Adding Cash Flow Forecasting to Your CAS Practice Without Hiring
Client accounting and advisory services have become one of the fastest-growing areas of public accounting. Benchmark surveys from CPA.com and the AICPA have reported double-digit growth for several years running. Forecasting and budgeting are among the services those practices offer.
The problem is staffing. Forecasting takes senior judgment, and it lands at month-end, when the team is already closing the books.
Three ways firms handle it
- Do it in-house. Best control, but it competes with close and tax season for the same senior people.
- Send it offshore. Lower cost and good for routine processing, but forecasting depends on context and judgment that is hard to hand off.
- Use a senior subcontractor. An experienced forecaster prepares the work under the firm's name, and the firm reviews it and owns the relationship.
What a good arrangement looks like
- White-label delivery, with client questions routed through the firm
- Deadlines set after the firm's own close calendar
- A written scope, confidentiality and non-solicitation
- A consistent model with built-in checks, so the reviewer's time goes to judgment rather than arithmetic
- Flat monthly pricing per client, so the firm can price its own engagement with a predictable margin
If your firm has clients asking for cash forecasting and no one free to build it, here is how we work with firms.