When your finance manager, controller or bookkeeper resigns, the next pay run does not wait. Our Chartered Accountants take over payroll, month-end close, BAS lodgement and reporting within two to six weeks, capturing the handover while the departing person is still there.
Whether you are covering a gap until you hire or rethinking the role entirely, engagements run rolling monthly at $2,500 to $6,000, the same price as ongoing work. Most clients continue.
Recruitment takes three to six months and $20,000 to $30,000 in fees before anyone starts. We take over in two to six weeks. Week one is systems access, the compliance calendar and process documentation, done alongside the person leaving if there is notice left. That overlap is the most valuable part of the engagement, which is why moving early matters.
Interim providers charge a premium for speed and then leave, so you pay more and end up where you started. We charge the same as an ongoing engagement, because it is the same work. Rolling monthly with no lock-in means you can hand back to a permanent hire whenever you choose, or keep the function as it is.
The reason the seat emptied is the reason it will empty again. You get analysts doing the processing and a CA-qualified senior reviewing it, with the close checklist, approvals map and compliance calendar written down. If we hand over to your new hire, they inherit a documented function rather than the situation you are in today.
The first fortnight decides how the next six months go. We document the close checklist, the approvals map, system access and every recurring obligation, working alongside the departing person wherever there is notice period left.
We also tell you what we find. Reconciliation gaps, unrecorded liabilities, lodgements that were never made and payroll set up on assumptions nobody wrote down. If the file needs catch-up before it can be closed properly, that is scoped separately so you can see it as a distinct job with an endpoint.
Clients typically get a written picture of the real position within two weeks, including anything the handover did not mention.
Payroll is the first thing to lock down because it has a date and it involves other people's money. We take over pay run processing immediately, on your existing cycle, with your approval before anything is submitted.
Superannuation is the part that has changed. Since 1 July 2026 contributions must be received by the fund within seven business days of payday, calculated on qualifying earnings, and the ATO clearing house has closed. We build the payment pathway backwards from receipt rather than from the day it is initiated.
Clients typically see the first pay run go out on time in week one or two, with award classifications and allowances checked rather than assumed.
A close that lives in one person's head leaves when they do. We run it to a documented timetable, in sequence, with a CA-qualified senior reviewing before anything is released.
Reporting resumes on a stated date each month rather than whenever the reconciliation finishes. That matters most if a board, a bank or an investor is waiting, because a missing month becomes a conversation about the gap rather than about the result.
Clients typically have their first full close under our team by week four to six, and a fixed reporting date from that point on.
Lodgement deadlines do not pause because the seat is empty. We pick up the compliance calendar from your lodgement history, prepare and lodge under registered BAS Agent 26298194, and use agent concessions where they apply.
Where the previous period was lodged from an unreconciled file, we work out how far back the error runs before correcting it. GST coding errors repeat every cycle, so the useful question is never only about the most recent statement.
Clients typically move from an unclear lodgement position to a documented calendar with nothing overdue inside the first month.
We build the documentation on the assumption you might replace the role. If you do, your new hire starts with written processes, a current compliance calendar and a reconciled file instead of a fortnight of archaeology.
If you decide the function no longer needs one senior generalist doing everything, that is a decision to make with numbers rather than under pressure. We will set out both cases honestly, including the ones where hiring is the right answer.
Clients typically make the rebuild or restructure decision in month two or three, once the reporting is arriving and the panic has passed.
Our experts will discuss your business, your finance pain points, and the services we can offer
We take your requirements and send a fixed proposal with pricing options within 24 hours. Free, no obligation
We will schedule a kick off meeting, give access to our online communication and project management tools
Deliverables start in week one and we take the function off your plate, so you get time back to run your business the way you want
30 minutes with our team.
We'll review your current finance setup, compare the full cost of an internal hire against our embedded team, and show you exactly what your finance function should cost at your stage of growth.
You'll leave with a clear view of what's working, what's missing, and where you'd save.
