01 / Cash
Profit is up. Cash is not.
Receivables, debt principal, equipment, tax payments, and owner draws can absorb profit before it ever reaches the bank.
Schedule a strategy call
30 min · free
Virtual CFO for owner-operators
Financial clarity that drives growth.
Better decisions. More cash. More profit. More control. We repair and rebuild the financial system behind a $500K–$5M business so you stop flying blind.
Profit to cash
“We're profitable. So where did the cash go?”
Bruce Hacking, CPA
The advisor who reads the numbers with you
Income statement says profit$312,000
Where it went
Into receivables and work in progress$132,000
Out to debt principal and equipment$106,000
Out to owner draws and estimated taxes$98,000
Total$336,000
So the bank balancefell $24,000on a year the income statement called profitable
Sample client · Service Co. · FY2026 · Numbers illustrative
A direct introduction
Before you read anything else, hear it from the CPA doing the work.
No slides. No funnel. Just where the profit actually went, how the rebuild works, and whether a 30-minute conversation is worth having.
- You work directly with Bruce
- Eighty seconds, not a webinar
- A fit call only if it lands
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The owner-operator gap
Your books can be closed and your questions still unanswered.
Compliance tells you what happened. Running the business requires knowing what it means, what happens next, and which decision your cash can support.
02 / Margin
Revenue grows, but the payoff does not.
Without profit by service line, customer, or job, the work keeping everyone busy may be the work suppressing margin.
03 / Tax
Taxes arrive as an event.
Good records and current forecasts make estimated payments and year-end planning part of the operating rhythm instead of a surprise.
04 / Decisions
Every big move feels like a guess.
Hiring, pricing, expansion, and equipment decisions need scenarios tied to real accounts—not instinct alone.
What we fix
Three things every owner wants — and most never get.
You don't need more reports. You need a system that tells the truth, and a CPA who reads it with you.
Cash flow forecasting
Cash visibility
A 13-week cash model wired into your real accounts, so runway, payroll cushion and deployable cash are never a guess.
- Rolling 13-week forecast
- Owner vs. operating cash
- Weekly variance review
Job & segment profitability
Profit clarity
We rebuild your income statement by service line, customer or job, so you can see what's funding the business and what's eating it.
- Profit-by-segment view
- Margin & contribution analysis
- Pricing decision support
Virtual CFO
Decision confidence
Can you afford the hire? The expansion? The equipment? We model it against your real numbers so you decide with conviction.
- Hire & expansion models
- Tax-positioned scenarios
- Monthly CFO review
Why Hacking CPA
More than bookkeeping. A system you can run the business on.
Bookkeeping records what already happened. We rebuild your numbers so they tell you what to do next, and a CPA reads them with you every month.
Typical bookkeeping
Hacking CPA
Bookkeeping plus a CPA in your corner
What you get
Transactions recorded each month
Books cleaned up, then rebuilt into a system around your decisions
Who you work with
A rotating bookkeeper
Bruce Hacking, CPA, directly. No handoffs.
How often you talk
Mostly when something is due
A monthly CFO review, with big hires and purchases modeled before you commit
Cash
Last month's bank balance
A rolling 13-week cash forecast built from your real accounts
Profit
One overall income statement
Profit by service line, customer or job
Taxes
Sorted out at the deadline
Books tax-ready year round, with exposure flagged early
Schedule a strategy call
30 minutes, free, with Bruce
Based on common bookkeeping-only services. Every firm is different.
How the work is built
This is your financial house.
We do a deep dive and design the blueprint. Then we build the foundation together. We support you as your controller and CFO. Then we envelop the entire system with the peer advisory board.
Start with an empty lot.
Every house goes up in the same order. Four layers, one at a time.
The Blueprint
We open the hood. A full financial systems discovery — every report, account, integration and habit feeding your numbers gets examined. We find what's lying, and why. Then we design what replaces it: which decisions are actually in front of you over the next twelve months, what the numbers have to tell you to answer them, and what the system has to do to get there. You approve the blueprint before we touch anything. Nobody starts anywhere else. And what the fix costs is part of it — I don't know that number before the deep dive, and neither does anyone who quotes you without one.
The Foundation
We lay the foundation together: the tech stack, the SOPs, the people. We get it running, clean up the history where it needs cleaning, and make the whole thing smooth. Everyone gets a foundation — and if you already have a bookkeeper in-house, we work with them rather than around them.
The Support
We are your controller and your CFO. As your controller we handle the historical numbers, the close, and the reports you can actually lean on. As your CFO we handle what comes next — forecasting, scenarios, pricing, and a seat at the table while the call is still open. Both seats are ours. Most owners start with the controller work and add the CFO layer when the questions start pointing forward.
