Clean Books.Credible Reporting.Clear Understanding.
HannumCPA works with owner-led businesses on the accounting they already have: making the records reliable, the reporting dependable, and the numbers understood by the person running the company.
Accounting should lead somewhere.
Most businesses have books. Most have reports. Fewer have an owner who can say, with confidence, what those numbers are telling them about the company.
That is the point of the first two. The books have to be right so the reporting can be trusted, and the reporting has to be trusted so it can be understood. HannumCPA works across all three, in that order.
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Clean Books
Numbers you can trust.
Your bookkeeper or accounting staff stays in place. We review what they produce: the reconciliations, the balance sheet, the general ledger, the unusual transactions, the month-end close. Problems get found and corrected. The close gets more reliable.
The questionCan we trust the underlying accounting?
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Credible Reporting
Financial information people can rely on.
Once the books are right, they should become reporting the owner and others can use: monthly financial statements, management reporting, lender and surety packages, and CPA-compiled financial statements where appropriate. Credibility comes from the accounting discipline and the CPA involvement behind the numbers.
The questionCan the owner, the bank and the surety rely on what we're presenting?
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Clear Understanding
Know what your numbers are telling you.
This is where the accounting and the reporting are headed. What changed. What is driving it. What looks unusual. Where profitability is moving. What the balance sheet and cash are saying. What questions the numbers raise. Not generic strategy, and not coaching: a CPA reading your company's actual financial information with you.
The questionWhat are the numbers telling us about the business?
Behind the Monthly Financial Review
Curt™
The Clear Understanding Review Tool
Every Monthly Financial Review is built around Curt™, the Clear Understanding Review Tool — the working surface we use to move from accounting records to understanding, decisions and commitments.
Curt brings the financial statements, underlying detail and noteworthy observations into one place. Before we meet, the numbers have already been reviewed. During the session, we decide together what deserves action, sustained focus, continued watching or simply needs to be handled.
It is not a dashboard, and it is not software we sell. Curt is the discipline behind the review — a consistent way to understand what the accounting is telling us and decide what to do with it.
Accounting should lead somewhere.
- The records go in.The trailing twelve months of general ledger activity, financial statements, receivables and other relevant operating information. Curt begins with the company’s actual records — not a separate set of dashboard numbers.
- Curt helps us see what changed.Movement, trends, unusual activity and noteworthy observations are surfaced for review. AI can help find things worth looking at, but it does not decide what matters.
- We go behind the numbers.Any financial statement line can be opened to the transactions underneath it. The point is not simply to identify that something changed, but to understand what happened and why.
- We work the Curt Board together.What matters moves onto the Board: ACT, FOCUS, WATCH or HANDLE. Other Noteworthy Observations remain available without cluttering the discussion. The Board becomes the working surface for the Monthly Financial Review.
- Decisions become commitments.What will we do? Who owns it? By when? Items can remain on the Board and carry forward from one review to the next. The session becomes a concise written review, and History preserves what we saw, decided and committed to over time.
Owner-led businesses, generally $2 million to $20 million in revenue.
Companies with enough going on that the financial information matters every month, but without a full internal finance department.
- You already have bookkeeping or accounting support, and financial statements exist.
- Those statements are not getting enough review, and you are not completely confident in them.
- You get reports, but not enough understanding from them.
- A lender, surety or partner needs better financial information than you can hand them today.
- You want experienced CPA involvement without building a larger finance department.
Where tax fits
HannumCPA is not a tax firm and works alongside your tax CPA, not in place of them. Your tax CPA handles the return. We handle the year.
Probably not the fit
Tax preparation, transaction-only bookkeeping, or a once-a-year relationship.
Your accounting people stay. The review is ours.
HannumCPA sits between day-to-day accounting and the owner. We do not replace a bookkeeper or an accounting staff; we make sure what they produce can be trusted, and then make sure you understand it.
- Month-endThe close is reviewed, and corrections are made or directed.
- ReportingFinancial statements and any lender, surety or management reporting are produced or overseen.
- ReviewWe go through the numbers and flag what deserves attention.
- ConversationWe sit down with you about what the numbers are saying and what comes next.
It runs on a calendar rather than on urgency, and the depth of involvement follows what the business needs.
Start with an Initial Financial Assessment.
A fixed-fee first look at where the financial side of the business stands, so neither of us is guessing about scope.
- The condition of the accounting records and the close.
- The financial reporting as it exists today, and who relies on it.
- What you currently receive, and what you actually take from it.
- Where HannumCPA can add value, and where it cannot.
From there, recurring relationships begin around $1,000 a month and increase with depth and scope. Defined CPA reporting engagements, such as compiled financial statements or a lender or surety package, are quoted separately in advance.
Recurring work is a fixed monthly fee. You should never wonder what a conversation will cost.
Start with a conversation
Tell us a little about the business and what the financial side looks like today. We will tell you honestly whether this is a fit.
Built from inside the business, not across the desk from it.
Josh Hannum has spent more than thirty years inside privately owned companies: as CFO, in operating leadership, and since 2007 as a fractional CFO working directly with owners on their accounting, cash and reporting.
That proximity is the point. He knows what the books look like before they are cleaned up, what the reports leave out, and what an owner actually needs to hear at the end of the month.
His value is not having all the answers. It is knowing how to get into the financial information, understand what is actually happening, and help an owner see it more clearly.
Josh Hannum · CPA · CGMA
Birmingham, Alabama
How we think about the work
Nine principles on how the financial side of a business should run. We wrote them down.
The books are not the destination. Neither are the reports.
Understanding the business is. If that is what you want from your numbers, let's talk.