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Accounting firms and finance departments run on a rhythm most outsiders never see: the monthly close, busy season, the audit calendar, the filing deadlines. Learn the rhythm and you can hold a real conversation with a controller or a tax partner.

This course was built for someone who works with accounting organizations rather than in them. It skips the exam material and focuses on process: who does what, when, with which tools, and what the pressure points are. Each module closes with a section on how to use what you just learned in a client or candidate conversation.

Corporate accountingFinance departments inside operating companies: the controller's team, AP, AR, payroll, FP&A.

CPA firmsPublic accounting practices selling audit, tax, advisory and outsourced accounting to clients.

AgenciesMarketing, advertising and creative firms whose accounting is shaped by project billing and media pass-throughs.

Each module is its own page. Use the syllabus on the left or the Next button at the bottom of each page. Modules build on each other, so read 1 through 4 in order; the rest can be read as needed. Your progress is saved in this browser only.

Case study · follows the whole course

Harbor & Vale Creative

One fictional company runs through every module. Harbor & Vale is a 40-person independent marketing agency that does brand work, campaigns and paid media for consumer and outdoor brands. It is exactly the kind of client whose books, audit, tax return and finance hires you will encounter. Each module has a red Case file box showing what happens to Harbor & Vale at that stage. Read them in order and you will have followed one invoice all the way to the owners' personal tax returns.

StructureS corporation, three owners: Maya Harbor 50%, Dev Vale 30%, Lena Okafor 20%

Size40 staff · 25 clients

Billings$9.2M

Net revenue (AGI)$6.1M

Largest clientCascadia Outfitters, 18% of revenue

Finance teamPriya Raman, controller · Tom Lindqvist, staff accountant · Jess Moreno, billing coordinator

Outside helpWhitfield & Grant CPAs (140-person regional firm) for audit and tax · a fractional CFO one day a month

Bank$1.5M line of credit that requires audited statements

SystemsDeltek Maconomy (jobs, time, billing, general ledger, payables, receivables), Ramp cards, Gusto payroll, Excel

Throughout the course, Deltek Maconomy is the example ERP. It is a project-based system built for professional services firms such as agencies, consultancies and accounting firms, so it fits both Harbor & Vale and its CPA firm. Slate-bordered "In Deltek Maconomy" notes show how each process looks inside the system. The concepts transfer to NetSuite, Sage Intacct or any other ledger.

All names, figures and people are invented for teaching. Any resemblance to a real firm is accidental. Deltek and Maconomy are trademarks of Deltek, Inc.; this course is not affiliated with Deltek.

Module 01 · 25 min

The language of accounting

Every process in this course exists to produce three documents. Understand those documents and the double-entry logic behind them, and the rest of the vocabulary falls into place.

You will be able to

Name the three core financial statements and say what question each answers
Explain debits and credits without flinching
Tell the difference between cash-basis and accrual accounting, and GAAP versus tax basis

The three financial statements

Nearly everything an accounting department does is upstream of these three reports. When a controller says "we're closing the books," they mean producing accurate versions of them for the period that just ended.

Statement	Question it answers	Covers	Key lines
Balance sheet	What do we own and owe right now?	A single date (point in time)	Assets, liabilities, equity. Must balance: Assets = Liabilities + Equity.
Income statement also P&L, profit and loss	Did we make money this period?	A span of time (month, quarter, year)	Revenue, cost of goods sold, gross margin, operating expenses, net income.
Cash flow statement	Where did the cash actually go?	A span of time	Operating, investing and financing cash flows. Reconciles net income to the change in cash.

The gap between the income statement and the cash flow statement is where much of accounting's difficulty lives. A company can show a profit and run out of cash, because revenue is recorded when earned, not when collected.

Debits and credits

Double-entry bookkeeping records every transaction in at least two places so the books always balance. Debit and credit are simply the left and right columns of an account. They are not "good" and "bad." Which side increases an account depends on what kind of account it is:

Account type	Increases with	Examples
Assets	Debit	Cash, accounts receivable, inventory, equipment
Expenses	Debit	Salaries, rent, software, advertising
Liabilities	Credit	Accounts payable, accrued expenses, loans, deferred revenue
Equity	Credit	Owner's capital, retained earnings
Revenue	Credit	Sales, service fees, commissions

Accountants sketch accounts as T-shapes, debits on the left, credits on the right. Here is a marketing agency invoicing a client $12,000 for a completed project:

Accounts Receivable (asset)

Debit12,000

Credit

Service Revenue (revenue)

Debit

Credit12,000

When the client pays 30 days later, cash goes up (debit Cash 12,000) and the receivable goes away (credit Accounts Receivable 12,000). Revenue was recognized at invoice time, not payment time. That is accrual accounting in one example.

Cash basis versus accrual basis

Cash basis records revenue when money arrives and expenses when money leaves. Simple, and how very small businesses and many sole proprietors keep books.
Accrual basis records revenue when earned and expenses when incurred, regardless of cash timing. Required under GAAP and by lenders, investors and auditors. Every company of meaningful size uses it, which is why "accruals" dominate month-end work.

GAAP, tax basis, and why companies keep two sets of books legally

GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) is the US rulebook for financial reporting, issued by the FASB. Public companies must follow it; private companies usually do because banks and investors expect it. Internationally, the equivalent is IFRS.

The IRS has its own rules. Depreciation, revenue timing, meals, and dozens of other items are treated differently for tax than for GAAP. So a corporate tax department reconciles "book income" to "taxable income" every year, and the difference creates deferred tax assets and liabilities. This is not fraud; it is the normal state of affairs, and it is why tax and financial accounting are separate specialties with separate career tracks.

The chart of accounts and the general ledger

The chart of accounts is the numbered list of every account a company uses (1000s for assets, 2000s for liabilities, 4000s for revenue, and so on). The general ledger (GL) is the master record where every transaction lands, organized by those accounts. Subledgers hold the detail for busy areas such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll and fixed assets, and post summary totals up to the GL.

A journal entry is a manual posting to the GL, typically for adjustments the subledgers cannot handle: accruals, reclassifications, depreciation, corrections. A trial balance is a list of every account with its balance, used to confirm debits equal credits before the statements are produced.

In Deltek Maconomy

The central object is the job (Maconomy's word for a project or engagement). Time sheets, expense sheets, vendor invoices and customer invoices all attach to a job, and the job carries the budget, the cost and the revenue.
Each general ledger posting also carries dimensions: Company, Location, Entity, Project, Purpose and several "Spec" fields. Dimensions let a controller slice the same account by client, department or office without creating hundreds of extra accounts.
Subledgers in Maconomy terms are the job cost ledger, the customer (receivables) ledger and the vendor (payables) ledger. Posting a transaction updates the subledger and the general ledger in one step; there is no separate sync.
Manual journal entries are "general journals". Accountants often enter them into a journal that is then approved and posted, which gives a review step.

How a transaction becomes a financial statement. Detail lives in the subledgers; only totals reach the general ledger. Journal entries are the manual adjustments accountants make at month-end. The trial balance is the checkpoint before the statements are built. In Maconomy the left two columns are the job cost, time sheet, vendor invoice and customer invoice workspaces; the general ledger and trial balance are the finance module.

Case file Harbor & Vale, June

In June, Harbor & Vale finishes a $48,000 brand refresh for Cascadia Outfitters and, in the same month, places $120,000 of paid social media for them at a 12% fee. Jess creates both invoices in Maconomy from the jobs: the brand refresh as a fixed-fee job invoice, the media as a job invoice with the platform cost as a pass-through line and the fee as a separate line. Posting them updates the customer ledger and the general ledger at once. The entries look like this:

Entry	Debit	Credit	Why
Brand refresh invoice	Accounts receivable 48,000	Service revenue 48,000	Work is complete, so revenue is earned now. Cash will arrive in about 45 days.
Media invoice to client	Accounts receivable 134,400	Media payable 120,000 Media fee revenue 14,400	The agency is an agent for the media, so only the $14,400 fee is revenue (Module 7). The $120,000 is a pass-through owed to the platform.
Meta's bill arrives	Media payable 120,000	Accounts payable 120,000	Registered as a vendor invoice against the Cascadia job in Maconomy, routed to the media director for approval, then scheduled in a payment run.

Billings this month: $182,400. Revenue: $62,400. Priya will explain that gap to the owners more than once this year.

For your client conversations

"Staff accountant" almost always means someone who prepares journal entries and reconciles GL accounts. Ask which accounts they own.
When a job description says "GAAP experience required," the client wants someone who has produced accrual-basis financials, not just entered bills into QuickBooks.
A candidate who can explain a deferred revenue entry clearly is demonstrating real accrual understanding. It is a good five-minute screening question.

Key terms

Accrual: An expense recorded before it is paid, or revenue recorded before it is collected.
Reconciliation: Proving a GL balance agrees to an outside source (bank statement, subledger, vendor statement).
Deferred revenue: Cash received before the work is done. A liability until earned. Common in agencies and SaaS.
Prepaid expense: Cash paid before the benefit is received (annual insurance, software). An asset that is expensed over time.
Depreciation: Spreading the cost of a long-lived asset over its useful life.
Retained earnings: Cumulative profits kept in the business rather than distributed.

Knowledge check

A company records $50,000 of revenue in March but the client pays in May. Under accrual accounting, which month shows the revenue?

March. Revenue is recognized when earned. May shows the cash coming in and the receivable going away, but no new revenue.

An agency collects a $30,000 retainer up front for work to be done over the next three months. What account does the cash go into on the credit side?

Deferred revenue, a liability. Each month, $10,000 moves from deferred revenue to service revenue as the work is delivered.

Why might a profitable company still be short on cash?

Profit is measured on accruals. Cash may be tied up in receivables not yet collected, inventory, equipment purchases, or loan repayments, none of which reduce profit in the period but all of which consume cash.

Mark module 1 complete

Module 02 · 25 min

The accounting cycle and the month-end close

The close is the heartbeat of every accounting department. It is where the pressure lives, where staffing gaps show first, and where most of your clients' pain originates.

You will be able to

Walk through the steps of a monthly close in order
Explain what "a five-day close" means and why companies want one
Recognize the four transaction cycles that feed the close

The four cycles that feed the ledger

Accounting departments organize their day-to-day work into end-to-end process streams. Job titles often map directly onto them.