The Boardroom
The room where you stop deciding alone. Eight to ten owners from outside your industry, none with a stake in your answer, meeting monthly — plus a private one-on-one with me. What they give you is perspective, which is the one thing nobody inside your business can. The walls have to be up first: a board is only worth having when the numbers underneath it hold. The next board launches July 1, 2027.
Scroll to build
Who this is for
We're not for everyone. That's the point.
A specific system for a specific operator. Being honest about both saves everyone time.
Yes — built for you
Owner-operated, $500K–$5M, and tired of guessing.
- $500K–$5M in annual revenue, and you own it
- Established and functioning — not a startup, not survival mode
- You have numbers but you don't fully trust them
- You want to understand what they mean, not just have them filed
- You'll invest to fix it properly rather than duct-tape it
If four of those five are you, we should talk.
Probably not us
Real needs. Just not the work we do.
- Under $500K — usually a bookkeeper's job, not a repair and rebuild
- Price-shopping for the lowest bookkeeping quote
- Want to be taught data entry — we teach you to read the numbers and make the call
- Want a tax outcome promised before anyone has seen the books
- “Just this one cleanup, then we're done”
All legitimate. There are good firms for every one of them, and I'll point you at one.
Not sure which side you're on? Still worth a conversation. Thirty minutes will tell us both whether this is the right fit — and if it isn't, I'll point you to someone it is.
How clients describe the problem
“I feel like I'm flying blind.”
“I don't trust what my bookkeeper tells me.”
“We're making money — but where did it go?”
“I only hear from my accountant when something's due.”
“I need to know if I can afford this hire.”
“My income statement doesn't match my bank account.”
“I'm making these calls on my own.”
“I'm tired of guessing.”
Chiropractic & medical practices
Production isn't collected cash. Charges, contractual adjustments, patient payments and payer deposits land on different days, so a full schedule can sit right next to a tight bank account. We separate what the practice earns from what it keeps, then show margin by service line — adjustments, rehab, wellness plans, diagnostics, products — so you know which part of the practice is carrying the rest.
Restaurants & hospitality
A busy dining room can still hide a weak business. Food and labor each commonly take about a third of every sales dollar, so a few points of drift is the entire margin. We reconcile POS, delivery payouts, merchant deposits, gift cards and comps until revenue ties out, then show prime cost weekly — while there is still time to act — and profit by menu, daypart and location.
E-commerce & online retail
Sales are visible. Profit is buried. Orders don't land in the bank as clean revenue: refunds, processing and channel fees, sales tax collected and payout timing all sit in between. We reconcile payouts to deposits, build contribution margin by SKU, channel and campaign, and connect inventory to cash — because stock is cash in another form.
The person you'll work with
I've sat in your chair too.
Years of it inside other people's companies, then once more for my own firm. Yours is next — and when you book a strategy call, you talk to me. No funnel, no associate handoff.
01For them.For years I ran operations and finance inside other people's companies. Every one of them, the same job — find where the money was leaking, tighten the operation, make it more profitable.
02For me.Then I built this firm on the same thing that worked there. Clean systems, real numbers, decisions you can actually trust.
03For you.Now the same repair and rebuild, for your business — the deep dive, then the foundation, then a standing monthly conversation about what the numbers mean.
Clients
Nationwide
In practice
Since 2007
Family
Married 32 yrs · 7 kids
Off-hours
In the garden · on the ambulance
MAcc, Taxation · MBA · Licensed CPA
On the operating side since 1993 — credit and collections manager to COO, CFO and SVP
Founder & principal
Bruce Hacking
Certified Public Accountant
I've spent my career doing this for other people first. At a consumer finance company I helped take the footprint from fourteen locations to forty-one across seven states. At a computer retailer I ran production and then all nine stores — moved the plant to lean manufacturing, cut inventory in half, rebuilt the accounting, and found the stores that were quietly losing money.
Then a software company called PlanSwift, where I came in as CFO. They'd just done $2.4 million, had fourteen employees, and the books were a mess. A year in, I helped plan and execute a merger. After that I moved over to run operations. By the time we sold, we were past $14 million in revenue with a hundred and forty employees across two locations — and I stayed on through two more acquisitions, the last one to Oracle. Same job, four different names on the letterhead.
In every one of them the work was the same: find where the money was leaking, tighten the operation, make it more profitable. I wasn't reporting the numbers. I was the one who had to act on them.
Then I did it for myself. I built my own firm on the same principle that worked everywhere else — clean systems, real numbers, decisions you can actually trust. A few years back I went looking for a practice of my own, one where the people I worked with would feel like family and the community would feel like home. I found that here in Utah.
Now I want to do it for you. My engagements look more like a virtual CFO than a once-a-year filing service, because that's the work that actually moves the needle.
Reasonable price
We have been with Hacking CPA for 8 years. He explains everything really well and is very knowledgeable. Makes everything go much smoother.
