Who you will actually be working with

Deb is a degreed accountant with more than twenty-five years across corporate accounting and her own practice. She has run Hellman Enterprises since 2011, working with small and mid-sized businesses across the country.

A good share of the work arrives referred by CPAs. They are the ones who open a client's file, find it is not something they can file from, and need somebody to fix it and then keep it right. That is a useful signal about the kind of work this is: the people who see the inside of a lot of books send this one along.

The specialties are the awkward ones. Inventory that has to reconcile to a count. Online sellers whose deposits never match their sales. Attorney trust accounts, where the standard is exacting and the consequences of drift are professional rather than merely financial. Businesses that are a year or three behind and have been putting off the phone call.

What she is actually being paid for

Not categorizing transactions. Software does more of that every year, and it does it well. The work is knowing what a transaction means, which is a different thing entirely, and noticing when something in the file does not make sense.

She works alongside your CPA rather than around them. And she will tell you the thing you do not want to hear, because the one time that matters, it is the whole value.