Cycle	What flows through it	Typical roles
Procure-to-pay (P2P)	Purchase requests, purchase orders, vendor invoices, approvals, payments, 1099 reporting	AP specialist, AP manager, procurement
Order-to-cash (O2C)	Quotes, contracts, invoicing, collections, cash application, credit decisions	Billing specialist, AR specialist, collections, credit analyst
Hire-to-retire	Onboarding, timekeeping, payroll, benefits, payroll tax filings	Payroll specialist, payroll manager (often shared with HR)
Record-to-report (R2R)	Journal entries, reconciliations, consolidation, financial statements, management reporting	Staff/senior accountant, accounting manager, controller

The monthly close, step by step

The close is the process of finalizing a period's books so the financial statements can be issued. Companies talk about it in business days after month-end: "Day 1" is the first working day of the new month. A typical mid-market close looks like this:

Day	Activity	Who
Before	Cut-off: stop posting to the old period. Final invoices out, final bills in, payroll posted.	AP, AR, billing, payroll
1–2	Close subledgers (AP, AR, fixed assets, inventory). Post recurring entries: depreciation, amortization of prepaids, loan interest.	Staff accountants
2–3	Record accruals for expenses incurred but not yet invoiced (contractors, utilities, bonuses, commissions). Recognize deferred revenue earned.	Staff and senior accountants
3–5	Reconcile balance sheet accounts: bank, credit cards, AR and AP aging to GL, intercompany, accrued liabilities. Investigate and clear variances.	Senior accountants; reviewed by manager
4–6	Review the draft P&L against budget and prior month. Explain unusual swings (flux analysis). Post correcting entries.	Accounting manager, controller
5–8	Consolidate entities if more than one. Eliminate intercompany balances. Translate foreign currency.	Senior/consolidations accountant
6–10	Issue the reporting package to leadership: statements, KPIs, commentary. Lock the period in the system.	Controller, FP&A, CFO

A typical mid-market close. Lighter bars are the steps that stretch a close past day five: consolidating multiple entities and assembling the reporting package. A single-entity company with clean reconciliations can lock the period around day five or six.

In Deltek Maconomy

Cut-off is enforced by periods. Each company has accounting periods that the controller opens and closes; once June is closed, nothing more posts to June without reopening it.
Closing subledgers means making sure every time sheet and expense sheet for the month is submitted and approved, every vendor invoice is approved and posted, and every draft invoice has either been sent or moved to next month.
Accruals and deferred revenue on jobs are largely handled by the revenue recognition run: Maconomy compares each job's cost or hours to its budget and posts work-in-progress and deferred revenue entries automatically. Non-job accruals such as utilities still go through a general journal.
Reconciliations use the customer and vendor ledger reports against the general ledger control accounts, plus a bank reconciliation workspace for the bank feed.
Reporting comes from Maconomy's Business Performance Management (BPM) reports and Analyzer, or from an export to Excel or Power BI.

A five-day close is a common goal and a real bragging point. Companies with a 15-day close are usually understaffed, running on spreadsheets, or dealing with a messy chart of accounts. When a controller tells you their close is slow, that is a hiring signal.

Quarter-end and year-end

Quarter-end adds more reviews and, for public companies, a 10-Q filing and external auditor review. Year-end is the heaviest: every balance sheet account gets scrutiny, physical inventory counts happen, bonus and tax accruals are finalized, and the auditors arrive (Module 5). A hard close at year-end may take three to six weeks before the books are truly final, followed by audit adjustments and then tax return preparation (Module 6).

Controls and the "SOX" conversation

Internal controls are the checks built into a process: two signatures on large payments, separation of the person who approves a vendor from the person who pays it, reviewer sign-off on every reconciliation. Public companies must document and test these under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, hence "SOX compliance." A candidate with SOX experience has worked in a documented, reviewed, audited environment, which is a meaningful qualification for public-company clients and often irrelevant for a 40-person agency.

Case file Harbor & Vale, the June close

Day	What happens
Jun 30	Jess works through Maconomy's invoice selection: every June draft invoice is either approved and posted or pushed to July. Tom imports the second Gusto payroll as a general journal. Priya chases account managers to approve their freelancer vendor invoices in Maconomy's workflow so they post in June.
1	Tom posts the recurring entries: depreciation on computers and furniture, amortization of the prepaid annual insurance, and the $1,250 monthly release of a prepaid Adobe contract.
2	Two freelance designers have not billed for about $9,400 of June work. Tom accrues it. Retainer clients were billed $310,000 on June 1 for June service, so that deferred revenue is now fully earned and moves to revenue.
3	Jess runs the job work-in-progress report in Maconomy: fixed-fee jobs by percentage complete, based on approved hours against job budgets. Priya reviews it and runs revenue recognition, which posts $38,000 of unbilled revenue across two jobs. One job is over budget; she overrides its percentage so revenue stays flat, taking the margin hit now rather than later.
3–5	Tom reconciles the two bank accounts, the Ramp card, and the customer and vendor ledgers to their general ledger control accounts. The media payable account is off by $4,800: a Meta credit note for a makegood that Jess had not yet passed on to Cascadia. Priya books the credit and a matching credit invoice to the client on the same job.
6	Priya reviews the P&L against budget in Maconomy's BPM reports. Media fee revenue is up because of Cascadia; net revenue is flat; freelance costs are 14% over budget. She writes three lines of commentary and closes the June period.
7	The owners get the package: statements, WIP schedule, cash forecast, utilization by department, all but the cash forecast pulled from Maconomy. Harbor & Vale closes in seven business days. Priya wants five, and knows late time sheets are the bottleneck: revenue recognition cannot run until the hours are in.

Notice who did what. Tom did the mechanical entries and reconciliations. Priya did the judgment calls on WIP and the review. That split is the staff-versus-controller line at every small company.

For your client conversations

Ask every accounting client: "How many days is your close, and where does it get stuck?" The answer tells you which role they actually need.
Reconciliations are the core skill of a senior accountant. Ask candidates how many balance sheet accounts they reconciled monthly and which were hardest.
Contract and temp demand spikes around year-end close (January into February) and around system implementations. Plan candidate pipelines in Q4.
"Full-cycle" in a job description (full-cycle AP, full-cycle accounting) means the person handles a process end to end rather than one step of it.

Key terms

Cut-off: The rule for which period a transaction belongs to. Getting it wrong shifts revenue or expense between months.
Flux analysis: Explaining fluctuations in account balances month over month or against budget.
Intercompany: Transactions between entities under common ownership, which must be eliminated when consolidating.
Aging: A report grouping receivables or payables by how overdue they are (current, 30, 60, 90+ days).
Period lock: Closing a period in the system so no further entries can be posted without controller approval.
Soft vs hard close: A soft close skips some steps for speed (often mid-quarter months). A hard close does everything.

Knowledge check

A contractor did $8,000 of work in June but their invoice will not arrive until July 10. What does the accounting team do at June close?

Record an accrual: debit the expense, credit accrued liabilities, for $8,000. When the invoice arrives in July, it is applied against the accrual rather than expensed again.

A client says their close takes 18 business days. What are the likely causes?

Usually some mix of understaffing, manual spreadsheet processes, too many entities without a consolidation tool, unreconciled accounts piling up, and slow information from operations (unbilled projects, missing receipts). The fix is usually a senior accountant or accounting manager plus process work.

Mark module 2 complete

Module 03 · 30 min

Inside a corporate accounting department

Who sits where, what they actually do all day, what they earn, and how the shape of the department changes as a company grows.

You will be able to

Draw the org chart of a typical finance department and place any job title on it
Distinguish accounting from finance, and controller from CFO
Recognize how department structure scales with company size

Accounting versus finance

Companies use "finance" as the umbrella. Inside it, accounting records what happened and reports it accurately (backward-looking, rules-driven, owned by the controller). Finance in the narrower sense plans what should happen: budgeting, forecasting, capital raising, treasury (forward-looking, judgment-driven, owned by the VP Finance or CFO). FP&A (Financial Planning and Analysis) sits on the finance side and is a distinct career track from accounting, usually staffed by people with modeling skills rather than CPAs.

The org chart

Chief Financial OfficerOwns the whole function. Strategy, capital, investor and board relationships, risk. In small companies the CFO role may be fractional (part-time, outsourced).

VP Finance / Director of FinanceRuns FP&A and often treasury. Budgets, forecasts, board decks, pricing analysis. Frequently the "number two."

FP&A Manager / AnalystBuilds models, variance reports, headcount plans. Heavy Excel and planning-tool users.

ControllerOwns the books. Responsible for the close, GAAP compliance, audit relationship, internal controls, and the accounting team. The single most important accounting hire in a mid-market company.

Assistant ControllerDay-to-day manager of the close and the team when the department is large enough. Common controller successor.

Accounting ManagerSupervises staff and senior accountants, reviews reconciliations and journal entries, coordinates the close calendar.

Senior AccountantOwns complex reconciliations, accruals, revenue recognition, fixed assets, and audit support. Usually 3–6 years' experience, often a CPA or candidate.

Staff AccountantJournal entries, bank reconciliations, simpler GL accounts, month-end schedules. Entry point for degreed accountants.

AP Manager / AP SpecialistVendor setup, invoice coding and approval routing, payment runs, vendor inquiries, 1099s. High-volume, deadline-driven.

AR / Billing SpecialistInvoicing, cash application, collections calls, aging review, customer disputes.

Payroll Specialist / ManagerRuns payroll cycles, handles garnishments, taxes, benefits deductions, year-end W-2s. Often reports to HR instead.

Cost AccountantManufacturing and inventory businesses. Standard costs, variances, inventory valuation.

Tax Manager / DirectorLarger companies only. Provision (ASC 740), compliance coordination with outside firm, sales tax, planning.

TreasuryCash management, banking relationships, debt, foreign exchange. Larger companies only.

Internal AuditReports to the audit committee, tests controls, investigates. Public companies and large private ones.

BookkeeperSmall-company generalist covering AP, AR, payroll and bank recs, typically without a degree requirement. Often outsourced to a CPA firm's CAS practice.

How structure changes with size

Company profile	Typical in-house team	What's outsourced	Systems
Under ~$5M revenue most small agencies, professional practices	Owner + bookkeeper, or office manager doing books	Tax, year-end, often the whole accounting function to a CPA firm or fractional controller	QuickBooks Online, Xero
$5M–$50M mid-size agencies, regional businesses	Controller, 1–3 accountants, AP/AR specialist, payroll shared with HR	Tax, audit or review, sometimes fractional CFO	QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, NetSuite; Deltek Maconomy for project-based services firms
$50M–$500M PE-backed companies, larger private firms	CFO, controller, assistant controller, 5–20 accountants, FP&A team, dedicated AP/AR, sometimes in-house tax	Audit, tax compliance, specialized consulting	NetSuite, Intacct, Dynamics 365, Deltek Maconomy (agencies, consultancies, accounting firms), close tools like FloQast
$500M+ / public	Full hierarchy: SEC reporting, technical accounting, tax department, internal audit, treasury, shared service centers	Audit (required), specialized tax, valuations	SAP, Oracle, Workday, BlackLine

What people earn

Approximate US base salary ranges. Markets vary a great deal: add 15–30% for major metros and public companies, subtract for small markets and nonprofits. Treat these as orientation, not quotes.

