The reference implementation of the four-framework methodology. A California boutique architecture practice — books eighteen months behind, no AR visibility across two hundred open projects, no controls. Ninety days later: a full financial and operational foundation running at audit grade. Details are anonymized; the mechanics are fully described.
The client at intake: a well-respected boutique architecture firm with strong technical work, a growing project book, and a founder who was — as founders often are — the constraint on everything downstream of the design output. Four gaps were immediately visible.
Transactions posted but not reconciled. No monthly close. Chart of accounts inherited from the founder's earlier sole-prop years, no longer serving the practice's actual operational shape. Every financial question required forensic reconstruction.
Project-level revenue tracked in a spreadsheet updated intermittently by the founder. No aging report, no escalation triggers, no clear picture of what was collectible versus stale. Cash flow was managed by feel.
Approval thresholds informal. Vendor onboarding uncontrolled. Bank reconciliation intermittent. Segregation of duties non-existent — the founder personally approved, posted, and reconciled every transaction. Audit exposure and fraud exposure both real.
Business development was fully personal to the founder. No CRM, no ranked prospect list, no repeatable pipeline mechanics. Hiring was ad-hoc: no job descriptions, no comp benchmarks, no structured interview process. Growth capacity was capped at the founder's personal bandwidth.
The Diagnostic Sprint ran weeks one through six. Foundation Buildout ran weeks seven through twelve. Every deliverable was coded, tracked, and produced with audit-grade documentation discipline. Below: the arc, sequenced by dominant framework.
Full inventory of accounting state, systems in use, project book, AR position, control gaps. Materiality thresholds established. Risk-mapping of every identified gap. Deliverable: a diagnostic memo with risks ranked by materiality and probability.
The gaps decomposed into independent workstreams. Each workstream sized for effort and impact. Recommendations ranked by pyramid: what fixes ten problems, then what fixes three, then what fixes one. Deliverable: a prioritized implementation roadmap for Foundation.
Diagnostic close-out. Foundation scope negotiated and fixed. Phase-appropriate sequencing agreed: books before controls, controls before dashboards, dashboards before BD. Deliverable: Foundation engagement letter with 60-day scope, deliverables inventory, and success criteria.
Eighteen months of transactions reconciled. Chart of accounts redesigned for the practice's actual shape. Monthly close protocol written, tested, and running. Bank reconciliation procedure documented. Deliverables: current books, close procedure, controls memo.
AR aging dashboard built and running with escalation triggers. GP analysis completed across 128 historical projects. Three job descriptions written with compensation benchmarking and structured interview scorecards. Deliverables: AR system, GP analysis, hiring package.
Ranked prospect database built (1,700+ facilities, 500+ Tier 1A). BD outreach playbook written. Five-year business plan produced with three scenarios and cash-flow projections. Deliverables: BD infrastructure, business plan, close-out memo.
Over the ninety-day arc, more than fifty discrete deliverables were produced and handed off. They cluster into six categories — one for each output class the four-framework stack is uniquely positioned to produce.
Chart of accounts, monthly close protocol, three-way reconciliation procedure, bank reconciliation checklist, AR aging system with escalation triggers, GP analysis across 128 historical projects, cash-flow forecasting model.
Full controls framework memo, approval-threshold policy, vendor onboarding process, segregation-of-duties design, expense-approval workflow, audit-preparation checklist for future review or compilation engagements.
Weekly operations rhythm, monthly review cadence, quarterly board-ready reporting package, project-status tracking, embedded feedback loops on every control — each system built with a Plan-Do-Check-Act structure so it improves over time.
Five-year business plan with three scenarios, entity-structure positions memo, phase-appropriate growth strategy, cash-flow-sustainable capacity model, engagement-fit criteria for future client selection.
Ranked prospect database (1,700+ facilities, 500+ Tier 1A), BD outreach playbook, CRM setup, three job descriptions with comp benchmarking, structured interview scorecards, onboarding framework for first hires.
Framework for reading a P&L past the top line. Pattern recognition for AR aging as a leading indicator. How to hold a monthly close conversation without doing the close. What a hiring scorecard is actually for. Cognitive upgrade that outlives the engagement.
Honest comparison against the fractional and consulting alternatives. Rate ranges reflect the going market for senior-level engagement of this scope in the San Francisco Bay Area, based on publicly available pricing from specialist firms and industry survey data.
The rate differential is deliberate. FOG ADVISORY is priced as a boutique practice operating on referral discipline and low overhead, not as a scaled firm carrying office space, business-development spend, or a leverage model of associates and analysts. Every hour is delivered by the founding principal. What clients pay for at branded firms — the office, the partner meeting time, the associate hours — is absent here by design.
Start with a Diagnostic Sprint. Four to six weeks, $4,000 fixed. Full accounting-state read, systems audit, prioritized recommendations, and a scoping proposal for the Foundation — or an honest recommendation to work with someone else, if that is the answer.
