Waypoint — A product of Cairn Accounting
What a $7,500-a-month fractional CFO does, for $562.
Three monthly reports a business owner can actually read. In plain English. Signed by an accountant. Mailed to your inbox.
You came here looking for something.
You did not come here to learn double-entry bookkeeping.
You came here because you have built something. A business. Real revenue. Real people. Real customers. And every year, around tax time, you look at the report your tax preparer hands you and you think: I should understand this better.
You don't. Not the way you want to.
Your gut tells you the business made money. Your gut tells you which months were good. Your gut is right — almost. Within about ten percent. The trouble is, for most businesses, ten percent is the whole margin. The difference between we had a great year and we worked a great year for nothing lives in that gap.
You did not come here to learn double-entry bookkeeping. You came here to close the gap.
The way it's usually done.
There is somebody else doing your books. Your spouse. The office manager. A long-tenured admin who has been with you since the early days. An outside firm that charges $400 a month and disappears between tax seasons. They are loyal. They are doing their best. They are not a controller, and they were never asked to be.
What you get from them is usually one of two things. Either silence — a QuickBooks file you never open, a folder of statements, a feeling that everything is probably fine. Or a year-end binder from the tax preparer, in March, that tells you what you already knew in your gut, eleven months too late to do anything about it.
What you want is the third thing. The thing that has never really existed for a business your size: a monthly conversation about your numbers, the way a fractional CFO would have it with you — what cash is doing, what last month meant, what to watch this month — without the fractional CFO bill.
That is what we built.
Here is what happens, every month, without you lifting a finger.
90-Day Money Map
One page on where your cash is heading, the biggest movers in and out, and the patterns worth watching.
Owner Dashboard
Last month's actuals, bookkeeper-resolved items, benchmarks, and a plain-English read signed by an accountant.
Month in Plain English
The story of what happened, what changed, and what to think about heading into the new month.
On the 5th, we read your books. Quietly. Read access only — we never touch a thing inside QuickBooks. Your data does not move.
On the 7th, your bookkeeper gets a friendly checklist by email. Items to review. Accounts to reconcile. Transactions that look unusual compared to the pattern of your business. Items addressed, never errors. Their name is on the work, and we are on call to them all week.
The same morning, you receive the 90-Day Money Map. One page. Where your cash is heading over the next ninety days, the biggest movers in and out, and a short list of patterns worth watching. The forward-looking page no QuickBooks report has ever produced.
Between the 7th and the 14th, your bookkeeper has the time to clean up anything that needs cleaning up — before any of it ever reaches your desk.
On the 15th, the Owner Dashboard lands. One page. Last month's actuals, the items your bookkeeper resolved during the close (named and credited to them), and a benchmark line — the national median for your industry, your number, and a plain-English read on whether your business is doing well, on par, or a little behind. Signed by an accountant.
Around the 22nd, the Month in Plain English arrives. A short letter, written the way a careful accountant would explain last month if they had time to sit down and tell you. The story of what happened, what changed, what to think about heading into the new month. No charts. No jargon. The thing you read with your morning coffee and walk into your week understanding your business better than you did the night before.
On the 7th of the next month, it starts again.
That is the whole arrangement. It runs whether you are out of state, deep in the work, asleep, or in the hospital. You are not buying software. You are buying the discipline of an accountant doing this work for you, every month, on schedule, so you do not have to remember it is the 7th.
Your bookkeeper stays. They are your lieutenant.
The most important paragraph on this page may be this one.
Your bookkeeper is not being replaced. Not being graded. Not being watched. We sit one layer above them, not in front of them. Their checklist arrives on the 7th — eight days before your dashboard does — and they have the full week to address anything that needs addressing before you see your numbers. Their name appears on your Owner Dashboard, credited for the items they resolved that month.
Most of the bookkeepers we work with come around to liking Waypoint more than the owner does. It gives them someone to call when something looks odd. It takes the pressure off them to be a controller they were never asked to be. It makes them look exactly as good as they are.
We were built by people who learned bookkeeping the long way. We are on their side.
Is this you?
Waypoint is built for an owner who:
- Runs the books in QuickBooks Online.
- Has somebody else — a spouse, an office manager, a long-tenured admin, an outside firm — doing the bookkeeping.
- Wants to understand the numbers without learning the accounting.
If that is you, keep reading.
If you do your own books, we will be a better fit for you the day you hire somebody. Not before.
What we are not.
We are not your bookkeeper. We sit one layer above. The product breaks if you don't have one.
We are not your tax preparer. Your tax accountant handles your return. We make their job easier in March by handing them clean monthly books to work from.
We are not software you log in to. Waypoint is a monthly service. The reports come to your inbox. You read them. There is no dashboard to learn, no login to remember, no quarterly software-training email.
We do not include cleanup in the monthly fee. If your books are behind, we will scope the cleanup separately and quote a number before any monthly billing starts. You will see the price before you commit.
What it costs.
Most owners find one thing in their first three reports worth more than a full year of Waypoint.
Card processing running at 3.2% when ACH would run 0.4%. Two hundred thousand dollars sitting in checking when a money market would have paid four percent. A service line quietly losing money for six months that nobody had the time to look at. Quarterly payroll taxes underwithheld for a year by a software default nobody had touched. A rent figure above market that one phone call can renegotiate. We have written all of these into Month-in-Plain-English letters.
For perspective, this work is usually purchased in pieces. A bookkeeper-only relationship runs $300 to $1,500 a month and does not include reports written for an owner. A fractional CFO retainer runs $5,000 to $10,000 a month. A business-intelligence dashboard subscription runs $200 to $2,000 a month and does not sit with you to explain what it means.
The trial.
Three months free. No card.
Connect QuickBooks Online once. Your first 90-Day Money Map arrives in your inbox in about five minutes. Your first signed Owner Dashboard arrives on the 15th.
After three months, if Waypoint isn't worth $562 a month to you, you walk. No phone call required. We will send you a folder of everything we produced for you, so you have it.
If it is worth it, you do nothing. The monthly billing begins. The reports keep arriving.
You did not start this business to learn accounting.
You started it to build something.
Let us watch the books.