Role	Typical experience	Approx. base range	Common credentials
Bookkeeper	Varied, often no degree	$45k – $70k	QuickBooks ProAdvisor, sometimes none
AP / AR specialist	1–5 years	$45k – $65k	Associate degree common
Payroll specialist	2–6 years	$55k – $80k	CPP or FPC
Staff accountant	0–3 years, degree	$55k – $75k	Bachelor's; CPA candidate
Senior accountant	3–6 years	$75k – $100k	Often CPA
Accounting manager	5–10 years	$95k – $130k	CPA typical
Assistant controller	7–12 years	$115k – $155k	CPA typical
Controller	10+ years	$130k – $200k	CPA strongly preferred
FP&A analyst / manager	2–8 years	$80k – $150k	MBA, CFA sometimes; CPA less common
CFO (mid-market)	15+ years	$200k – $400k+	CPA or MBA; equity common

Case file Harbor & Vale's finance team

At $6.1M of net revenue, Harbor & Vale sits squarely in the second row of the size table above. Its finance function:

Priya Raman, controller. Eight years' experience, four of them at a regional CPA firm auditing professional services companies, then a senior accountant role at a larger agency. CPA. Owns the close, the WIP judgment calls, the bank relationship, the audit and the tax firm.
Tom Lindqvist, staff accountant. Two years out of school. General journals, reconciliations, vendor invoice registration and payment runs in Maconomy, expense reports in Ramp. Studying for the CPA exam.
Jess Moreno, billing coordinator. Came from account management. Runs the job side of Maconomy: setting up jobs and budgets, chasing and approving time sheets, building draft invoices, running the WIP report. Not an accountant, but the close cannot happen without Jess.
Office manager runs payroll in Gusto and benefits, reporting to Maya, not Priya.
Fractional CFO, one day a month: cash forecast, pricing discussions, the owners' compensation planning, and the line of credit renewal.

The gap: there is no senior accountant. Priya does senior-level reconciliations herself, which is why the close is seven days and why audit prep in December eats her month. When Harbor & Vale passes about $8M in net revenue, the first hire will be a senior accountant, and it will probably come from a CPA firm's audit practice. That hire is the subject of Module 10's case file.

For your client conversations

The controller is your key relationship at most mid-market clients. They feel the staffing pain first and usually own the hiring decision for anyone below them.
Titles are inflated at small companies and deflated at large ones. A "controller" at a 20-person agency may be doing staff accountant work; a "senior accountant" at a Fortune 500 may manage a process worth millions. Ask about scope, not title.
Public accounting alumni are the preferred pipeline for senior accountant and above. "Big 4 audit senior looking to go to industry" is a phrase you will hear constantly; it means a 3–5 year auditor leaving a CPA firm for a corporate role, typically at senior accountant or accounting manager level.
Expect AP, AR and payroll roles to be filled by experience rather than credentials. Expect GL roles to require a degree and increasingly a CPA.

Knowledge check

A client with $30M revenue has a CFO, a bookkeeper, and nobody in between. What is missing and what would you recommend?

A controller. The CFO is likely doing month-end work they should not be doing, and the bookkeeper is likely out of depth on accruals and GAAP. A controller (or accounting manager, if budget is tight) is the standard hire at this size.

What is the difference between what a controller and an FP&A manager do?

The controller reports what happened accurately (close, GAAP, audit, controls). The FP&A manager models what will happen (budgets, forecasts, scenarios). Different skill sets, different candidate pools, different systems.

Mark module 3 complete

Module 04 · 30 min

How a CPA firm works

A CPA firm is a professional services business that sells hours. Understanding its economics explains almost everything about how it hires, when it hires, and why its people leave.

You will be able to

Name the main service lines and describe what each sells
Explain the partner-to-staff pyramid and the metrics partners live by
Describe busy season and the firm tiers from Big 4 to local

Service lines

Service line	What it sells	Who buys it	Rhythm
Audit & Assurance	An independent opinion on whether financial statements are fairly presented. Also reviews, compilations, employee benefit plan audits, SOC reports.	Companies with lenders, investors, regulators, or grant funders requiring it. All public companies.	Planning in fall, fieldwork Jan–Mar for calendar year-ends, benefit plans in summer
Tax	Return preparation (compliance), planning, representation before the IRS, state and local tax, international, estate and trust.	Everyone. Business entities and their owners, individuals, trusts, nonprofits.	Peaks Feb–Apr 15 and Sep–Oct 15
Advisory / Consulting	Transaction support (due diligence, quality of earnings), valuation, forensic accounting, risk and controls, technology implementation, CFO advisory.	Companies buying or selling, PE firms, litigants, growing companies.	Project-based, less seasonal
Client Accounting Services (CAS) also "outsourced accounting," "CAAS"	Doing the client's bookkeeping, payroll, bill pay, month-end close and management reporting for them. Fastest-growing line at most firms.	Small and mid-size businesses that do not want an in-house team.	Monthly, steady, recurring revenue
Wealth management	Investment advice and financial planning, usually through an affiliated registered investment advisor.	Individual tax clients and business owners.	Steady

Small firms may be tax-only or tax-plus-CAS. Mid-size firms have all of the above. The largest firms are increasingly consulting businesses with an audit practice attached.

The pyramid

Firms are structured as a pyramid because the economics depend on leverage: a partner's hours are limited, so profit comes from billing many junior hours under one partner's signature.

Partner / ShareholderOwns equity in the firm, signs reports and returns, sells work, manages client relationships. 12–15+ years. Compensation is a share of profits, commonly $300k to well over $1M.

Principal / DirectorPartner-level responsibility without equity, or a non-CPA leader in advisory or CAS. Also a "parking" title for those not on the equity track.

Senior ManagerRuns a book of clients, manages several engagements at once, develops business. 8–12 years. Usually the last stop before partner or exit.

ManagerReviews the work of seniors and staff, manages budgets and deadlines, main client contact for day-to-day. 5–8 years, CPA required.

Senior (Senior Associate, In-Charge)Leads fieldwork on an engagement, supervises staff, prepares complex returns or audit areas. 3–5 years. The most overworked and most poached level.

Staff / AssociatePrepares returns, performs audit testing, documents workpapers. 0–3 years. Studying for the CPA exam.

InternWinter (busy season) and summer programs. Primary pipeline for staff hires; offers often made a year ahead.

The metrics partners live by

Chargeable hours: Hours billed to clients. Annual targets run roughly 1,400–1,600 for staff at smaller firms and 1,800–2,200+ at large firms. Everything else (training, admin, business development) is non-chargeable.
Utilization: Chargeable hours divided by total hours available. 60–75% is typical; higher for staff, lower for partners.
Realization: Fees actually collected divided by standard billing rates times hours worked. If a job is budgeted at $20,000 but takes $30,000 of hours, realization is 67%. Write-downs are the constant tension between partners and staff.
Billing rate: Hourly rate charged per person. Roughly $150–$250 for staff, $250–$400 for managers, $400–$800+ for partners, more at large firms.
WIP: Work in progress: hours recorded but not yet billed. Firms carry large WIP balances during busy season and bill them out afterward.
Leverage: Ratio of staff to partners. Higher leverage means more profit per partner but more supervision risk.
Book of business: The revenue a partner or manager is personally responsible for. Lateral partner hires are valued by the book they bring.

In Deltek Maconomy

CPA and consulting firms run these metrics from the same kind of system their agency clients use. In Maconomy each client engagement is a job; staff record chargeable and non-chargeable hours on time sheets against those jobs; and the job's work-in-progress balance is the firm's WIP. Utilization comes from time sheets versus available hours, realization from invoiced fees versus time at standard rates on the job, and a partner's book of business from the jobs where they are the responsible partner. Larger firms often use Maconomy as their practice management system for exactly this reason; smaller firms use tax-suite practice modules such as CCH Axcess Practice.

Busy season

The defining feature of firm life. For a tax or audit professional at a firm serving calendar-year clients, mid-January through April 15 means 55–70+ hour weeks, Saturdays in the office, and no vacation. A second, smaller busy season runs from late August through the October 15 extension deadline. Firms that serve fiscal-year clients, nonprofits (990s due May 15) and employee benefit plans (audits due in the summer) spread the load somewhat.

Busy season drives the hiring calendar. Firms lock in seasonal preparers and contract auditors in October through December. Voluntary turnover peaks in April and May, right after busy season and after bonuses are paid. That is when firms backfill, and when "leaving public" candidates flood the corporate market.

Firm tiers

Tier	Examples	Character
Big 4	Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG	Global; audit the vast majority of large public companies; huge consulting arms; highly structured; brand carries weight on a résumé for life.
National / Top 25	RSM, Grant Thornton, BDO, Baker Tilly, CLA, Forvis Mazars, Crowe, Moss Adams, CBIZ, Marcum, Withum, EisnerAmper, Cherry Bekaert, Armanino	Serve mid-market and PE portfolio companies; many have taken private equity investment since 2021 and are consolidating rapidly through mergers.
Regional	Firms of 100–1,000 people covering a state or several	Strong local business relationships; mix of tax, audit, CAS; often the acquisition targets of the tier above.
Local	2–50 people	Tax and bookkeeping for small businesses and individuals; owner-operated; succession is a chronic issue as founders age out.

Rules that shape the business

Independence. An auditor cannot own stock in, or do certain other work for, an audit client. It is why firms have compliance teams and why an audit partner cannot also be the client's outsourced controller.
Licensing. A CPA license requires 150 semester hours of education (some states now allow 120 with extra experience), passing the four-part CPA exam, and one to two years of supervised experience. Only a licensed CPA can sign an audit opinion. Firms are licensed by state boards of accountancy.
PCAOB. Firms that audit public companies register with and are inspected by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Other firms undergo AICPA peer review every three years.
Private equity ownership. Since 2021, PE firms have bought stakes in dozens of top-100 firms using an "alternative practice structure" that separates the attest (audit) business from the non-attest business. This has accelerated mergers, changed partner compensation, and increased pressure to grow advisory and CAS revenue.

Context: the talent pipeline problem

The number of people sitting for the CPA exam has fallen sharply over the past decade, and accounting degree enrollments dropped through the early 2020s. Firms are responding with offshore teams (India and the Philippines especially), automation, higher starting salaries, and relaxed 150-hour requirements. For a staffing business, this means chronic shortages at the senior and manager level and strong demand for contract help every busy season.

Case file Whitfield & Grant CPAs

Harbor & Vale's firm is a 140-person regional practice with 14 partners, offices in two cities, and revenue split roughly 45% tax, 30% audit, 15% CAS and 10% advisory. It is in the "regional" tier and has been approached twice by PE-backed national firms about a merger. The engagement team for Harbor & Vale:

Person	Role on the account	Billing rate	Hours / yr
Audit partner	Signs the opinion, meets the owners twice a year	$525	14
Audit manager	Plans the audit, reviews all workpapers, handles Priya's questions	$310	48
Audit senior	Runs fieldwork, tests revenue and WIP, supervises staff	$215	110
Audit staff (two)	Cash, AP, payroll, fixed assets testing; confirmations	$160	140
Tax partner	Reviews and signs the 1120-S and owner returns; fall planning meeting	$495	9
Tax senior	Prepares the 1120-S, K-1s and three 1040s	$205	34

The audit is a fixed fee of $42,000. Whitfield & Grant runs its own time, WIP and billing in Deltek Maconomy, and the job profitability report for the Harbor & Vale audit job shows $53,800 of standard-rate time last year, a realization of 78%, because Harbor & Vale's WIP schedule arrived late and needed rework. The manager has told Priya, politely, that the fee goes up if that happens again. The tax work is $6,500 for the 1120-S and $1,800 per owner return. Both services from one firm is allowed here: tax compliance is a permitted service for a private-company audit client, though the firm cannot also act as Harbor & Vale's outsourced controller.