ServicesBusiness startup services, Business tax return preparation, Individual tax planning
Google review
Bruce Hacking has helped me with my taxes for several years now. I keep going back every year because he does an amazing job. He stays current with changing tax laws and helps answer my questions with a deep level of understanding. I would highly recommend Hacking CPA!
View on Google →
I was really nervous about my taxes this year and am terrible on computer applications. Bruce was good explaining the process and was quick to answer questions and concerns I had. I highly recommend him and his staff.
Google review
Schedule a strategy call
30 minutes. No prep required.
A working session, not a sales call. You describe the gap; I'll tell you whether a repair and rebuild fits — and what it would look like for your business.
- Bruce Hacking, CPA — directly
- Free, with no obligation
- 30 minutes over Zoom
- Honest fit assessment
- If we're not a fit, I'll say so
Or email [email protected]
Ready when you are
Choose a time that works for you.
Open the calendar to view Bruce's available times and schedule your free 30-minute strategy call.
Schedule Your Strategy Call →Common questions
Anything else on your mind?
If your question isn't here, bring it to the call. Honest answers are part of the work.
How is this different from a bookkeeper or my current CPA?
Bookkeepers record. CPAs file. Neither one has sat in the chair where the decision actually gets made. I spent years running operations and finance inside other people's companies before I built my own firm the same way. So the deliverable isn't a tax return. It's a system you can run the business on, and someone who has built it before reading it with you every month.
What does an engagement cost?
Every engagement starts with The Blueprint — $3,500. A deep dive into the books as they actually are: what's wrong, what it's costing you, and a plan for fixing it. You keep it whether you hire me after or not. Nobody builds without one. And if the Blueprint turns out to be a simple job, I'll credit part of the $3,500 against the build — I'd rather do that than hold money I didn't have to earn.
Past that I don't publish a price list, because the number depends on how heavy your books are and nobody can tell that from a website. What I can give you is the shape of it.
Tax planning and return preparation are priced separately and open up once you're a client. Returns start at $850 for a personal return (1040) and $1,850 for an S corp or partnership return (1120-S, 1065). Those are starting prices — a complicated return costs more, and I'll tell you the number before I start it.
If the numbers don't fit your business yet, I'd rather say so on the call than after.
What does the build cost — the cleanup, the systems, getting it running?
I don't know yet. And neither does anyone who quotes you before they've seen your books.
The cleanup, the tech stack, the SOPs, the people — what that takes depends entirely on what we find. Pricing it sight unseen would mean guessing with your money, and I'd rather not start that way.
That's what the Blueprint is for, and it's why $3,500 is the only number on this page. Investment and timeline are two of the six things the Blueprint delivers, so you get the figure in writing before anyone touches anything — and you keep it whether you hire me afterward or not.
What's the difference between a controller and a CFO?
A controller makes the numbers right. A CFO uses them to make the call.
Controller work looks backward and has to be airtight — reconciliations, a close that actually closes, reports that hold up when you lean on them. CFO work looks forward — forecasting, scenarios, pricing, what a hire or a piece of equipment does to cash twelve months out — and a seat at the table while the decision is still open, not a report after it's already made.
Most owners need the controller layer first, because you can't forecast off numbers you don't trust. You can move up later, and plenty do.
What is the peer advisory board?
Eight to ten owner-operators — none in your industry, none with a stake in your answer. The board meets once a month for three to four hours on real decisions, not a webinar, and you get a private one-on-one with me each month on top of it.
The point is plain enough: most owners make the biggest calls in the business alone, with nobody to check the thinking. This is the room where you don't. Seats are capped at ten and the next board launches July 1, 2027.
My books are a mess. Is that a problem?
No. It's the normal starting condition, and the repair and rebuild assumes it. What we don't do is clean it up once and hand it back — if the books need serious work first that pushes the build toward the long end of that range, and we'll tell you that before we start rather than halfway through.
Do you specialize in an industry?
No, and that's intentional. We niche by operational profile: $500K–$5M owner-operated businesses with real complexity — employees, payroll, multiple revenue streams. The system is the same regardless of what you sell.
How long until I see results?
The Blueprint takes about two weeks. Laying the foundation runs another two to six weeks, depending on how heavy the books are. You'll have a working cash model and profit-by-segment view inside the first month. After that we move to the monthly cadence — and that part doesn't end.
Do you do tax prep, too?
Yes — for clients we already work with. Your books are kept tax-ready year round and we flag exposure as we see it, so April is never news. Tax planning and return preparation are priced separately and open up once you're a client — returns start at $850 for a personal return and $1,850 for an S corp or partnership return. The return is a downstream artifact of clean operations, not the product itself.
I'm in another state. Can we still work together?
Yes. The work is operational — financial system repair and rebuild, cash modeling, profit clarity, monthly CFO cadence — and isn't bound by state lines. We work with owner-operators across the country.