Frequently Asked Questions

It begins with a conversation, not a contract. We will ask what you are running today, what is breaking, and what you actually need — then tell you honestly whether we are the right fit. Bookkeeping clients get a free initial evaluation (normally $125) where we review your current books before anyone commits to anything.

From there our team handles implementation and trains your staff, so payroll runs cleanly from the first cycle. Get in touch and we will take it from there.

Within one business day. That is our one-day callback policy, and it applies to everyone — you will hear from a real person on our team, not a ticket queue.

Yes. Our office is in Chattanooga, but we serve clients in about 30 states. Multi-state payroll compliance is one of the things we do most — if you have employees in more than one state, that is familiar territory for us, not an exception.

Restaurants and hospitality, healthcare practices, hemp and CBD operators, nonprofits, real estate, retail, professional service firms, and trade services like HVAC, plumbing and electrical. Our clients range from self-employed owners working from home to established small and mid-sized companies.

See the industries we serve for how we work in each one.

You do not have to wait for January. We collect your year-to-date wage and tax totals from your current provider, verify them against your filings, and carry them into the new system so your W-2s come out right at year end. A quarter boundary makes it cleaner, but mid-quarter switches are routine.

We are a Xero Platinum Partner and a Gusto Gold Partner, and our bookkeepers are all QuickBooks Online certified. Those three are our preferred platforms and where we work fastest, but we are not limited to them — we support other payroll and accounting providers on a case-by-case basis.

We handle setup, migration between platforms, and ongoing support, including connecting your payroll system to your accounting system so the two stop disagreeing.

Either, and it is your call. On our Traditional support plan, payroll runs on Gusto and your team submits it, while we handle setup, tax registrations, training and support behind the scenes. On our Partner plan we run it for you, including off-cycle payrolls, org charts and policy management.

Some owners want the control; others want it off their desk entirely. Both are legitimate answers — compare them on our pricing plans.

Yes to both. Multi-state payroll is included from the Plus plan up, and state tax registrations are part of our support plans. If you are hiring your first employee in a new state, you do not have to work out that state's withholding and unemployment registration on your own.

Yes. Our Partner plan includes up to four off-cycle payroll runs a year, which covers most bonus cycles, corrections and final paychecks. Beyond that, we will tell you the cost before we run it, never after.

Workers' compensation administration and benefits management are included on every payroll plan. On the Premium tier you also get health insurance broker integration, compliance alerts and access to certified HR experts — useful once you are past a handful of employees and real HR questions start showing up.

More detail on our payroll and HR services.

A Profit and Loss statement, a Balance Sheet, and a variance report that flags month-over-month anomalies — the report that catches the duplicated vendor payment or the expense category that quietly doubled.

Quarterly, we sit down and go through the numbers with you. Annually, you get an in-depth industry report comparing your performance to your sector. New clients also get structured check-ins at 30, 60 and 90 days.

Yes, and you would not be the first. Catch-up and cleanup work is scoped and priced separately from ongoing bookkeeping, because the amount of work depends entirely on how far back it goes and what condition the records are in.

The free initial evaluation is where we find that out and give you a real number rather than a guess. Once the books are current, you move onto normal monthly service.

No. Bookkeeping clients get unlimited support from our bookkeeping team outside of scheduled review sessions. On the payroll side, support hours are built into your plan — 15 minutes a month on Traditional, five hours on Partner — and we will tell you if a request is heading past that before it does, not on the invoice.

More on our bookkeeping services.

No. We are not a tax preparation firm, and we would rather tell you that plainly than take the work and hand you a surprise in April.

What we do is keep your books and monthly reporting in the condition a CPA needs, so filing season is a handoff rather than a scramble. If you do not already have a tax preparer, we will point you toward CPAs we work with regularly and trust.

Bookkeeping keeps your records accurate and your monthly financials on time — it tells you what happened. Advisory uses those numbers to decide what happens next: cash flow forecasting, KPI dashboards, profitability analysis and fractional CFO support.

Most clients start with bookkeeping and add advisory when they are ready to grow deliberately.

Usually one of three things has happened: you are making decisions you cannot reverse cheaply — a hire, a location, a piece of equipment — your margins moved and you cannot say why, or you have realised you are managing the business from your bank balance.

Advisory is about having the numbers in front of you before the decision, not after.

Payroll pricing has two parts: your Gusto plan (from $100 base plus $7 per employee) and your SPB support plan. On the Traditional plan there is no extra charge for our support, and combined monthly fees start around $200. The Partner plan, where we run payroll for you, is $125 base plus $6 per employee on standard pay frequencies. There is a one-time implementation fee that scales with headcount, from $250 to $5,000.

Bookkeeping starts with a free evaluation, then runs either hourly at $95 or on a custom monthly retainer sized to your business. Training sessions are $600 for four hours. Full detail is on our pricing plans page.

No. We do not use annual contracts, and you can add services to any plan at any time. We would rather earn the next month than lock you into twelve.