For your client conversations

Partners think in realization and chargeable hours. Frame a contract placement in those terms: "a seasonal preparer at $X per hour billed at $Y" is a conversation they can approve instantly.
Ask which service lines are growing. Almost every firm will say CAS and advisory; that is where the non-CPA hiring happens (bookkeepers, staff accountants, client accounting managers).
Firm seniors and managers are your best source of corporate placements. They leave in April–June, and they know exactly what they want: a controller track, no busy season, equity if possible.
For remote or offshore-averse firms, US-based contract preparers with UltraTax or CCH experience are gold from October to April.

Knowledge check

A tax partner says their realization on small business returns is 62%. What does that mean and why does it matter for hiring?

They are collecting 62 cents of every dollar of standard-rate time spent. They are writing off 38% of the work, probably because junior staff take too long or fees are too low. They may want more experienced preparers who work faster, or CAS staff to clean up client books before tax season.

Why can't a firm's audit partner also serve as the outsourced controller for the same client?

Independence rules. An auditor cannot audit their own work or act as management for the client. Firms separate attest and non-attest services for this reason.

When is the best time to approach an audit senior about a corporate role?

Late March through May. Busy season is ending, bonuses and promotions are announced, and people decide whether to stay for another cycle. They will not respond in February.

Mark module 4 complete

Module 05 · 20 min

The audit process

An audit is a structured, months-long project with a predictable sequence. Knowing the sequence lets you understand what an "audit senior" does in October versus February, and what a controller means by "audit prep."

You will be able to

Distinguish an audit from a review and a compilation
Describe the phases of a financial statement audit
Read the four opinion types

Three levels of assurance

Engagement	Assurance	What the CPA does	Who needs it	Relative cost
Compilation	None	Puts management's numbers into statement format. No testing.	Small companies whose bank wants CPA-formatted statements	Low
Review	Limited	Analytical procedures and inquiries. Concludes nothing material appears wrong.	Mid-size private companies with lenders	Medium
Audit	Reasonable	Tests transactions and balances, confirms with third parties, evaluates controls, issues an opinion.	Public companies, companies with significant debt or investors, nonprofits over federal funding thresholds, benefit plans over 100 participants	High

Phases of an audit

For a company with a December 31 year-end, a typical timeline:

When	Phase	What happens
Sep–Oct	Planning & risk assessment	Engagement letter signed. Auditors learn the business, set materiality (the dollar threshold below which errors don't matter), identify risky areas (revenue, inventory, estimates), and plan the approach.
Oct–Dec	Interim fieldwork	Walkthroughs of key processes. Testing of internal controls. Testing of transactions through, say, September so less remains for year-end. Sending the client a PBC list ("prepared by client": the schedules and documents the client must deliver).
Dec 31	Year-end	Physical inventory observation, cash counts, cut-off testing where relevant.
Jan–Mar	Year-end fieldwork	Substantive testing of balances: bank confirmations, receivable confirmations, vouching invoices, recalculating accruals, testing revenue recognition, reviewing legal letters and subsequent events. Documented in workpapers. Seniors' work is reviewed by managers, who leave review notes to clear.
Mar–Apr	Wrap-up & reporting	Proposed audit adjustments discussed with the controller. Financial statements and footnotes drafted. Partner review. Management representation letter signed. Opinion issued. Management letter delivered with control weaknesses noted.

Public companies run on compressed deadlines: the annual 10-K is due 60, 75 or 90 days after year-end depending on company size, and quarterly 10-Qs get an auditor review within 40–45 days.

The four opinions

Unmodified (clean): Statements are fairly presented in all material respects. The normal outcome.
Qualified: Fairly presented "except for" a specific issue.
Adverse: Statements are materially misstated. Rare and serious.
Disclaimer: Auditor could not obtain enough evidence to form an opinion.

A separate paragraph may flag going concern doubt (the company may not survive the next 12 months) or, for public companies, material weaknesses in internal control.

Other assurance work you will hear about

SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports. Reports on the controls of a service provider (payroll processor, SaaS company, data center). SOC 2 has become a sales requirement for software companies; a growing practice area.
Employee benefit plan audits. Required for 401(k) plans with 100+ participants. Due with the Form 5500 by July 31 (October 15 extended). A summer busy season for firms that do many of them.
Single audits. Required for organizations spending over $1M in federal awards (nonprofits, governments, universities). Specialized compliance testing.
Agreed-upon procedures. Custom testing for a specific purpose, such as royalty compliance or a media audit of an agency's billings.

Case file The Harbor & Vale audit

When	What happens
Oct 8	Planning call. The manager sets materiality at about $60,000 (roughly 1% of net revenue) and names the significant risks: revenue recognition on fixed-fee projects, gross-versus-net on media, and completeness of freelancer accruals.
Nov 12–14	Interim fieldwork on site. The senior walks through the order-to-cash process with Jess (job budget to approved time sheet to draft invoice to posted invoice in Maconomy) and the procure-to-pay process with Tom (vendor invoice registration, approval workflow, payment run). Tests 25 invoices from January through September against signed estimates and the Maconomy job budgets.
Dec 2	The PBC list arrives in Suralink: 46 items, including the year-end WIP schedule by job exported from Maconomy, the deferred revenue roll-forward, the customer aging with collectibility notes, all bank statements, the fixed asset register, the Gusto year-end payroll register, freelancer 1099 detail and every contract over $50,000.
Dec 31	Year-end. No inventory to count. Priya makes sure every December invoice is out and every freelancer bill is in.
Jan 5–28	Priya and Tom close December and build the PBC items alongside it. This is the month Priya works most weekends.
Feb 3–14	Year-end fieldwork. Bank confirmations return. The staff select 40 receivables for confirmation and vouch 60 disbursements. The senior recalculates percentage-of-completion on all 18 open fixed-fee jobs from Maconomy's approved hours and job budgets, and finds one where the budget revision Jess entered was too optimistic: revenue is overstated by about $22,000. Below materiality alone, but the manager wants it booked and Priya agrees.
Mar 4	The manager sends 31 review notes to the senior. All cleared by March 11. Two questions for Priya about a client whose $86,000 balance is 95 days past due; she provides the payment plan email.
Mar 20	Unmodified opinion issued. The management letter notes one control recommendation: project estimates are updated by producers without a second review, which is how the $22,000 error happened. The bank receives the audited statements a week before the covenant deadline.

Total audit hours: about 310. The senior spent roughly a third of the fieldwork on revenue and WIP, which is exactly why an audit senior with agency or professional-services clients would be a strong candidate for Priya's future senior accountant role.

For your client conversations

"Audit prep" at a corporate client means building the PBC list: schedules, reconciliations, contracts, support. It is a common reason to bring in a contract senior accountant in December and January.
Auditors in their third busy season have strong reconciliation, documentation and skepticism skills but usually little hands-on experience with an ERP or with running a close. Set corporate client expectations accordingly: they ramp fast, but they ramp.
An auditor's industry experience matters. An audit senior who has spent three years on manufacturing clients understands inventory; one who has done nonprofits understands grants and 990s.
Firms hire contract auditors ("loan staff," "project professionals") for January–April at senior level. The candidates are usually ex-public accountants who prefer seasonal work.

Knowledge check

A $15M private company's bank wants "reviewed financial statements." Does the company need an audit?

No. A review is a lower level of assurance than an audit, cheaper and faster. Many lenders accept it for smaller borrowers. The company would move to an audit if the loan covenant required it or if it took outside investment.

What is a PBC list and who is responsible for it?

"Prepared by client": the auditors' list of schedules, reconciliations and documents the client must provide. The controller and their team own it. A long PBC list with a slow team is exactly the moment a contract senior accountant gets hired.

Mark module 5 complete

Module 06 · 25 min

The tax process

Tax is the largest service line at most firms and the source of the calendar everyone else works around. This module covers the entity types, the deadlines, and the workflow from client organizer to e-filed return.

You will be able to

Match each business entity type to its return and due date
Describe the tax preparation workflow inside a firm
Distinguish compliance from planning, and corporate tax provision from tax return work

Entities, forms and deadlines

Which form a business files depends on its legal and tax structure. Most small businesses, including most agencies and CPA firms themselves, are pass-through entities: the business pays no income tax, and profits flow to the owners' personal returns on a Schedule K-1.

Taxpayer	Form	Original due date	Extended	Notes
Partnership / multi-member LLC	1065	Mar 15	Sep 15	Pass-through. Issues K-1s to partners, who need them before filing their own returns.
S corporation	1120-S	Mar 15	Sep 15	Pass-through. Very common for small professional firms and agencies. Owner must take a "reasonable salary."
C corporation	1120	Apr 15	Oct 15	Pays its own tax at a flat 21% federal rate. Venture-backed and large companies.
Individual	1040	Apr 15	Oct 15	Owners of pass-throughs file here. Schedule C for sole proprietors and single-member LLCs.
Trust / estate	1041	Apr 15	Sep 30	Estate and trust practices are a specialty.
Nonprofit	990	May 15	Nov 15	For calendar-year organizations. Information return, publicly available.
Employer payroll	941 / W-2 / 1099	Quarterly / Jan 31	—	W-2s and 1099-NECs to recipients and IRS by January 31. A hard deadline that lands during year-end close.
Estimated payments	1040-ES / 1120-W	Apr 15, Jun 15, Sep 15, Jan 15	—	Quarterly prepayments for anyone without enough withholding.

Deadlines falling on a weekend or holiday move to the next business day. Fiscal-year companies have different dates. Add state returns, which mostly follow federal deadlines but not always, and sales tax filings, which can be monthly.

Inside the firm: the preparation workflow

Engagement and organizer. In December and January the firm sends engagement letters and a tax organizer (a questionnaire plus last year's data) to each client. Increasingly done through a client portal.
Document gathering. The slowest step. Admin staff and preparers chase W-2s, 1099s, K-1s, brokerage statements, and for businesses, the closed books. Business returns cannot start until the client's year-end close is done, which is why CAS teams and tax teams are tightly linked.
Preparation. A staff or senior preparer enters data into tax software, reconciles book income to taxable income for businesses, and prepares workpapers supporting every number. Many firms now route this to offshore teams or use scanning and auto-population tools.
Review. A manager or senior reviews the return against the workpapers, leaves review notes, and the preparer clears them. Complex returns get a second (partner) review.
Delivery and signature. The client receives the return and signs Form 8879 authorizing e-filing. If the client is slow, the firm files an extension to move the deadline. Extensions do not extend the time to pay; the firm estimates the payment due.
E-file and follow-up. Returns transmitted, acknowledgments tracked, notices from the IRS or states handled over the following months.

Firms track this on a due date list or in practice management software (Module 8). A tax manager's spring is spent watching that list.

Compliance versus planning

Compliance is preparing and filing what is required. Planning is structuring things in advance to reduce tax legally: entity choice, retirement plan contributions, timing of income and deductions, state residency, R&D credits, cost segregation studies. Planning is higher-margin and happens mostly in the fall (Q4 planning meetings) and is what firms mean when they say they want to be "advisors, not preparers."

