Slate and Summit is a strategic finance firm for U.S. owner-led businesses. We close your books by the tenth, plan your tax position year-round, and put a Pulse Deck in your hands every month — so you can stop guessing and start deciding.
Foundation first. Strategic elevation second. We will not build a forecast on broken books, and we say so on the discovery call. Every engagement moves through the same three-step arc.
We take ownership of your AP, AR, and month-end close. Books closed by the tenth business day, every month, on QuickBooks Online or Sage Intacct. Management-prepared financials in a format your banker and your board can read.
Year-round tax planning. Draft returns prepared in-house under PTIN; signed by our partnered CPA or Enrolled Agent. A 13-week rolling cash forecast updated monthly — weekly when the business demands it.
A standardized monthly board-ready deliverable covering performance, cash, forecast variance, vertical KPIs, and the three decisions your leadership team needs to make this month. Scenario modeling, lender meetings, and quarterly strategic reviews on a steady cadence.
The anchor engagement.
Full-cycle bookkeeping on QuickBooks Online or Sage Intacct. AP and AR workflow ownership. Month-end close by the tenth business day. Management-prepared financials — income statement, balance sheet, cash flow — in a format your banker can use.
Explore Modern Controllership →A tax position you manage year-round, not one you discover in April.
Entity structure analysis. Cost segregation coordination for real estate clients. R&D credit identification. Sales and use tax management. Draft returns prepared in-house under PTIN — signed by our partnered CPA or Enrolled Agent.
Explore Tax Advisory →A finance leader in the room — without the full-time hire.
13-week rolling cash forecast. Unit economics by service line, job, or property. Capital stack strategy. Banker and lender meeting attendance. And the Pulse Deck — our signature monthly board-ready deliverable.
Explore Fractional CFO →Generalist providers underserve businesses where finance complexity is the bottleneck. We chose three verticals where the work compounds across clients — and where the cost of getting it wrong is high.
Three-way IOLTA reconciliation every month — audit-ready and documented. Practice-management integration with Clio, MyCase, or LeanLaw. Contingency-fee revenue recognition, origination tracking, and partner compensation discipline. Your trust account is one mistake away from a bar complaint. We close it monthly.
Multi-entity bookkeeping with property-level NOI and consolidated portfolio reporting. Cost segregation coordination — meaningfully sharper since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act restored permanent 100% bonus depreciation in January 2025. REPS qualification documentation. Lender package preparation. 1031 basis tracking.
Cost-code-level job costing, weekly during active phases. Defensible WIP schedule preparation — the kind sureties and lenders will actually accept. Margin fade analysis: estimate-to-actual variance by job, phase, and crew. Change order tracking. Equipment depreciation planning.
Every Fractional CFO engagement includes a standardized monthly board-ready deliverable. Five sections, delivered by the fifteenth business day, every month — covering financial performance, cash position, forecast variance, vertical-specific KPIs, and the three decisions your leadership team needs to make this month.
A fixed template, never custom-redesigned per client. Vertical KPIs swap by industry; everything else is constant.
Slate and Summit is not a CPA firm. By design. Where the law requires a CPA — signing returns, issuing audited or reviewed financials, representing you before the IRS — we work alongside a partnered CPA or Enrolled Agent. Everywhere else, we hire and deploy on demonstrated capability. It is a more honest model. It is also a better one for owner-operators.
The CPA license was designed to protect the public around attestation work — audits, reviews, opinions a third party relies on. It was not designed to gatekeep the monthly close, the forecast model, or the strategic conversation with an owner about whether to take a project. Most $2M–$15M businesses pay a CPA firm for the latter and never receive the former. We invert that arrangement. We do the work in-house. We bring a CPA in where the law brings the CPA in. The result is a firm that is faster, more accountable, and more honest about what it is doing on your behalf.
"Slate and Summit is the first finance partner we've had where I don't worry about the books between meetings."— Managing Partner, mid-sized litigation firm
"We hired a CFO and got a firm. That's better."— Principal, multi-family real estate operator
"The Pulse Deck is the only thing our board reads end-to-end."— Owner, general contractor
We do not pitch on the first call. Every engagement starts with two short conversations — one diagnostic, one scoping — so we both know what we are agreeing to before anyone signs anything.
We learn the state of your books, the state of your tax position, the state of your strategic visibility, and the vertical context. We listen for the trigger — the specific event behind why you are here this month. No pitch. No deck.
We come back with a recommended engagement shape — which pillars, what cadence, what success looks like in ninety days. We share a written Scoping Proposal: maximum five pages, including pricing and terms.
Most engagements start on the first of the month following scoping. The first 60–90 days are the Slate phase: tech stack audit, catch-up work where needed, and the first month-end close at the 10-day target.
SOC 2-aligned controls. Zero-Trust access architecture. AES-256 encryption at rest, TLS 1.3 in transit. Role-based access with least-privilege defaults and client-data segmentation across engagements. Formal SOC 2 Type II attestation is on our roadmap (DRAFT — verify target date).
Slate and Summit operates a dedicated Global Capability Center in Pakistan that supports our controllership operations. The GCC is not a third-party vendor — it is a dedicated team operating under our tech stack, our quality standards, our SOC 2-aligned controls, and our Zero-Trust access architecture, supervised by U.S.-based principals who own every engagement. We treat our GCC colleagues as colleagues.
We use AI as a co-pilot, not a co-signer. AI accelerates transaction categorization, anomaly detection, narrative drafting, and document handling. Every AI-assisted artifact that leaves Slate and Summit has been reviewed by a person who is accountable for it.
Slate and Summit, LLC is not a CPA firm and is not licensed by any state board of public accountancy. Financial statements we prepare are management-prepared and have not been audited, reviewed, or compiled under the AICPA's Statements on Standards for Accounting and Review Services (SSARS). Tax returns are prepared under a PTIN and signed by an independently engaged CPA or Enrolled Agent. Slate and Summit does not represent clients before the IRS, and does not provide investment, legal, or fiduciary advice.
Thirty minutes with a principal. We learn the state of your books, your tax position, and your strategic visibility — and tell you honestly whether we can help. No pitch. No deck. No phone field.
How owner-operators actually ask these questions — and how we actually answer them.