Fractional controller services for nonprofits
Your nonprofit's finances need an owner. Not just a bookkeeper.
Truvio owns the finance function for nonprofits: the monthly close, board reporting, grant and fund accounting, and audit preparation. CPA-led, delivered remotely, and accountable for numbers your board can rely on.
Describe what's happening in your finance function and you'll hear back from Jeremy directly.
Jeremy Hood, CPA Florida-licensed In accounting since 2008
- $65M
- Nonprofit healthcare organization Where Jeremy served as Controller, across roughly 40 programs and multiple federal and grant-funded revenue streams.
- 10 days
- Monthly close, after redesign He rebuilt the close process at that organization and brought it down to ten business days.
- 3 weeks to 1
- Close cycle, another nonprofit At Southern Legal Counsel, where he serves as Comptroller, after rebuilding the close and grant reporting.
These are results from Jeremy's own roles as Controller and Comptroller inside nonprofit finance departments, not outcomes claimed on behalf of Truvio clients. Full background.
Sound familiar?
Your books can be technically correct and your finance function can still be broken.
Most of the problems we see don't show up as errors. They show up the moment someone needs to rely on the numbers.
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The monthly close keeps slipping.
March financials arrive in June. Decisions get made on stale numbers, or on someone’s best guess.
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Board reports need last-minute corrections.
The packet changes between distribution and the meeting. The fundraising report and the financial statements don’t agree. After a few cycles, the board stops trusting the reports, even when they’re right.
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Restricted funds and grants are hard to track.
Nobody can say quickly what’s been spent against which grant, what’s left, and what’s owed back. Reimbursement requests lag. Funder reports get assembled under deadline pressure.
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Too much lives in one person’s head.
One employee knows how the allocations work, which accounts get reconciled, and where the grant files are. If they leave, that knowledge leaves with them.
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The audit is a fire drill every year.
Schedules get built from scratch. Auditor questions land on the Executive Director. The management letter keeps mentioning the same things.
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Leadership gets reports but still can’t answer basic questions.
How much unrestricted cash do we actually have? Can we afford this hire? Are we on budget? The reports exist. The confidence doesn’t.
If two or three of these sound familiar, the problem usually isn't your bookkeeper. It's that nobody is accountable for the finance function as a whole.
What Truvio actually does
Four responsibilities. One finance function that actually has an owner.
Truvio works as your nonprofit's Controller on a fractional basis, taking responsibility for the finance function rather than delivering a set of reports.
Own the monthly finance function
A close that lands on a date you can plan around, with reconciled accounts and statements nobody has to caveat.
Give leadership better information
Budget to actual with written explanation, cash and runway by restriction, and board packets built for the decisions in front of you.
Keep grants and audits from becoming fire drills
Award tracking stays current through the year, so funder reports reconcile and audit schedules are a byproduct of the close.
Build a function that outlasts any one person
Written procedures, controls sized to your actual staffing, and an accounting system configured for fund accounting rather than fought against.
What each of these includes, and what sits outside the engagement. Deeper detail on audit preparation and grant and restricted fund accounting.
Finance leadership transitions
Your Finance Director is leaving. The accounting doesn't get to leave with them.
When a Controller, Finance Manager, or Finance Director gives notice, nothing on the calendar moves. Payroll still runs, the board still meets, grant reports are still due, and most of what that person did was never written down.
Truvio keeps the finance function running through the gap, and makes sure the organization is in better shape when the next person arrives than it was the day the notice landed.
How that usually works
- 01 Capture what the outgoing person knows
- 02 Stabilize the close, payroll, AP, and grant billing
- 03 Document processes and controls
- 04 Keep the external deadlines
- 05 Fix what should not be handed over as is
- 06 Hand off to your new hire, or stay
Why fractional
Why fractional, and when it makes sense.
Most nonprofits need controller-level judgment: someone who understands fund accounting, knows what the auditors will ask, and can tell the Executive Director what the numbers actually mean. Fewer of them need 40 hours a week of that.
A well-designed finance function separates the work by what it requires. Transaction processing can be handled by a bookkeeper or a capable staff member, supported by good systems and clear procedures. Controller-level review, reporting, and judgment sit on top.
Truvio provides that top layer, and the layer beneath it where you need that too. You get senior financial oversight without building the whole finance department around one full-time salary, and without hoping a bookkeeper grows into a Controller on their own.
A fractional controller tends to fit when
- The organization has bookkeeping covered, but nobody is accountable for the finance function overall
- Grants, restricted funds, or multiple programs have made the accounting genuinely complex
- Leadership needs better reporting than it’s getting, and knows it
- The finance role is in transition
- A full-time Controller isn’t justified yet, but the risk of not having one is real
It fits less well when an organization mainly needs transaction processing, or is large enough that the role is clearly full-time. If that's the case, you'll hear it in the first conversation.
- Florida-licensed CPA
- In accounting and finance since 2008
- Former Controller, $65M nonprofit healthcare organization
- Master of Accounting, University of Florida
- QuickBooks Online and MIP Abila
About Jeremy
Jeremy Hood, CPA
Founder, Truvio Financial
Jeremy leads every Truvio engagement and stays directly involved in the controller-level work, reporting, and financial decisions that matter.
He started Truvio after years inside nonprofit finance departments, where the same gap kept appearing. Organizations had bookkeeping handled, but nobody with controller-level experience owned the close, the reporting, the grant accounting, or the numbers leadership was using to decide things. Most did not need another full-time finance executive. They needed that ownership in a more flexible form.
Most recently Controller of Meridian Behavioral Healthcare, a $65 million nonprofit healthcare organization, and currently Comptroller for Southern Legal Counsel. Before nonprofits, he founded and ran a multi-entity operating business for nearly 15 years as President and Controller.
How an engagement starts
First, we figure out what's actually going on.
Every engagement starts with a look at your current setup: the accounting system, the close process, the reports leadership receives, who does what, your grants and funding structure, upcoming deadlines, and anything that feels like an immediate risk.
From there, it's usually clear whether you need:
- Ongoing fractional controller support
- A cleanup or stabilization project
- Transition coverage while you hire
- Something smaller than you expected
Sometimes the answer is that what you have is mostly fine and needs one or two specific fixes. You'll hear that too.
What the assessment covers, and how engagements are structured
Talk with Jeremy
If your finance function is becoming an executive problem, let's talk.
Tell us what's going on. A late close, an audit coming up, a finance person leaving, reports the board doesn't trust. You'll speak directly with Jeremy Hood, CPA, about what's happening in your finance function, whether Truvio is the right fit, and what he would do first.
Or email directly
jeremy@truviofinancial.comThanks. Jeremy will be in touch shortly.
If it's time-sensitive, email him directly at jeremy@truviofinancial.com.