Tax inside a corporation

Larger companies have their own tax department, and its work looks different from a firm's:

Tax provision (ASC 740). Calculating the income tax expense that appears on the GAAP income statement each quarter and year, including deferred taxes. Technically demanding and audited. A "tax provision" specialist is a distinct hire.
Compliance coordination. Preparing or overseeing the corporate return, often with an outside firm doing the actual filing.
Indirect tax. Sales and use tax, property tax, VAT abroad. Sales tax compliance became far more complex after the 2018 Wayfair decision let states tax remote sellers.
Payroll tax is usually handled by the payroll team or provider, not the tax department.

Case file The 1120-S and three K-1s

Harbor & Vale is an S corporation, so it files Form 1120-S and pays no federal income tax itself. Its profit flows to Maya, Dev and Lena in proportion to their ownership, and they pay the tax on their personal returns. Here is how the year plays out:

Mid-December. The tax partner holds a planning meeting. Net income is tracking to about $740,000. The owners pre-fund their retirement plan contributions and buy the new edit suite before year-end to take bonus depreciation. Q4 estimated payments are confirmed.
March 12. The audit is not done, so final numbers do not exist. Whitfield & Grant files an extension for the 1120-S. This happens every year and surprises no one.
Late March. Audit adjustments are booked, the audited trial balance goes to the tax senior. She builds the book-to-tax reconciliation: half of meals disallowed, GAAP depreciation replaced with tax depreciation, the accrued bonus deducted only because it will be paid within two and a half months of year-end, and the owners' health insurance handled as S-corp shareholder compensation.
April 14. Because the K-1s are not ready, all three owners extend their 1040s and make estimated payments with the extensions based on the December projection.
April 28. Tax partner reviews, four review notes cleared, return signed via Form 8879, e-filed. K-1s delivered to the owners through the portal. Maya's K-1 shows $370,000 of ordinary business income on top of her $190,000 W-2 salary from the agency (S corps must pay owner-employees a reasonable salary).
May–June. The owners' 1040s are finished and filed well ahead of the October 15 extended deadline. State returns follow the same pattern.

Fee for the 1120-S: $6,500 at about 32 hours, a realization near 100% because Priya's audited books were clean. The tax senior's spring is 90 clients like this one, layered on top of each other.

For your client conversations

Firms hire seasonal tax preparers and reviewers from October through December for January start. Hourly, 10–16 weeks, often remote. Candidates are retirees, former firm staff, and EAs. Software experience (UltraTax, CCH Axcess, Lacerte) is the first filter.
"Tax senior" at a firm and "tax accountant" at a corporation are different jobs. The first prepares many returns for many clients; the second works on the provision and one company's compliance. Candidates rarely move well between them without a ramp.
An Enrolled Agent (EA) is licensed by the IRS to represent taxpayers and is a full-fledged tax professional without being a CPA. Many firms hire EAs for individual and small business tax work.
Do not schedule intake calls with tax partners between March 1 and April 15 or the last two weeks before September 15 and October 15. They will not take them, and asking signals you do not know the business.

Knowledge check

An agency is an S corporation with three owners. When is its return due and what do the owners need from it?

Form 1120-S is due March 15 (September 15 extended). Each owner receives a Schedule K-1 showing their share of income, which they need to file their own 1040 by April 15. If the 1120-S is extended, the owners almost certainly extend too.

Why can't a firm start a business client's tax return in early January?

The client's books for the year are not closed yet. Business returns depend on final financial statements, so tax work follows the client's year-end close, typically late January into February. Firms with CAS practices control this timing better because they do the close themselves.

What does "extended" mean for a taxpayer's payment?

Nothing. An extension gives more time to file the return, not to pay the tax. The firm estimates the liability and the client pays it by the original due date to avoid penalties and interest.

Mark module 6 complete

Module 07 · 25 min

Agency and marketing firm accounting

Agencies sell time and buy media on their clients' behalf. Both facts make their accounting distinctive, and both create hiring needs that a generalist accountant may not be ready for.

You will be able to

Explain how an agency recognizes revenue on retainers, projects and media
Describe the gross-versus-net question and why it matters
Name the agency-specific roles and metrics

Three kinds of agency revenue

Revenue type	How it's billed	How it's recognized	Accounting wrinkle
Retainer	Fixed monthly fee for an agreed scope	Ratably over the month as service is delivered	Billed in advance, so cash sits in deferred revenue until earned. Scope creep quietly destroys margin.
Project / fixed fee	Milestones or on completion	Over time based on percentage complete (hours incurred to total estimated hours) or at milestones, per ASC 606	Requires good time tracking and estimates. Creates unbilled revenue (WIP) when work runs ahead of billing, or deferred revenue when billing runs ahead of work.
Time and materials	Hours at agreed rates, plus expenses	As hours are worked	Simplest, but clients dislike open-ended bills. Unbilled time at month-end must be accrued.
Media and pass-through	Client is billed for ad spend, printing, production, freelancers, often plus a commission or markup	See gross vs. net below	The dollars are large relative to fees and the agency often pays vendors before the client pays the agency.

Gross versus net: the question every agency accountant must answer

Suppose an agency places $1,000,000 of digital ads for a client and charges a 10% fee. Does the agency have $1,100,000 of revenue and $1,000,000 of cost, or $100,000 of revenue?

Under ASC 606, the answer depends on whether the agency is the principal (controls the service before it is transferred, takes inventory or pricing risk) or the agent (arranges for another party to provide it). Most media buying is agent-like, so revenue is reported net, at $100,000. Production work the agency controls and marks up may be gross.

This matters more than it sounds. Gross reporting makes an agency look ten times larger. Buyers, lenders and auditors care intensely. Many agencies track "billings" (gross) for bragging and "revenue" (net) for the financial statements, and a good agency controller keeps the two straight.

The cash-flow squeeze

Media vendors (Google, Meta, TV networks, printers) want payment on 30-day terms or by credit card up front. Clients pay agencies in 45 to 90 days. The agency floats the difference, which for a media-heavy shop can exceed its entire annual fee income. Agencies manage this with:

Sequential liability clauses: the agency is liable to the vendor only once the client has paid.
Pre-billing media to clients a month ahead of the spend.
Credit lines and careful aging management. Collections is a senior job at an agency, not a clerical one.

Metrics the agency leadership watches

Utilization: Billable hours divided by available hours per person. Agencies target 65–80% for delivery staff.
Realization / effective rate: Revenue actually earned divided by hours worked, compared to the target rate. Reveals scope creep.
Revenue per employee: Net revenue divided by headcount. Healthy agencies run roughly $150k–$250k+.
Agency gross income (AGI): Net revenue after pass-through costs. The number industry benchmarks use for margins and valuations.
Project margin: Fee minus direct labor cost (at loaded rates) minus direct expenses. Requires job costing.
Client concentration: Share of revenue from the largest client. Above 25–30% makes lenders and buyers nervous.

Agency accounting roles

Role	What makes it agency-specific
Agency controller / finance director	Revenue recognition on projects, WIP and deferred revenue schedules, media cash management, job costing, pitching agency KPIs to owners who are creatives, not finance people.
Billing coordinator / project accountant	Turns job estimates and timesheets into client invoices, tracks change orders, reconciles job costs. Works closely with account managers and producers.
Media billing / media accounting	Reconciles media plans to vendor invoices to client billings. Large agencies have whole teams. Understands insertion orders, makegoods, and platform invoices.
Freelancer / vendor payables	High volume of independent contractors means heavy 1099 work and contractor classification risk.
Resource / traffic manager	Not an accountant, but their staffing data drives utilization and revenue forecasts. Finance depends on them.

Systems

Agencies have two ways to run their books. Small shops pair a project management and job costing tool (Workamajig, Productive, Kantata, Scoro, Harvest) with a general ledger such as QuickBooks, and live with the sync between them. Larger agencies and networks run a single project-based ERP where jobs, time, billing and the ledger are one system. Deltek Maconomy is the standard example: it is used by agency holding companies and large independents, and Deltek also sells WorkBook for agency traffic and resourcing. Media agencies may add Mediaocean or platform-native billing for the media side.

In Deltek Maconomy

Retainers are set up as jobs with a monthly invoice plan. The invoice posts to deferred revenue and revenue recognition releases it as the month's hours are approved.
Fixed-fee projects carry a job budget in hours and cost. Percentage complete is approved hours against budget, and the revenue recognition run posts unbilled revenue or deferred revenue on each job at month-end.
Pass-through media and production are vendor invoices registered against the client's job and re-invoiced from the job. Because both sides sit on the same job, the gross billings and the net fee are visible on one job report, which is how a controller keeps billings and revenue straight.
Pre-billing media uses an invoice on account: an advance invoice to the client that is later matched against the actual media invoices on the job.
Utilization and project margin come straight from time sheets and job cost, without a separate job costing tool.

Case file Harbor & Vale by the numbers

Measure	Value	Reading
Billings (gross)	$9,200,000	What the owners quote at conferences.
Pass-through media and production	($3,100,000)	Reported net; never touches revenue.
Net revenue / AGI	$6,100,000	The number the bank, the auditors and any buyer care about.
Revenue mix	55% retainer · 33% project · 12% media fees	Retainers give stability; projects drive the WIP work; media fees drive the cash squeeze.
Revenue per employee	$152,500	On the low side of healthy. The fractional CFO wants $175,000 through pricing, not headcount cuts.
Utilization, delivery staff	68%	Acceptable. Below 65% the owners start asking about layoffs.
Client concentration	18% (Cascadia)	Fine today; the bank asked about it at renewal.
Monthly media spend managed	~$260,000	Platforms bill on 30-day terms or card. Clients pay in 55 days on average.
Media float at any time	~$450,000	Money Harbor & Vale has paid out but not yet collected. Larger than a quarter's profit.

The float is why the $1.5M line of credit exists, why the bank requires an audit, and therefore why Whitfield & Grant is in the picture at all. Priya added sequential liability language to new media contracts this year and moved Cascadia to pre-billing media one month ahead using invoices on account in Maconomy, which cut the float from about $600,000. Every module in this course connects back to that cash-flow fact.

For your client conversations

Agency principals are usually creatives or account people. They know they have a finance problem when cash gets tight, not when the books are wrong. Lead with cash flow and project margin, not GAAP.
A generalist senior accountant can learn agency accounting, but ask candidates directly about WIP, deferred revenue, percentage-of-completion and pass-through billing. Prior agency, architecture, law firm, or consulting experience transfers well because all are project-based services.
Holding-company agencies (WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, IPG, Dentsu, Havas) run shared service centers and have more corporate-style roles. Independents are where the controller and finance director searches happen.
Agency finance teams are small, so one departure is a crisis. Fractional and interim controllers are a natural offering.

Knowledge check

An agency bills a client $200,000 for a campaign: $180,000 of media the agency passes through and $20,000 of fee. What is the agency's revenue under ASC 606, most likely?

$20,000, reported net, because the agency is acting as an agent for the media. Billings are $200,000; revenue is $20,000. If the agency had bought the inventory at its own risk and resold it, a gross presentation might be supportable.

