What decision-led accounting means
Decision-led accounting means the filings are done properly and on schedule, and the real value sits in what happens between them. Every CPA firm can produce a corporate return. What clients actually pay us for is having someone who already knows the business when the question arrives, because the questions that decide whether a business builds wealth are not filing questions. They look like this:
- Whether to buy another business, and how to finance it
- Whether a holding company is worth the cost
- Salary, dividends, or the mix
- How to get a lender to say yes
- When to restructure the corporations
- How to bring children into ownership without triggering tax
A year-end accountant meets these questions cold, months after the fact, working from statements prepared for the CRA rather than for you. We meet them mid-year, on current numbers, because we are either already running the finance function or have already built the structure the question sits inside. That is the whole difference, and it is why the line at the top of this page is the firm's positioning rather than a slogan.
Who this is for: complexity matters more than size
An incorporated professional with a holding company and a succession question is a better fit for us than a larger business that wants a year-end filing and nothing else. Industry matters less than owners expect. What our best files share is a business that has moved past what its old accounting arrangement could carry. The signs are consistent:
- Financial information reaches you too late to act on
- The books, the tax return and the advice come from different people
- Two or more corporations, or a trust in the picture
- A lender, a purchase or a restructuring coming in the next year
- Cash accumulating in the corporation with no plan for it
- Decisions get made and the tax consequences turn up later
- The owner is still coordinating the finance function personally
Most of our clients are owner-managed businesses between roughly $750k and $25M in revenue, across Mississauga and the GTA, and we work across Ontario. Two of those signs are usually enough to make the conversation worth having. If you would rather start from the decision you are facing than from a service name, the decisions page is built exactly for that.
When something else fits better
We are not the right firm for every situation, and we would rather say so in the first exchange than in the third month. Something else fits better when:
- You need one return filed and no ongoing relationship
- You have one specific question, where a paid consult is faster: $75 for 30 minutes or $150 for 60 minutes
- You want a CPA on call for occasional questions rather than a full engagement, which is what CPA Quick Support covers at $99 per month Standard or $139 per month Priority
- You have internal finance staff and need review only
- The business is early enough that a bookkeeper covers it
The longer version of both lists, with the six kinds of business we work with most, is on who we work with.
If you write to us and the honest answer is one of these, we will point you there. An engagement that is bigger than the problem serves the firm, not the client, and it never lasts anyway.
The same work, engaged two ways
Everything Tauro does is bought in one of two ways: a year-round relationship, or a project with a beginning and an end. The work itself, and the standard it is done to, is identical. The difference is the shape of the engagement.
| Ongoing Financial Partnership | Strategic Projects | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The complete outside finance function: books, payroll, reporting, tax and advice as one team | A transaction, a structure or a decision with a defined objective and an end date |
| Rhythm | Year-round, on a monthly and quarterly cycle | A start, a timeline and a finish |
| Typical work | Monthly close, reporting, corporate tax, HST and payroll oversight, planning | Reorganizations, estate freezes, s.85 rollovers, purchases and sales, financing packages, CRA matters |
| Best fit | Too complex for year-end-only accounting, not ready to hire a controller, a tax CPA and a CFO separately | A clear objective, often with a lawyer, lender or buyer on the other side |
| Pricing | Scoped from entities, volume, employees, reporting and advisory needs | Quoted in writing once the objective and the records are understood |
The two models feed each other constantly. A financing project exposes reporting the business should have had all along, and becomes a partnership. A partnership client decides to freeze the estate or buy a competitor, and that becomes a project inside the relationship. Read the full pages on the Ongoing Financial Partnership and Strategic Projects before deciding which conversation to start; many owners guess wrong in the first email, and it costs nothing to be redirected.
Why we read lenders and structures well
Walla Assaf, CPA, founded Tauro in 2021 after more than a decade in banking and corporate finance, and built the firm around the part most accountants leave alone: what the numbers mean for the next decision. That background is not a biography line. It is the reason financing, corporate structures and acquisitions sit alongside the compliance work here instead of in a separate practice, and the reason a lender package from this firm is built for the desk that reads it, not for the client who pays for it.
It also changes how structure work is done. A holding company, a compensation plan and a credit application are usually the same conversation happening at the same time, and a firm that only sees one of the three will optimize it at the expense of the others. You deal directly with the CPA doing the work: preparation is done by the team, and the thinking, the review and the advice are not delegated.
What decides whether we are the right firm
Five facts settle most of it, and we ask about all five before proposing anything:
- How many entities are in the picture, because two corporations or a trust changes both the work and the stakes
- What is coming in the next twelve months: a financing, a purchase, a sale, a restructuring or a shareholder change
- How current the records are, since catch-up work shapes the first months of any engagement
- Who does the finance work today, and whether the books, the return and the advice come from one place or three
- What you actually want from an accountant: filings only, or someone in the decisions
If those five facts point our way, the next step is small on purpose: a short written snapshot of the business, read personally, answered either way. The working together page walks through exactly what happens from that note to the end of your first ninety days, and the contact page is where it starts.