No lock-in contracts. 30-day money-back guarantee.
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Lock down the next pay run, then the payment approvals, in that order. Everything else can wait a week. The person leaving holds bank authority, knows which supplier invoices are legitimate and is the only one who can tell you whether Thursday's payment run should go out, so fraud risk rises during handovers for exactly that reason.
Then get the handover documented while they are still in the building. Most businesses spend the notice period on recruitment and none of it on capture, which is why the first month after a departure is usually worse than the departure itself. Our 30-day plan for a finance manager resignation sets out the sequence day by day.
Most engagements sit between $2,500 and $6,000 per month, depending on scope, entity count and payroll headcount. Interim cover is priced the same as ongoing work because it is the same work, and catch-up of a neglected file is quoted separately as a project with an endpoint.
Compare that to the alternative rather than to a bookkeeper. Replacing a finance manager costs $20,000 to $30,000 in recruitment fees, and the role itself runs $155,000 to $185,000 a year fully loaded once superannuation, on-costs, software and equipment are counted. Three to six months of vacancy sits on top. Run your own version through the hire versus outsource calculator.
Two to six weeks for a full transition, depending on the state of the file. Payroll and any hard compliance deadline can be covered faster than that, and usually need to be.
The variable is not us, it is what we find. A current file with documented processes transitions in a fortnight. A file that is three months behind with no close checklist takes six weeks, because catch-up has to run in parallel before a close is meaningful. We will tell you which situation you are in after looking at the file, not before.
We find out in the first fortnight and tell you what we find. Common ones: bank accounts reconciled but suspense balances never cleared, superannuation paid late, BAS lodged from figures that were never agreed, and leave balances that do not match entitlements.
Quantifying it early is the point. Every one of those items gets more expensive the longer it sits, and finding them during a due diligence process or an audit is considerably worse than finding them now. If the file needs rescuing, our messy Xero file rescue plan sets out how that work runs and what it costs.
It depends whether the work needs one senior generalist or several different skills at different levels. A finance manager doing bank reconciliations is expensive. A bookkeeper producing board reporting is not credible. Most businesses that lose a finance manager discover the role had drifted into a mix of both.
We will set out both cases with numbers, including the situations where hiring is the right answer. Our comparison of in-house finance manager versus outsourced finance team works through it, and cost to hire a finance manager in Australia has the loaded figures.
Yes, any month. Engagements are rolling monthly with no lock-in, and we document processes as we build them specifically so a handover is possible rather than notional.
In practice most clients do not take it. Once reporting arrives on a fixed date and the compliance calendar is being managed by a team rather than a person, the case for rebuilding a single in-house seat gets harder to make. But the option is real, and if you do hire, your new finance manager starts with a documented function instead of the situation you inherited.
Then hiring is probably the better option, and we will tell you that honestly. We are not right for every business. If you have 40 hours a week of hands-on work requiring office presence, high transaction volumes needing constant on-site attention, or an operational role that happens to include finance, an internal hire makes more sense.
We are also not the right fit if you run payroll or the ledger on Chris 21, SimPro, Business Central, Wiise or a comparable platform and will not move. Taking over a system we cannot properly review means running a migration in the middle of a crisis, which is the wrong time. Engage a local contractor for the interim period and make the platform decision later.
You do. We prepare and review, you approve before anything is submitted or released. Bank authority never moves to us, and that does not change during the interim period.
It is deliberate rather than a limitation. The transition is exactly when controls are weakest, because the person who knew what was normal has gone. Separating preparation from approval is what stops an outsider acting alone, and it is the control we would want in place if we were you.
Yes, and it is a cleaner version of the same engagement. There is a known return date, a proper handover at both ends, and no crisis. We take the function for the period, document what we do, and hand back to the returning person with a current file and written processes.
It also works as a trial. Several clients have used a parental leave period to see what an embedded team looks like before deciding how to structure the function permanently.