A fixed-fee $60,000 project is estimated at 400 hours. At month-end 300 hours are done and the agency has billed $30,000. What appears on the balance sheet?

Revenue earned is 75% of $60,000, or $45,000. Only $30,000 has been billed, so $15,000 sits in unbilled revenue (a receivable-like asset, often called WIP). If the estimate is wrong, revenue is wrong, which is why estimates get reviewed monthly.

Mark module 7 complete

Module 08 · 20 min

The technology stack

Software experience is the first filter in most accounting job descriptions. This module maps the tools by category and by company size so you can decode a requirement and qualify a candidate.

You will be able to

Place the common general ledger systems on a size spectrum
Recognize the tools used for AP, expenses, payroll, close, tax, and audit
Judge how transferable one system's experience is to another

General ledger and ERP systems

System	Typical user	Notes
QuickBooks Online / Desktop	Under ~$20M revenue; most small agencies and most CAS clients	The default small-business ledger. Desktop is being retired in favor of Online. Almost every bookkeeper knows it.
Xero	Small business, strong outside the US	QuickBooks competitor. Popular with cloud-first firms.
Sage Intacct	$10M–$300M; nonprofits, professional services, SaaS	Multi-entity, dimensional reporting, strong CAS-firm adoption. AICPA-endorsed.
Oracle NetSuite	$20M–$1B; growth companies, PE-backed, e-commerce	The dominant mid-market ERP. NetSuite experience commands a premium.
Deltek Maconomy	Project-based professional services: agencies and agency networks, management and IT consultancies, accounting and advisory firms, research organizations. Roughly 50 to several thousand users.	The example ERP in this course. Jobs, time and expense, billing, revenue recognition, general ledger, payables, receivables, multi-company and multi-currency in one system, with resource planning and BPM reporting on top. Deltek's sister products serve other project industries: Vantagepoint and Ajera for architecture and engineering, Costpoint for government contractors, WorkBook for agency operations.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central / Finance	Mid-market, Microsoft-centric companies, distribution	Successor to Dynamics GP and NAV; large installed base.
Sage 100 / 300, Acumatica, Epicor	Mid-market manufacturing and distribution	Common in older industrial companies.
SAP S/4HANA, Oracle Fusion Cloud, Workday Financials	Large enterprise and public companies	Multi-year implementations; experience is module-specific.

Transferability: QuickBooks to Intacct or NetSuite is a step up in complexity but very learnable for a solid accountant. Between NetSuite and Intacct is easy. Maconomy is learnable for anyone who already understands job costing and WIP; the hard part is the project accounting, not the software, so agency or professional-services experience matters more than prior Maconomy screens. SAP and Oracle are their own worlds and clients hiring for them usually insist on prior experience.

In Deltek Maconomy

A firm on Maconomy typically needs fewer add-ons than the table below suggests. Time and expense entry (including the Maconomy mobile app), vendor invoice approval workflows, customer invoicing and revenue recognition are built in, so tools like Harvest, BILL or a separate billing system are usually unnecessary. What Maconomy customers still add: a payroll provider (US payroll is imported as a journal), corporate cards and expense capture, a planning tool for budgets, and often Power BI on top of Maconomy's own BPM reports.

Around the ledger

Category	Common tools	Why it matters
AP automation & bill pay	BILL (Bill.com), Tipalti, Stampli, AvidXchange, Ramp, Airbase	Invoice capture, approval routing, payments. Standard at CAS firms and mid-market.
Expense & corporate cards	Expensify, Ramp, Brex, SAP Concur, Navan	Ramp and Brex bundle cards with spend management and have spread fast.
Payroll & HR	ADP, Paychex, Gusto, Paylocity, Rippling, Paycom, Workday, UKG	Gusto and Rippling for small companies; ADP and Paylocity mid-market; Workday and UKG enterprise.
Close management	FloQast, BlackLine, Numeric	Checklists, reconciliation tracking and sign-offs. FloQast for mid-market, BlackLine for enterprise. A résumé with either signals a structured close environment.
FP&A / planning	Workday Adaptive Planning, Planful, Vena, Anaplan, Cube, Mosaic	Budgeting and forecasting. Still Excel at most companies under $100M.
Billing & revenue recognition	Chargebee, Maxio (SaaSOptics), Zuora, Stripe Billing	Subscription businesses. ASC 606 automation.
Reporting & analytics	Excel, Power BI, Tableau, Fathom, Jirav	Excel is not optional. Pivot tables, XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, and increasingly Power Query are the baseline for GL roles.

Inside the CPA firm

Category	Common tools	Notes
Tax preparation	CCH Axcess Tax, CCH ProSystem fx, Thomson Reuters UltraTax CS, GoSystem Tax RS, Intuit Lacerte, Intuit ProConnect, Drake	CCH and UltraTax dominate mid-size and larger firms; Lacerte and Drake at smaller firms; GoSystem at the largest. Switching costs are real, so firms hire for their specific software during busy season.
Corporate tax (in-house)	ONESOURCE, Corptax, Longview Tax	Provision and compliance for large companies.
Audit & engagement	CaseWare, CCH Engagement / ProSystem fx Engagement, Thomson Reuters AdvanceFlow, Suralink, DataSnipper, MindBridge, Inflo	Workpaper binders (CaseWare, Engagement), client document requests (Suralink), automated tie-outs and analytics (DataSnipper, MindBridge).
Practice management	Deltek Maconomy, CCH Axcess Practice, Thomson Reuters Practice CS, Karbon, Canopy, TaxDome, Star, Intapp	Time entry, billing, WIP, due date tracking, workflow. Maconomy serves as the practice management and finance system at larger accounting and advisory firms; Karbon, Canopy and TaxDome are the cloud-native tools popular at growing smaller firms.
Research	Checkpoint, CCH AnswerConnect, Bloomberg Tax, BNA	Tax and accounting research databases.
CAS delivery	QuickBooks Online Accountant, Xero, Intacct, BILL, Gusto, Keeper, Uncat	CAS teams standardize on one stack and want hires who already know it.

Case file Two stacks, one client, one ERP

Harbor & Vale uses	For	Whitfield & Grant uses	For
Deltek Maconomy	Jobs and budgets, time sheets, draft and posted invoices, invoices on account for media, vendor invoices and approvals, payment runs, revenue recognition, general ledger, periods, BPM reports	Deltek Maconomy	Engagement jobs, time entry, WIP, billing and realization, firm general ledger
Ramp	Corporate cards; expense lines imported to Maconomy expense sheets	CCH Axcess Tax	The 1120-S, K-1s and 1040s
Gusto	Payroll and benefits; each payroll imported as a general journal	CaseWare	Audit workpaper binder and financial statement drafting
Excel	Cash forecast and budget; WIP and deferred revenue now come from Maconomy	Suralink	The PBC list and document exchange with Priya
Power BI	Owner dashboards fed from Maconomy	Checkpoint, DataSnipper	Tax research; tying invoice samples to the ledger inside Excel

Harbor & Vale moved from QuickBooks and a separate job costing tool to Maconomy eighteen months ago, when the sync between the two kept breaking the WIP report. Priya's next project: the new production studio becomes a second company in Maconomy in January, with intercompany postings between the agency and the studio and a consolidated report pack for the owners and the bank. She will need someone for six to nine months who understands multi-company accounting and, ideally, has worked in Maconomy before. It will be the first time Harbor & Vale calls a staffing firm.

For your client conversations

When a client lists a system as "required," ask if it is a true requirement or a preference. NetSuite and CCH Axcess usually are; QuickBooks and Excel almost never are.
Candidates coming out of public accounting know audit and tax tools but often have never posted a journal entry in an ERP. Ask corporate clients how much system training they are willing to provide.
System implementation projects (QuickBooks to NetSuite is the classic; QuickBooks plus a job costing tool to Maconomy is the agency version) create three to nine months of contract demand for an accountant who knows the target system.
Maconomy experience is scarce and clustered in agencies, consultancies and larger accounting firms. When a client asks for it, look at alumni of agency networks and consulting firms first, and ask whether strong project-accounting experience on another system would do.
Note whether a firm's tax software is desktop (ProSystem fx, Lacerte, UltraTax hosted) or cloud (CCH Axcess, ProConnect). Cloud firms can hire remote seasonal staff easily; desktop firms often cannot.

Knowledge check

A $40M PE-backed company is moving from QuickBooks to NetSuite. What hiring needs typically follow?

A contract or permanent accountant with NetSuite experience during and after the implementation, often a senior accountant or accounting manager. Frequently a controller upgrade as well, because PE owners expect a faster close and better reporting than the QuickBooks-era team delivered.

A tax firm uses CCH Axcess and a candidate has only used UltraTax. Is that a problem for a seasonal role?

Often yes for a 12-week seasonal role, where there is no time to train. For a permanent hire, most firms accept the switch. Confirm with the firm before submitting.

Mark module 8 complete

Module 09 · 15 min

The annual calendar

Put the previous modules on a timeline. This is the year as a controller and a CPA firm partner experience it, with the hiring moments marked in red.

You will be able to

Predict what any accounting client is busy with in a given month
Time outreach, pipelines and contract offerings to demand

Assumes calendar-year companies and clients, which covers most businesses. Governments, universities and many nonprofits use June 30 year-ends, which shifts their audit and close work to July through October. Red bullets mark hiring signals.

January

Year-end close in full swing at every company
W-2s and 1099s due Jan 31
Auditors begin year-end fieldwork
Firms send organizers; seasonal staff start
Contract senior accountants for close and audit prep
Last-minute seasonal tax staff

February

Audit fieldwork peak; PBC requests flying
Tax preparation ramps hard once K-1s and books arrive
Public companies file 10-Ks (large filers by ~Mar 1)
Corporate: quiet on permanent hiring; firms unreachable

March

Mar 15: 1065 and 1120-S due or extended
Audit reports issued for private companies
Firms at maximum hours
Begin sourcing "leaving public" candidates for April conversations

April

Apr 15: 1040, 1120, 1041 due; Q1 estimates
Busy season ends; firms exhale
Q1 close at corporations
Firm turnover begins; peak month to recruit seniors and managers out of public

May

May 15: 990s due
Firm promotions and raises announced; bonuses paid
Corporate hiring resumes at full pace
Highest volume of public accounting résumés on the market

June

Jun 15: Q2 estimates
Fiscal year-end for governments, schools, many nonprofits
Employee benefit plan audits under way
Firms backfill departed seniors; summer interns start

July

Q2 close and 10-Qs
Jul 31: Form 5500 for benefit plans (or extend)
June 30 year-end audits begin
Firms run training, planning, PTO
Steady corporate demand; firm advisory and CAS hiring

August

Fall busy season preparation at firms
Budget season kicks off at corporations
Firms begin planning seasonal staffing for fall extensions

September

Sep 15: extended 1065 and 1120-S; Q3 estimates
Sep 30: extended 1041
Audit planning and interim fieldwork begin for Dec year-ends
FP&A deep in budgets
Firms hiring experienced staff ahead of January; campus recruiting for next year's interns and staff

October

Oct 15: extended 1040, 1120, 5500
Q3 close and 10-Qs
Budgets finalized; tax planning meetings with clients
Prime month to sign seasonal tax preparers and contract auditors for January

November

Year-end tax planning
Interim audit fieldwork, controls testing
Corporate year-end prep: fixed asset reviews, inventory count planning
Seasonal hiring continues; corporate permanent hiring slows into holidays

December

Dec 31: year-end; inventory counts; cut-off
Firms finalize engagement letters and staffing plans
Bonuses and accruals set at corporations
Contract needs identified for January close and audit; offers made now start Jan 2

The year as a wheel

The grid above lists the year; the wheel shows the overlap. Read clockwise from January at the top. The outer ring is the CPA firm, the middle ring is the corporate finance department, and the inner ring marks the windows when hiring conversations actually happen.

