Frequently Asked Questions
Working with Thryve
Working with Thryve means taking your accounting relationship to the next level; we act as an ongoing financial partner assisting you to grow your business.
- Weekly Bookkeeping for updated and accurate financial data
- Clean financial reporting
- Proactive tax planning, not just year-end filing
- Ongoing access to your responsive accountant
- Business CFO strategy sessions to support your business growth and long-term planning (optional)
- Personal CFO option to build clarity around your personal finances, strengthen cash flow and support your move to financial independence
You get clear numbers, consistent support, and better insights for decision-making.
Our onboarding process is structured to get you up and running quickly:
- Kickoff meeting within a few days of signing up to:
- Lay out onboarding plan
- Align on goals and priorities Discuss immediate projects
- Provide overview of annual accounting cycle
- Receive access from client to data needed for work
- Set up a fixed date for monthly meetings
- Clean up and organize financials, if needed
- Work on amended tax returns, if needed
Set up reporting and workflows Most of our clients gain clarity from their numbers within the first 30–60 days of working with us.
With Thryve, communication is built in – no surprise bills!
- Emails, calls, and meetings included
- Responses typically within 24 hours
- Recurring strategy meetings for CFO clients
No hourly billing, so you don’t hesitate to reach out. Our goal is to help you understand the available options as quick as possible and determine the best course of action to keep your business moving forward.
We handle the day-to-day accounting so you can focus on running your business.
Your involvement is focused on:
- Reviewing reports
- Making decisions
- Setting goals
We simplify the financial side without removing your visibility.
Smart Financial Systems is a standalone service that helps small business owners figure out where technology and AI tools can realistically fit into their finance and administrative processes and how to put the right ones in place correctly.
It’s a structured one month engagement. We assess how your business currently runs, map the workflows where technology can save real time or improve financial visibility, share financial process best practices grounded in real small business experience, and deliver a prioritized 90-day action plan with tool recommendations built around your specific situation.
You don’t need to be an existing Thryve client to start here.
Fit & Pricing
We work with small businesses across the U.S., typically:
- $200K to ~$10M in annual revenue
- Businesses without a full-time CFO or controller
- Owners looking for a deeper relationship with their accountant to gain financial clarity and support business growth
We may not be the right fit if you:
- Only want basic tax filing once a year
- Are looking for the lowest-cost provider
- Don’t want an ongoing accounting relationship
- Require assistance for a specific one-time project
We work best with owners who want to use their numbers to grow.
The Smart Financial Systems is a fit if you’re:
- Spending too many hours on repetitive finance and administrative tasks
- Reacting to cash flow and profitability problems instead of using data and systems to see them coming
- Curious about AI and technology benefits for your back office but not sure what’s actually worth using
- Ready to build smarter systems without a steep learning curve
You don’t need a background in technology or an existing Thryve relationship to get started.
We offer fixed monthly pricing with no surprise fees. See all of our services here.
Pricing depends on your business complexity and service level.
Pricing is finalized during the initial call and is dependent on the number of processes you want to complete and the complexity of the business.
No – there are no long-term contracts. We want you to be excited to work with your accountant and choose Thryve every month.
If you aren’t fully satisfied with your Thryve experience, you can cancel at any time and receive a one-month refund of your monthly recurring fees. We want to earn your business through trust and results.
Services & Value
A fractional CFO helps you make better financial decisions by providing:
- Financial performance explained in a practical way focused on successes, risk areas and immediate actions to improve
- KPI selection, goal setting, tracking and performance insights
- Strategic planning and accountability
- Cash flow forecasting and visibility
- Profitability analysis
- Working capital management
- Back office process development and improvement
It’s about turning your financial data into action.
A business fractional CFO is ideal for business owners who:
- Need help managing cash flow and profitability
- Want more strategic insight
- Are growing and making more complex decisions
It’s a cost-effective way to get high-level financial guidance. For more established business ready for the next step, Business CFO Catalyst looks deeper and further ahead.
A personal fractional CFO is designed for business owners who want the same level of clarity and control in their personal finances.
