Better questions. Sharper decisions.

Specialty refinishing company · Bookkeeping & Accounting + Fractional CFO (Project)

The situation

A founder-built specialty refinishing business had outgrown its finance function. The owner had inherited a union-based cost structure he had been carrying for years, a service mix he priced on instinct, and reporting that arrived after every decision had already been made. The business was profitable on paper. The owner could not tell, month to month, whether it was holding ground or quietly losing it.

Several decisions had stacked up. The owner was considering a restructuring of the union commission-and-benefits arrangement and wanted to understand the P&L impact before acting. Owner deposits needed to be coded correctly for tax purposes. A capital decision on the next van — finance or pay cash — was sitting unresolved. The existing reports did not speak to any of it.

The work

Azurium took over the books under the Business Partner tier and tightened the monthly close so reporting landed inside the owner's decision window. The structural work followed. We rebuilt the management view around the way the business actually operates: accrual revenue separated from cash collections, AR aging surfaced by bucket, subcontractor spend broken out as a discrete cost line, and a clean before-and-after view of the cost base so the owner could see the impact of his structural decisions before he made them.

On top of that, we ran a working session against the three decisions the owner had been carrying: cost structure, distribution policy, and the next investment. Between sessions, the fractional CFO absorbs the in-flight questions — how to code a member deposit, how to think about van financing, what to send a bank to support a refinancing — that previously sat unresolved.

The outcome

The reports look different now. They feel like his. When the owner moved on the union restructuring, we helped him quantify and operationalize the change: over $104K of annual COGS came off the P&L, contributing to a YTD profit turnaround of more than $75K versus the prior-year loss. Gross margin expanded by roughly 10 points. Cash on hand is up 50% year-over-year on the comparable month.

The levers are visible and in the owner's hands. AR by bucket tells him where to chase cash. Subcontractor spend has a ceiling tied to revenue. Distribution policy is anchored to a cash floor rather than a bank balance.

The monthly review stopped being a post-mortem. It became a working session.

"Most business owners I know didn't grow up with a financial background. Azurium gets you asking better questions, understanding what your numbers really mean, and making smarter decisions. That's what actually helps your business grow." — Owner, specialty refinishing company