The two rhythms are offset. Firms peak when corporate accounting is recovering from year-end, and firms hire for January while corporations are in budget season. The inner ring is where those rhythms create openings for a staffing conversation.

Case file Harbor & Vale's year

January: December close plus 46 PBC items, W-2s from Gusto and 1099s from BILL out by the 31st. February: audit fieldwork on site for two weeks. March: opinion issued, 1120-S extended. April: return filed, K-1s out, owners extend. May through August: the quiet stretch, when Priya finally fixes the time sheet discipline that slows the WIP report and plans the studio's setup as a second company in Maconomy. September: the fractional CFO leads budgeting; the firm calls to schedule audit planning. October: planning call, Q3 close. November: interim fieldwork, the owners' tax planning meeting. December: cut-off discipline, engagement letters signed, and Priya quietly wondering whether this is the year she asks for a senior accountant.

For your client conversations

Two windows matter most: October–December for selling contract and seasonal help to firms, and April–June for placing firm alumni into corporate roles.
Controllers are most receptive to a conversation in the second half of the month, after the close is out. The first week of the month is the wrong time to call.
A corporate client asking for help in mid-January is already late. Build the relationship in November and ask what year-end looks like.

Mark module 9 complete

Module 10 · 25 min

Talking the talk

Credentials, the questions that make you sound like you know the business, how to read a job description, and how to screen a candidate in ten minutes.

You will be able to

Decode the alphabet soup of accounting credentials
Run a credible intake call with a controller or partner
Screen an accounting candidate with a handful of well-chosen questions

Credentials

Credential	Full name	What it signals	Where it matters
CPA	Certified Public Accountant	Passed a rigorous four-part exam, met education and experience requirements, licensed by a state. The gold standard.	Required to sign audits; strongly preferred for controller and above; required for firm manager and up.
CPA candidate	—	Eligible and studying; may have passed some parts. Firms track "parts passed."	Staff and senior roles.
EA	Enrolled Agent	IRS-licensed tax practitioner with unlimited representation rights. Tax-only.	Tax preparation and resolution, especially at smaller firms.
CMA	Certified Management Accountant	Corporate accounting, cost, and decision analysis focus (IMA).	Industry roles, manufacturing, FP&A. Less known than CPA.
CIA	Certified Internal Auditor	Internal audit and controls.	Internal audit departments, SOX teams.
CFE	Certified Fraud Examiner	Forensic accounting and investigation.	Forensic practices, internal audit, litigation support.
CISA	Certified Information Systems Auditor	IT audit and controls.	SOC reporting, IT audit, SOX IT controls.
CFA	Chartered Financial Analyst	Investments and valuation.	FP&A, corporate development, treasury; not an accounting credential.
CGMA	Chartered Global Management Accountant	Joint AICPA/CIMA designation for management accounting.	Mostly a résumé add-on for CPAs.
CPP / FPC	Certified Payroll Professional / Fundamental Payroll Certification	Payroll expertise.	Payroll roles.
CB / CPB	Certified Bookkeeper / Certified Public Bookkeeper	Bookkeeping competency.	Small business, CAS.
MAcc / MST / MBA	Master's degrees	MAcc often taken to reach 150 hours; MST is a tax specialty; MBA is finance-side.	Common on résumés; rarely a hard requirement.

Intake questions for a corporate client

How many days is your close, and where does it bog down?
What is your general ledger, and are you planning to change it?
How many legal entities, and do you consolidate?
Are you audited, reviewed, or neither? Who is your firm, and when is fieldwork?
Public, PE-backed, family-owned? (Each changes the pace, the controls environment and the comp.)
Who does this role report to, and who does it supervise?
Which balance sheet accounts will this person own?
Is this a backfill, growth, or a problem you are trying to fix? What happened to the last person?
Any industry specifics: inventory, percentage-of-completion revenue, grants, multi-state sales tax, foreign currency?
Remote, hybrid or on-site, and does that change at quarter-end?

Intake questions for a CPA firm

Which service line, and what is the client mix (industries, entity types, size)?
Tax software? Audit software? Cloud or desktop?
Chargeable hour expectation and busy-season hours?
Seasonal or permanent? If seasonal, what dates and can it be remote?
Level: staff, senior, manager? Reviewer or preparer?
Will this person have client contact and a book to manage?
Is the firm PE-backed or recently merged? (Affects culture, comp, and whether roles are stable.)
Do you use offshore support, and how does that change what the US hire does?

Screening a candidate

Ask	A strong answer sounds like	A weak answer sounds like
"Walk me through your month-end close."	Names specific days, tasks and accounts they owned; mentions accruals, recs, review by a manager.	"I helped with month-end." No detail on what they personally did.
"Which reconciliations did you own and which was hardest?"	Specific accounts (intercompany, deferred revenue, payroll liabilities) and a real problem solved.	"Bank rec" and nothing else, for a senior candidate.
"Give me an example of a journal entry you prepared last month."	Explains the debit, the credit, and why.	Cannot articulate the entry or gets the sides wrong.
"What systems have you used and how deeply?"	Distinguishes admin-level use from data entry; names reports built. For Maconomy: "I ran revenue recognition, set up jobs and dimensions, and built the WIP report in BPM" rather than "I entered my time sheet."	Lists every system they have logged into.
"Why leave public accounting?" (for firm alumni)	Wants ownership of one company's books, to build rather than test; realistic about the ramp.	Only "the hours," with no interest in what corporate accounting actually is.
For tax: "What return types and volume did you handle last season?"	Numbers of returns by form type; describes review level reached.	Vague; cannot name the software or entity types.
For agency: "How did you handle unbilled and deferred revenue?"	Describes WIP schedules, percentage-of-completion, monthly true-ups with account teams.	Has never heard of the distinction.

Reading a job description

"Full-cycle" = end-to-end ownership of a process (AP, AR, or the whole GL).
"Month-end close" as a duty = a GL role, not a transactional one.
"GAAP" or "technical accounting" = expects someone who can research and apply standards, usually a CPA.
"SOX" = public company or preparing to be one.
"Multi-entity" / "consolidations" = complexity; pay accordingly.
"Hands-on" for a controller = small team; the controller does the work, not just reviews it.
"Big 4 or national firm experience preferred" = they want an auditor turned corporate; expect to pay a premium.
"Fast-paced / growth environment" = the close is messy and the team is thin.
"Client-facing" at a firm = senior or above; interns and staff usually are not.
"Maconomy" or "Deltek experience" = a project-based professional services business (agency, consultancy, accounting firm) that wants someone fluent in jobs, time sheets, WIP and revenue recognition. Vantagepoint or Costpoint on a résumé signals the same skills from architecture or government contracting.

Glossary of terms you will hear

ASC 606: The revenue recognition standard. Any conversation about when revenue counts.
ASC 842: Lease accounting; put most leases on the balance sheet from 2019–2022 and created a wave of work.
ASC 740: Income tax accounting (the provision).
EBITDA: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The profit measure PE owners and lenders watch.
Quality of earnings (QoE): A due-diligence report on a target company's true recurring earnings. A big advisory service line.
Materiality: The threshold below which a misstatement does not matter to a reader.
Fractional / interim: Part-time or temporary senior finance roles (fractional CFO, interim controller).
Shared services: Centralized AP, AR, payroll for a multi-location company, often in a low-cost location.
Roll-forward: A schedule showing beginning balance, additions, reductions, ending balance for an account.
Tie out: To agree one document to another. "Does the schedule tie to the GL?"
True-up: An adjusting entry that corrects an estimate to actual.
Write-down / write-off: Reducing an asset's book value; in firms, also reducing billable time that cannot be charged.
Nexus: Sufficient presence in a state to owe its taxes. Central to sales tax and state income tax work.
K-1: The schedule a partnership or S corp gives each owner showing their share of income. Late K-1s are why so many individuals extend.
Attest: Assurance services (audit, review) that only a licensed CPA firm can perform; the opposite is non-attest.
Deltek Maconomy: Project-based ERP for professional services firms. Jobs, time, billing, revenue recognition and the general ledger in one system. The example ERP throughout this course.
Job (Maconomy): Maconomy's term for a project or client engagement. Time, costs, budgets, invoices and WIP all attach to a job.
Busy season / compression: The January–April crunch; "compression" is the industry's term for too much work squeezed into too few weeks.

Case file The call from Priya

It is the second week of December. Harbor & Vale has crossed $8M in net revenue and the production studio entity is coming in January. Priya calls you. Here is the exchange, and what each answer tells you:

You ask	Priya says	What you now know
How many days is your close and where does it stick?	"Seven. The WIP report on day three, and then I'm doing the recs myself."	She needs a senior accountant, not another staff accountant. The role must own reconciliations and WIP.
What's the GL, and any changes coming?	"Deltek Maconomy, live for eighteen months. The studio becomes a second company in January, so intercompany and consolidation are new for us."	Maconomy experience is a plus, not a must. Multi-company, intercompany and job-based revenue recognition experience matter more.
Audited?	"Yes, Whitfield & Grant, fieldwork first two weeks of February."	The hire should start by mid-January and will spend the first month on PBC items. An ex-auditor will find that familiar.
Who does this person report to and supervise?	"Me. They'd review Tom's work eventually."	Senior accountant with a path to accounting manager. Attractive to a firm senior who wants a track.
Industry-specific pieces?	"Percentage-of-completion on projects, deferred revenue on retainers, gross-net on media, 1099s for about 60 freelancers."	Prior agency experience is ideal; audit experience with professional services clients is nearly as good.
Budget and timing?	"Around ninety, maybe ninety-five for the right CPA. Start January 12 if possible."	Upper end of the senior range for a $8M company, appropriate for the scope. Source now: firm seniors will not talk until after April 15, so look at people who left public in the spring and are unhappy in their first corporate role.

The candidate who eventually starts is a four-year audit senior from a national firm whose clients were ad agencies and architecture firms. They have audited job WIP in Maconomy and Vantagepoint but never posted a journal in either. Priya does not care; they understand WIP, they learn the general journal workspace in a week, and by March the close is at five days.

Putting it together

You now know enough to do three things well: hear a client describe their situation and translate it into the role they need, place a candidate's experience on the map of the profession, and time your outreach to the calendar the profession actually runs on. The rest is repetition. After a dozen intake calls with controllers and partners, the vocabulary in this course will be yours.

