Our Services

Specializing in Charter Schools, our accounting firm offers tailored financial services, including Accounting, Finance, Development/Grant Management, Audits, and more.

From strategic planning to professional development, we ensure fiscal integrity and support schools in navigating challenges with confidence.

Accounting & Finance, Development & Grant Management, Budgets & Reporting, Strategic & Process Development, Audits, Professional Development, StartUp, Assessments, Dissolutions

Accounting & Finance

Let us be your back-office support. We can:

Enter and pay your monthly bills
Prepare & process your payroll
Enter and track Per Pupil revenue and other receivables
Track grant spending & restrictions
Design, implement, and manage your monthly close
Leverage technology to make the entire process more transparent and efficient

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Questions about our services or unsure where to start?

Development & Grant Management

Grants can be complicated with their funding qualifications, usage restrictions, and mountains of paperwork. This only gets more complicated with the more grants you have and the variety of grantors. CSBM can help you with your grant applications, tracking of funds, and budgeting for specific programs. We’ll ensure this data ties back to your accounting system so that grant-spending status is a click away.

Budgets & Reporting

Whether you need a single-year, multi-year, departmental, or project-based budget, we can help to produce whatever your organization requires. We’ll meet with your team to understand your reporting needs and can design, edit, and update your periodic reporting. You may also have school authorizer-specific reports, bond covenants, or grantor reporting due on a regular basis which we can help you stay on top of.

Strategic & Process Development

Finance and accounting can be even more challenging when you don’t have the right processes in place for your school. When should billing start? Who signs off for what type of transaction? Why is it taking so long to pay a bill? Identifying the bottlenecks in your finance process can help build efficiency and reduce stress on your team. CSBM can review your processes and provide guidance in thoughtfully restructuring the workflows and how to best utilize technology for greater efficiency.

Audits

Don’t panic! CSBM can support your entire audit process by helping you prepare throughout the year. Additionally, we will manage your engagement with the auditor, prepare audit schedules, and review all documents requested to/from the auditor. We can also ensure that your CPA has all the needed information for your 990 return as you close out your fiscal year.

Professional Development

Not everyone knows what accrual-based accounting is, or how to read Financial Statements. But that’s ok. CSBM can design courses for individuals or teams to understand the variety of topics that they will encounter in school-focused finances. We also offer ongoing support throughout the school year in order to help your team learn the timing and lifecycles of the various systems, reporting requirements, and other fun things that the government may ask of you.

StartUp

So you’re starting a Charter School? Let us help you through this extraordinary and noble undertaking. You will need to create realistic multi-year budgets, design usage plans for your initial revenue sources, and architect a thoughtful financial management process. Most educators do not have this experience preprogrammed in their minds, so we can guide you through these steps and the myriad others that will follow. We will help you stay on top of all the deliverables and competing timelines required by your authorizer, the government, and funders.

Assessments

If something doesn’t feel right about your financial process, allow us to conduct an assessment of your situation. We can analyze your overall financial operations or specific areas of concern like reporting, accounting software, or bill payment. If you feel your team is struggling, we can review the structure of the team, their responsibilities, and provide an analysis of what processes or tasks are causing the points of frustration. We can provide a formal written synopsis and meet with key stakeholders to review our findings and recommendations.

Dissolutions

No one wants to be in this situation, but if your school is going to be shut down, we can assist with this challenging process. Communication is paramount, and we will work closely with your auditor, legal counsel, authorizer, and other agencies to ensure that the books are finalized and financial assets are tracked. Depending on the reason for the dissolution, there can be a tremendous request of financial information from the few remaining staff or board members – let us help you with this arduous task.

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