Your accounting department.
Without the headcount.

Most ongoing engagements land between $2,500 and $15,000 a month. Where you’d fall depends on what the Diagnostic finds — pricing before we’ve looked under the hood would be a guess, and you’d be the one paying for the guess. If that range doesn’t work for your budget, we’re not the right fit yet, and we’d rather both know that in week one.

Yes — it’s one of our three layers, and some clients hire us for it alone. The difference from a bookkeeping firm: your books are kept by people who work under controllers and CFOs, so the record is built for decisions, not just for taxes. If your books need cleanup first, the Diagnostic prices that work before you commit to it.

Keep them. We’re not here to replace people who are doing good work — we’re the layer you’re missing. Plenty of our clients have internal teams we help run; what they were missing was someone connecting the numbers to decisions. If your current setup has a gap, the Diagnostic will name it. If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you that too.

A typical fractional CFO gives you meetings and a monthly PDF. We diagnose the problems, then actually fix them — systems installed, processes documented, dollar impact tracked. And because our team keeps the books and runs the controls, your CFO isn’t reading your P&L cold. The advice comes from inside the numbers, not on top of them.

Straight answer: our team works as a unit, which means shared access to your financial systems across Bison CFO. That’s how the work stays consistent when someone’s out. Access is limited to the engagement team, and we’re happy to walk through specific security practices on the intro call. If that model doesn’t sit right with you, we want to know before we start — not after.

Maybe — and the Diagnostic is where we’d both find out. Our best work happens in owner-run businesses past $1M in revenue with real operational complexity. If you’re not there yet, we’ll say so, and you’ll still leave with a clear financial picture and a punch list you can run yourself. Nobody gets sold ongoing work they don’t need.

Some of our clients were. It’s why the model has an off-ramp at every stage: the Diagnostic is three weeks, defined scope, money-back guaranteed. Implementation is a project with an end date. Advisory is month-to-month — no lock-in, ever. We don’t trap clients, because a trapped client is a bad reference. People stay because the numbers keep justifying it.

The Diagnostic is sized to the company — for Bookkeeping and Financial Essentials it can start at $3,000, one-time. If you need immediate help (as in: yesterday), we can accommodate that too. But every failed advisory relationship we’ve seen died from skipping the diagnosis, so we never skip it. Three weeks protects both of us — and it’s guaranteed to pay for itself.

Then you’ll hear it from us first. It’s happened — some businesses get what they need from the Diagnostic alone and run with it. That’s a win, not a failed sale. You keep the findings, the dollar figures, and the plan either way.

Then we did our job — that’s growth. Everything we build is documented and designed to survive the handoff, and when the time comes we’ll help you hire, onboard, and transition. Often we stay on for a short stretch to train and assist the new hire — and some CFOs keep us as a long-term advisor. Either way, nothing we build depends on us staying.

Three weeks to a full diagnosis: every leak found, priced, in writing. The quick wins usually start before that — findings you can act on the same week we spot them. From there, recovery starts during the build, not after it.

Kurtis is in Oklahoma City; the team works remotely across the country. Most engagements run perfectly well over video calls and Slack, and when in-person matters, we show up.