Final knowledge check

A PE-backed, $80M multi-entity company on NetSuite with a 12-day close, audited by a national firm, needs "a senior accountant, hands-on, Big 4 preferred." What are they really buying and what will it cost?

A CPA-track accountant, likely 3–5 years out of a national or Big 4 audit practice, who can own intercompany, consolidations and complex reconciliations and help shorten the close. NetSuite experience is a plus they may not get. Expect the upper end of the senior range or the low end of accounting manager, plus a bonus, because PE owners pay for speed.

A 30-person independent agency's founder says "our bookkeeper is great but we never know if we're making money on projects." What role do you propose?

An agency controller or finance director, or a fractional one, who can implement job costing, WIP and deferred revenue tracking, and project margin reporting on top of the bookkeeper's transactional work. Lead the conversation with project profitability and cash flow, not GAAP.

A regional CPA firm's tax partner calls in mid-October wanting help for January. What do you offer?

Seasonal preparers and reviewers with experience in their tax software, US-based if the firm runs desktop software, for roughly mid-January through April 15, hourly. Move quickly: they are already competing with every other firm for the same pool. Ask about a fall extension-season need too.

Mark module 10 complete

Appendix A · 20 min

A week in the life

Five roles you will place most often, sketched hour by hour in an ordinary week and in their hardest week of the year. Titles describe scope; this is what the days actually contain.

Staff accountant, corporate

Two years' experience, reports to a controller or accounting manager. Think Tom at Harbor & Vale.

Time	Ordinary week (mid-month)	Hardest week (days 1–5 of the close)
8:00	Clear the AP inbox: register vendor invoices in Maconomy against the right job and account, route them through the approval workflow, chase missing W-9s.	Post recurring general journals first thing: depreciation, prepaid amortization, loan interest.
10:00	Apply yesterday's customer payments to invoices. Follow up on two unidentified deposits.	Build the accrual list: ask department heads what was received but not billed. Post accruals.
12:30	Lunch. Thirty minutes of CPA exam review on a good day.	Lunch at the desk.
1:30	Weekly payment run in Maconomy. Import the Ramp card feed to expense sheets and chase missing receipts. Answer a vendor asking about a late payment.	Bank reconciliations for two accounts and the card. Investigate every unreconciled item; write up the two that are real problems for the controller.
3:30	Prep fixed asset additions for the month. Update the prepaid schedule.	AR and AP aging tie-out to the GL. Roll forward the accrued liabilities schedule. Hand completed recs to the controller for review.
5:30	Done by 5:30 or 6.	Clear the controller's review notes; often 7 pm on days 3 and 4.

What they worry aboutGetting the reconciliations to tie, missing an accrual, being blamed for a vendor's late payment.

Why they leaveNo path to senior, no exposure beyond transactional work, a controller who never explains the why.

Senior accountant, corporate

Four to six years, often ex-public. Owns the hard accounts and supports the audit. The role Priya wants to hire.

Time	Ordinary week	Hardest week (January: December close plus audit prep)
8:00	Review the job WIP and deferred revenue reports in Maconomy against approved time; flag jobs whose budgets look stale before the revenue recognition run.	Year-end close entries: bonus accrual, vacation accrual, true-ups of every estimate made during the year, and a final revenue recognition run once all December time is approved.
10:00	Meet with billing and account leads about two projects running over budget. Decide the revenue treatment.	Work the PBC list in Suralink: pull contracts, build the deferred revenue roll-forward, document the AR collectibility analysis.
12:30	Lunch away from the desk, mostly.	Lunch at the desk. Answer three auditor emails.
1:30	Review the staff accountant's reconciliations; leave notes. Post the intercompany journals between the two Maconomy companies.	Reconcile intercompany across both companies, run the consolidated report pack, and explain every eliminating entry in a memo the auditors will read.
3:30	Research a new lease under ASC 842 and draft the entry. Update the fixed asset roll-forward.	Flux analysis on the full-year P&L against prior year for the audit committee-style review the owners now want.
5:30	Usually out by 6. A little later during close week.	Late nights and at least one weekend in January. Auditor fieldwork in February is easier because the prep is done.

What they worry aboutRevenue recognition judgment calls, audit adjustments that make them look wrong, the controller leaving and the job doubling.

Why they leavePromotion to accounting manager is blocked, or a competitor offers a title bump and 15%.

Controller, mid-market

Ten-plus years, CPA. Owns the books, the team, the auditors and the bank. Think Priya.

Time	Ordinary week	Hardest week (year-end: late January)
7:30	Cash position and 13-week cash forecast before anyone else is in. Decide which vendors get paid Friday.	Cash first, always. Then the close checklist: what is done, what is late, who is stuck.
9:00	Weekly meeting with the owners or CFO: last month's results, this month's forecast, anything unusual.	Review every reconciliation and journal entry the team prepared. Make the judgment calls on WIP, reserves and accruals.
11:00	Approve the payment run, the payroll journal and any new vendor, customer or job setups in Maconomy's workflow. Sign the sales tax return.	Year-end payroll: W-2s must be right; 1099s to 60 freelancers by January 31, pulled from Maconomy's vendor ledger. Confirm the payroll provider's filings.
1:00	Work on the setup of the studio as a second company in Maconomy: chart of accounts, dimensions, intercompany accounts. Meet the fractional CFO about the line of credit renewal.	Audit manager call: PBC status, open questions, the schedule for fieldwork. Negotiate what can be delivered a week late.
3:00	Coach the staff accountant through an unreconciled item. Answer an account director's question about a client's margin.	Write the year-end commentary and the first draft of the financial statement footnotes the auditors will edit.
5:00	Out by 5:30 most nights mid-month. Days 3 through 6 of the close run later.	Most of January runs to 7 or 8 pm, with one or two weekends. February is better once fieldwork starts.

What they worry aboutCash, a surprise in the audit, losing the one senior person on the team, a system migration going wrong.

Why they leaveA CFO title elsewhere, an owner who will not fund the team, or PE buying the company and bringing in their own people.

Tax senior, CPA firm

Three to five years, CPA or nearly. Prepares complex returns and reviews staff work. Carries 80–120 clients through busy season.

Time	Ordinary week (July)	Hardest week (first week of April)
8:00	Clear IRS and state notices that arrived for clients. Draft response letters.	Open the due-date list. Forty returns in process, twelve due this week, five missing documents. Triage.
10:00	Prepare extended business returns with September deadlines. Research a multi-state apportionment question.	Prepare two S-corp returns from audited trial balances. Book-to-tax reconciliations, K-1 allocations.
12:30	Lunch out. Firm-sponsored CPE webinar some days.	Eat at the desk while reviewing a staff preparer's 1040 with a rental property and three K-1s. Eleven review notes.
1:30	Tax planning projection for a client selling their business. Meet the partner to review.	Client calls: "Did you get my documents?" "Why do I owe?" "Can we extend?" Calculate extension payments for six clients who will not make it.
3:30	Help the CAS team clean up a small client's books so next year's return is faster. Business development lunch prep.	Clear the partner's review notes on three returns, send for e-signature, transmit two more, chase acknowledgments.
5:00	Out by 5:30. Forty-hour weeks from May through July, a bit more in September.	Working until 9 or 10, Saturday included. Sixty to seventy hours this week, and it has been that way since mid-February.

What they worry aboutMissing a deadline, a preparer's error getting through, realization write-downs on their jobs, passing the last exam section.

Why they leaveThe third busy season. Corporate tax, a smaller firm with a saner calendar, or out of tax altogether.

Audit senior, CPA firm

Three to five years. Runs fieldwork, supervises two staff, is the client's daily contact. The person who tested Harbor & Vale's WIP.

Time	Ordinary week (October, interim season)	Hardest week (mid-February, year-end fieldwork)
8:00	Travel to the client, or open the remote engagement. Review the planning memo and risk assessment with the manager.	At the client. Check the PBC tracker: what arrived overnight, what is still missing. Assign the day's testing to two staff.
10:00	Walk through the order-to-cash process with the billing coordinator in the client's Maconomy: job setup, time sheet approval, draft invoice, posting. Document the controls and pick the ones to test.	Revenue testing: export job WIP from Maconomy, recalculate percentage of completion on eighteen jobs, agree hours to approved time sheets and budgets to signed contracts.
12:30	Lunch with the client's staff accountant. Half business, half relationship.	Lunch at the client's conference table while reviewing a staff member's cash workpaper.
1:30	Interim testing of nine months of disbursements. Coach a first-year on how to document an exception.	Meet the controller about the WIP finding. Draft the proposed adjustment. Call the manager.
3:30	Draft the PBC list for year-end. Budget the fieldwork hours in the firm's own Maconomy job and compare to last year's realization.	Review staff workpapers, clear their questions, write review notes. Update the manager on budget versus actual hours.
5:30	Out by 6 in the fall. Some weeks include a second client's planning.	Working to 9 pm at the hotel or at home, clearing manager review notes. Saturdays through mid-March. Two clients overlapping.

What they worry aboutBlowing the budget, a finding the client fights, first-year staff who cannot document, the manager's review notes arriving at 11 pm.

Why they leaveAlmost all of them do, between years three and six. Corporate senior accountant or accounting manager is the standard landing.

Appendix B · as long as you like

Flashcards and final quiz

Every key term from the course in one shuffled deck, then a 25-question quiz that mixes all ten modules. Cards you mark "got it" are remembered in this browser.

Flashcards

Term

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Final quiz

Twenty-seven questions drawn from every module. Pick an answer for each, then check. Wrong answers show the explanation and the module to revisit.

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Your courses

Inside the Ledger

Reading financial statements

Payroll fundamentals

Harbor & Vale Creative

The language of accounting

The three financial statements

Debits and credits

Cash basis versus accrual basis

GAAP, tax basis, and why companies keep two sets of books legally

The chart of accounts and the general ledger

Key terms

The accounting cycle and the month-end close

The four cycles that feed the ledger

The monthly close, step by step

Quarter-end and year-end

Controls and the "SOX" conversation

Key terms

Inside a corporate accounting department

Accounting versus finance

The org chart

How structure changes with size

What people earn

How a CPA firm works

Service lines

The pyramid

The metrics partners live by

Busy season

Firm tiers

Rules that shape the business

The audit process

Three levels of assurance

Phases of an audit

The four opinions

Other assurance work you will hear about

The tax process

Entities, forms and deadlines

Inside the firm: the preparation workflow

Compliance versus planning

Tax inside a corporation

Agency and marketing firm accounting

Three kinds of agency revenue

Gross versus net: the question every agency accountant must answer

The cash-flow squeeze

Metrics the agency leadership watches

Agency accounting roles

Systems

The technology stack

General ledger and ERP systems

Around the ledger

Inside the CPA firm

The annual calendar

The year as a wheel

Talking the talk

Credentials

Intake questions for a corporate client

Intake questions for a CPA firm

Screening a candidate

Reading a job description

Glossary of terms you will hear

A week in the life

Staff accountant, corporate

Senior accountant, corporate

Controller, mid-market

Tax senior, CPA firm

Audit senior, CPA firm

Flashcards and final quiz

Flashcards

Final quiz