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Senior judgment, when the decision is big enough.

Outside financial leadership for owners who have outgrown doing it themselves but are nowhere near hiring a finance director.

CFO and advisory services in Cedar Park, TX

There is a long stretch in a small business where the financial decisions get consequential well before the business can justify a senior finance hire. Leases, headcount, pricing, debt, a second location, or an exit. Each one is easier with someone in the room who has done it before.

Advisory work here is always an outside engagement. Tim is not on your payroll and not an officer of your company. He works with several businesses, and that independence is part of what makes the advice useful, because there is no internal politics attached to the answer.

The background matters for this work specifically: more than twenty years in finance and accounting, inside large multinational banks and at two of the Big Four consulting firms, helping companies find efficiency and room to grow. That is the experience an advisory engagement gives access to.

The quiet home office where Next Step advisory work is prepared

Two ways advisory work is engaged

One ongoing, one a defined project. Plenty of clients do the second and never need the first.

Advisory

Fractional CFO services

An outside finance lead engaged for a set number of days each month against a written scope. Financial strategy, cash and capital management, margin and pricing analysis, and the ability to sit in a board or lender meeting and answer the follow-up questions directly.

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Advisory

Business financial planning

A defined project rather than an ongoing arrangement. Unit economics, multi-year projections with every assumption written down, scenario and sensitivity testing, and an honest read on how much capital the plan needs and when.

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Advisory clients nationwide

Advisory engagements run with businesses in Cedar Park, TX, Austin, TX and the surrounding towns, with companies in San Diego County, and with owners elsewhere in the country, all fully remote. Because the work is conversation and analysis rather than paperwork, a scheduled video session is genuinely equivalent to sitting in the room. Financial services firms are among the most frequent users of this work, alongside owners preparing for a sale.

Austin area, Texas

  • Cedar Park, TX
  • Leander, TX
  • Round Rock, TX
  • Georgetown, TX
  • Austin, TX
  • Pflugerville, TX

San Diego County, California

  • San Diego, CA
  • Carlsbad, CA
  • Escondido, CA

What advisory work depends on

Accounting and financial reporting

Advice built on unreliable reporting is confident guesswork. Reporting comes first.

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Bookkeeping

The closed books underneath all of it.

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Industry-specific accounting

Sector economics, which is usually where the real margin question lives.

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Not sure whether you need this yet?

Book a consultation. If better bookkeeping would serve you more than advisory work, we will say so.

Book a Consultation

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