You might benefit if you:
- Have growing income but no clear personal financial system
- Want to track your net worth and cash flow more effectively
- Need help planning for financial independence or major life goals
- Struggle to connect your business success to personal wealth
- Want more structure, organization, and accountability
A personal CFO helps you turn business success into long-term financial stability.
In many cases, yes.
Your business generates income, but your personal finances determine how that income actually supports your life.
When both are aligned, you get:
- A clearer financial picture
- Better long-term planning
- More intentional decision-making
Bookkeeping focuses on recording transactions and maintaining accurate financial data.
Accounting goes further by:
- Interpreting financial reports
- Providing insights
- Supporting tax strategy and decision-making
Yes, through proactive tax planning.
We help:
- Identify relevant deductions and credits for your business
- Prepare mid-year and year end tax liability projection calculations to map out tax planning strategies and manage tax estimate payments
- Plan ahead to minimize tax liability
- Align tax strategy with business goals
- Monitor new tax law at the federal, state and local levels to apply to our clients’ specific situations quickly
The biggest savings come from planning before year-end.
Strong financial management supports growth by:
- Improving cash flow visibility
- Identifying profitable opportunities
- Reducing unnecessary expenses
- Supporting better, faster decisions
Clear numbers lead to smarter growth.
For the right business, yes. These tools are genuinely useful for:
- forward looking visibility,
- generating insights on your financial data,
- real-time anomaly detection,
- connecting processes from different systems and apps
- and improving the efficiency and accuracy of manual work.
The challenge most small business owners run into is knowing:
- which processes can be accomplished better with the right technology,
- which tools are worth using,
- how to set them up so the output is actually accurate,
- and how to ensure all the pieces fit together so your financial operations stay effective and continue to support your business goals.
Most clients see value quickly:
- Immediate time savings
- Better financial organization
- Less stress
- Clearer reporting within the first 1–2 months
- Strategic insights as data improves
Business CFO Essentials keeps you on track month to month. We meet regularly, review your current operational performance, cash flow and KPIs, and help you work through business decisions from a financial perspective as they come up.
Business CFO Catalyst includes all of that, plus three things that look deeper and further ahead:
- Profit: Each quarter, we break down which customers, products, or services make you the most money and which ones don’t.
- Value: Once a year, we estimate what your business is worth and give you specific ways to increase it.
- Plan: Each year-end, we build a full forecast for the next year with you, including a few “what if” scenarios.
If Business CFO Essentials helps you run the business well today, Business CFO Catalyst helps you decide where to take it next.
No. Our value assessment is an internal planning tool for you and your team. It can’t be used for a sale, a bank loan, gift or estate taxes, or any legal purpose, and others can’t rely on it.
Its job is different. It shows you roughly what your business is worth today and which changes would raise that value the most, such as pricing, contracts, your team, or how much you depend on a few big customers. Then we pick one or two to work on together.
If you need a formal valuation for a sale, loan, or tax filing, you’ll want a credentialed valuation professional.
Business CFO Catalyst follows a set calendar, so you always know what’s coming:
- Every month: Your regular Business CFO Essentials meetings.
- Every quarter: We analyze your profitability drivers by customer, product and service and review them together with you.
- July and August: We complete your business value assessment, using your 12 month trailing results through June 30, and meet to build your value improvement implementation plan.
- November and December: We build next year’s financial forecast, including assumptions, so you can test drive your ideas and put them into concrete numbers to start January with a clear plan.
Logistics
Yes, we handle transitions regularly.
- Coordinate with your current accountant
- Transfer financial data
- Ensure a smooth handoff
No need to start from scratch.
Our clients primarily use QuickBooks Online and provide us with access as an accountant user. We also use other bookkeeping, tax and data visualization tools as part of our tech stack. These tools commonly provide:
- Real-time financial access
- Accurate reporting
- Efficient collaboration
Our goal is to make the client experience as simple and stress free as possible.
That’s common and fixable.
We’ll:
- Clean up your books
- Catch everything up
- Build a reliable system going forward
Still Have Questions? Let’s talk.
We’re happy to walk through your situation and see if Thryve is the right fit.
