Accounting shouldn't be the stressful part.
Client accounting, FP&A, and fractional controller services for businesses across California — done start to finish by a licensed CPA, on a deliberately small client list.
Licensed California CPA · Non-attest practice · Based in San Diego, working statewide
The idea
Why this practice exists.
Most owners don't dread accounting. They dread not knowing.
Not knowing whether the numbers are right. Not knowing what the tax bill is going to be until it arrives. Not knowing if last month was actually a good month or just a busy one. Not knowing whether there's enough in the account six weeks from now, and finding out the hard way.
That uncertainty is what makes accounting feel heavy — not the bookkeeping itself. The work here is aimed squarely at it: books that close on a date you can plan around, financial statements you can read without translating, a budget to measure against, and a straight answer when a decision depends on the number. Then the part that actually changes outcomes: what those numbers are telling you, and where the business would be better off doing something differently.
Done properly, the monthly financials should be the least stressful thing on your desk.
About
Who is actually doing the work.
A CPA start to finish — not a CPA at the end
At most firms, the CPA reviews. The reconciliations, the close, the schedules, and the workpapers are done by staff or offshore teams, and the licensed professional signs off at the end. It's an efficient model for the firm. It's also why questions take three days to answer and why the person who knows your business best is often the one most likely to leave.
Here, the person doing the work and the person licensed to answer for it are the same person. Your close is not handed down. When you ask why margin moved, the answer comes from someone who was in the general ledger that week, not from someone reading a summary of it.
Seven years in accounting and an active California CPA license, with multi-entity close experience across tribal government enterprises, project-based media, and a parent-subsidiary consumer brand. That range matters more than it sounds — closing books for a production company and closing books for an inventory business are genuinely different problems, and having done both means less time spent learning your business at your expense.
Chloe Pellegrino, CPA
Licensed in California · Non-attest practice
Based in San Diego · Clients throughout California
Client list capped at twelve engagements
Taking fewer clients is the whole point.
A solo practice can grow one of two ways: add clients until the work gets thin, or cap the list and go deeper on each one. This practice does the second. The number of active engagements is limited on purpose, because the work being sold — knowing your business well enough to spot the thing you didn't ask about — doesn't survive a full caseload.
Practically, it means your month-end doesn't compete with thirty others, questions get answered the same day, and when the list is full, new inquiries get an honest referral rather than a waitlist you never hear back from.
Services
Most engagements combine two or three of these.
What a month looks like
The close is the foundation — everything else depends on the books being right, and being right on time.
Client accounting
The monthly close run properly and delivered on a date you can plan around. Transactions coded consistently, accounts reconciled, and management-prepared financial statements that mean the same thing in March as they did in January. This is the layer everything else is built on, and it's the layer most businesses are quietly missing.
- Monthly close and reconciliations
- AP and AR management
- Payroll coordination
- Management-prepared financial statements
- Multi-entity and inventory accounting
- Class and department reporting
FP&A
Financial statements tell you what happened. The harder and more useful work is telling you the story behind them — which line is quietly drifting, where margin is actually being made and lost, and which two or three things are worth fixing before they compound. A real operating budget gets built, the actuals get measured against it every month, and the commentary that comes back says what it means, not just what it was.
- Annual operating budget build
- Monthly budget vs. actual
- Written variance commentary
- Monthly or quarterly close deck
- Margin analysis by job, product, or location
- Rolling 13-week cash forecast
Cleanup and catch-up
Books months behind, or inherited from someone who left mid-year. Undeposited funds that never cleared, a balance sheet nobody trusts, two years of unfiled returns waiting on numbers that don't tie. This is scoped as its own fixed-fee engagement after reviewing the actual file — never quoted sight unseen — and it finishes before any monthly work begins.
- Prior-period catch-up and reconstruction
- Balance sheet cleanup and tie-out
- Chart of accounts rebuild
- QuickBooks Online file diagnosis
- Opening balance correction
- Handoff-ready documentation
Fractional controller and advisory
Everything above, plus someone to talk it through with before the decision rather than after. Each month the financials get translated into a short list: what's working, what's eroding, and what to do about it. Cost structure gets a hard look, pricing gets questioned, and the big moves — a hire, a location, a line of credit — get modeled before they're made rather than explained afterward. It's the senior finance attention that usually requires a full-time hire you're not ready for.
- Monthly review call and priorities
- Profitability and cost structure review
- Scenario modeling — hiring, pricing, capex
- Close process design and buildout
- Entity structure analysis
- Systems and workflow cleanup
Industries
Where this close has been run before.
Industry experience
Every industry has one thing that makes its books harder than the textbook version — job costing in construction, inventory in retail, program reporting in government. Knowing what that thing is before the first close is most of the value.
Controller-level close experience
Government and public sector
Tribal government enterprises and a municipal engagement — multiple reporting audiences and program-level detail that has to hold up to outside review.
Transit
Transit sector operations, including cost allocation across programs and funding sources.
Media and advertising
Project-based revenue and spend — job-level margin, pass-through costs, and revenue that doesn't arrive on a monthly rhythm.
Retail and consumer brands
Inventory accounting, parent-subsidiary consolidation, and reporting broken out by class or channel.
Public accounting client work
Real estate and property management
Entity-per-property structures, intercompany activity, and owner distributions.
Construction
Job costing and work in progress, where margin lives at the job level rather than on the income statement.
Professional practices
Law firms, medical, and dental — owner compensation, entity structure, and the S-corp questions that come with a practice.
General small business
Service businesses across sectors, where the need is simply a close that happens on time and ties out.
Not on the list? The close is the close. What changes by industry is which accounts cause trouble, and that's a short conversation.
How it works
Nothing is quoted before the file has been looked at.
From first call to first close
Every engagement is quoted after reviewing the actual books, never in advance. If the file needs cleanup, that's scoped and completed as its own engagement first — so the recurring fee reflects the ongoing work rather than someone else's backlog.
Scoping call
Thirty minutes on the business, the entities, the systems in use, and what's currently breaking.
File review
A look at the actual general ledger and close process. This is what a real quote depends on.
Written proposal
Scope, deliverables, dates, and fee — with the exclusions listed, so nothing is a surprise in month four.
Cleanup, if needed
Quoted and completed separately. It closes before the monthly retainer starts.
Monthly cadence
Close, financials, and reporting on a fixed schedule. Billed monthly on autopay, in advance.
Everything is delivered remotely — cloud accounting, shared documents, and scheduled calls. Distance has no effect on the work. In-person meetings are available in San Diego and Los Angeles when they're useful.
Fit
Worth knowing before the first call.
Who this is built for
A good fit
- Businesses that have outgrown a bookkeeper but can't justify a finance hire
- Multi-entity operators, holding structures, and consolidations
- Inventory or project-based businesses where margin hides below the P&L
- Owners who want a budget and a monthly deck, not just a year-end file
- Anyone whose books are currently a source of anxiety
Probably not a fit
- Pre-revenue businesses or a handful of transactions a month
- Anyone looking for the lowest bookkeeping quote
- Attest engagements — those are referred to an independent firm
- One-off tax filing with no ongoing relationship
Contact
The more detail here, the more useful the first call is.
Start a conversation
Fees depend on entity count, transaction volume, and the state of the current books, so they're quoted after a scoping call rather than published. A few details up front means the first conversation can be about your business instead of basic questions.