Trades & construction
Electrical, mechanical, plumbing, HVAC, general contracting. Progress billing, equipment purchases, seasonal payroll swings, GST on materials, and holdbacks that sit for months. Every cash-flow problem at once.
Services
A controller for the business that needs one but cannot justify a full-time hire.
It starts with a one-time diagnostic and, when it fits, becomes a monthly engagement. Both delivered personally by Steve Paschak, CPA, MBA. No juniors, no hand-offs.
Start here
The Profitability Diagnostic
A standalone, fixed-fee, one-time engagement. I go into your books and tell you exactly where you are bleeding margin and where the upside is. It is low commitment for you, it demonstrates value immediately, and it is the natural way to find out whether an ongoing engagement makes sense.
It also runs both directions. While you evaluate me, I am doing due diligence on the business. A clear picture of the books tells both of us, cheaply, whether we are a good fit.
What you walk away with
- Your real margins, broken down by product or service line
- Which customers and which work are actually profitable, and which are quietly subsidized
- Where cash is tied up, and where the next squeeze is likely to come from
- An honest read on whether your financial statements are telling you the truth
- A short list of the highest-value things to fix first
A fixed fee, paid once. No obligation to continue.
When it fits
Fractional Controller
The ongoing engagement. I sit inside your numbers the way a controller does at a larger company, and I keep finding the gap between what you are earning and what you are keeping, month after month.
This is not a report you file. It is financial leadership: the clarity to price right, hire at the right time, and know your cash position before it becomes a problem.
Core monthly deliverables
- A one-page dashboard you actually read: revenue, margin, cash position, and one forward-looking number
- A rolling thirteen-week cash flow forecast, updated every month
- A quarterly review of where the money is going: cost-structure analysis, not just reporting
- An annual pricing and profitability audit by revenue stream
- Advisory availability when real decisions come up between reports: equipment, hiring, a new contract
Controller-grade books are maintained as the foundation, so the numbers above can be trusted.
Who this is for
Owner-operated businesses doing $1M to $10M.
Below that, the complexity is usually not there yet. Above it, you likely already have a controller on staff. In between is where a fractional controller earns its fee many times over, especially where there are employees, real complexity, and a few years of mess that nobody has had time to fix.
Manufacturing & light industrial
Food processing, aerospace supply chain, ag equipment. Inventory carrying costs, capital equipment decisions, and seasonal demand. Classic controller territory.
Professional services with staff
Dental, physiotherapy, veterinary, engineering, and architecture firms. Skilled owners who are usually too busy practising their craft to see the unit economics underneath the practice.
Wholesale & distribution
Credit terms on both sides create the classic squeeze: paying suppliers in thirty days, collecting from customers in sixty. Most owners manage that gap by feel. A thirteen-week view replaces the feel with a number.
Hospitality at scale
Catering companies, food manufacturers, and multi-location operations with real revenue, where volume and timing make cash management a genuine discipline.
The common thread
Owner-operated, with employees, and complex enough that revenue alone no longer tells you whether you are winning. If that is you, the diagnostic will almost certainly pay for itself.
What Advantage Books does not do
This is not commodity bookkeeping and it is not tax. No tax returns, personal or corporate. No financial statement preparation or compilation, no review or audit engagements, no tax planning. That is your CPA firm's role, and I work alongside yours or can refer you to one. The division of labour is clean: your tax accountant looks backward once a year to file, and I look forward all year so you can run the business with numbers you trust. Honest scope makes for better results on both sides.
Experience Counts
Not sure where to start?
Start with the diagnostic, or just with a conversation. Either way you will get a plain answer about fit.