basis — the work becomes operational rather than project-based. Some engagements are shorter when they're focused on a specific event: a financing round, a sale, a system migration. We can scope either way.
Probably. We've built finance functions inside manufacturers, retailers, restaurants and bars, hospitality and tour operators, construction firms, convenience stores, wellness studios, bookshops, creative practices, and subscription/membership businesses. Good financial discipline travels — what changes is operational nuance, and we pick that up quickly.
Yes — and at scale. We've managed the close and reporting for businesses with thousands of active subscriptions, including deferred revenue recognition under ASC 606, MRR and churn tracking, failed-payment dunning workflows, and cohort-level retention analysis. The discipline applies equally to SaaS, membership models, subscription boxes, and service-based recurring-billing operations.
No. We work alongside your tax team and bookkeepers. If you don't have a CPA, we can point you to ones we trust.
Both. We're based in Charleston, SC and meet locally when it helps. Most of the work — close, reporting, forecasting, dashboards — happens remotely with scheduled working sessions.
Yes — aggressively, after the initial buildout. Once the chart of accounts is clean and the workflows are mapped, we automate the repetitive execution: recurring journal entries, reconciliations, dashboard refreshes, variance analysis. That's how a senior finance professional can serve multiple clients well — human time goes to judgment and decisions, and well-designed automation handles the monthly grind. The fee covers the judgment, the system design, and the senior oversight. The automation is how we deliver it reliably, every month, without the cost structure of a full-time hire.
