The dividing line: we own the work, you own the decisions
The cleanest way to state the split is this: everything that requires accounting skill moves to us, and everything that requires knowing your business, your customers and your appetite for risk stays with you. We never ask an owner to reconcile an account, and we never presume to sign a cheque, set a price or choose a hire. The value of the model is that each side stops doing the other side's job badly.
That line is not decorative; it is what makes an outsourced finance and accounting department work for an established business in Ontario. When responsibilities blur, two things happen: tasks fall into the gap because each side assumes the other has them, and owners drift back into evening bookkeeping because no one said out loud that it was no longer theirs. So we put the division in the engagement letter itself, task by task, and this page is the plain-language version of that schedule.
If you want the full anatomy of the model before reading how we split it, start with the complete finance and accounting department for established businesses, then come back here for the division of labour.
What Tauro takes over completely
We own the full technical loop, end to end, with no part of it left on your desk. In practice that means five standing responsibilities:
- Full-cycle accounting. Transactions coded through the month, receipts captured digitally, payables queued for your approval, receivables tracked and chased on the cadence you set, payroll run and remitted.
- The month-end close. Every bank, card and loan account reconciled, accruals and cut-offs recorded, subledgers agreed, the month locked on a fixed business day so the numbers stop moving.
- Management reporting. A monthly package with results against budget and prior year, cash position and outlook, aging, the indicators that drive your business, and written commentary in plain words.
- The compliance calendar. HST, payroll remittances, T4s and T5s, WSIB and Employer Health Tax where they apply, instalments, and the T2 itself, every filing dated, owned and filed without you asking.
- Tax planning and year-end. Owner compensation strategy, instalment management, pre-year-end planning while there is still time to act, and financial statements built from months already closed.
Two things about that list matter. First, it is one team: the person who plans your tax saw your September close, so nothing is discovered in April. Second, it includes being on the receiving end of official mail. CRA reviews, bank requests for statements and audit-style questions come to us first, are answered from reconciliations that already exist, and reach you as a summary rather than a scramble. That entire loop is what we mean by End-to-End Accounting.
What stays with you, and why it should
Everything that defines the business as yours stays yours, and we would decline to take it even if offered. The list is shorter but heavier:
- Decisions. Pricing, hiring, firing, expansion, borrowing, buying, selling. We will argue a position with numbers attached; the call is yours.
- Payment approvals. We prepare payment runs; you or your designate release them. Money leaves your accounts only on your authority, which is an internal control, not a courtesy.
- Customer and supplier relationships. We will tell you which receivables are aging; the phone call to a valued customer is yours to make or to delegate to us case by case.
- Source information. New hires, raises, terminated staff, new leases, disputes, insurance changes: the facts originate with you, and the month is only as complete as what reaches us.
- Banking authority and signatures. Signing officers stay inside your company. We never hold signing authority on client accounts.
Notice what is not on your list: nothing technical. You do not review reconciliations, chase filing deadlines, or check whether payroll remittances went out, because a partnership in which the owner still audits the accountant has not actually transferred the work. Your visibility comes from the monthly package and the standing meeting, not from re-performing what you are paying for.
The reason is control, in the technical sense. A finance function is safest when the people who record transactions cannot also approve them, and the people who approve them do not record them. Keeping approvals and signatures inside your company while preparation and recording sit with us creates exactly the segregation of duties most owner-managed businesses otherwise cannot achieve with a small team. The split is not just a workload arrangement; it is the control structure.
The shared zone: we prepare, you decide
Between our side and yours sits a set of responsibilities that are deliberately joint, and this zone is where most of the advisory value lives. The pattern is always the same: we build the analysis, you bring the context, the decision comes out of the conversation. Here is the split at its most precise:
| Area | Tauro's side | Your side |
|---|---|---|
| Cash flow | Maintain the forward cash view, flag the pinch points weeks ahead | Decide what to delay, accelerate or finance |
| Budget and forecast | Build the model, test the assumptions, track variances monthly | Own the targets and the appetite for risk |
| Owner compensation | Model salary, dividends and timing against tax and cash | Choose the mix that fits your life and plans |
| Financing | Prepare lender packages, projections and covenant math | Choose the lender, sign the facility |
| Pricing and margins | Show margin by line, model the scenarios | Set the price your market will bear |
| Big moves | Structure, model and quarterback purchases, reorganizations, exits | Decide whether and when to move |
The standing monthly meeting is where the shared zone operates. We arrive with the closed numbers and the three things worth your attention; you arrive with what is actually happening on the ground. When the decisions outgrow the monthly rhythm, a purchase, a restructuring, a financing round, the same team extends into Fractional CFO depth or a defined Strategic Project, without re-explaining your business to anyone.
How the split works day to day
Day to day, the partnership runs on shared systems and a fixed cadence rather than on emails asking where things stand. We work inside your accounting software, not a copy of it, so you can look at anything at any time; approval rules are set once, in writing, so our team knows what we may process and what waits for you; and questions move through a single channel with agreed response times instead of scattering across inboxes. You will typically spend an hour or two a month on the finance function: approving payment runs, answering the handful of questions only you can answer, and sitting in the monthly review.
The split is established once, during onboarding, rather than negotiated forever. In the first weeks we transfer system access, write the approval rules with you, build the compliance calendar from your actual filing history, and agree the close and reporting dates for the year. From then on, the standing question "whose job is this?" has a written answer, which is the single biggest operational difference clients report after leaving a fragmented setup. New situations get assigned a side at the monthly meeting and added to the schedule, so the document stays current instead of aspirational.
The rhythm has accountability built in both directions. We commit in writing to close and reporting dates, and you can hold us to them the way you hold a supplier to a delivery date. In return, the month depends on your side arriving on time: approvals given promptly, source documents captured when they happen, decisions made when the numbers ask for them. When one side slips, the other side says so at the monthly meeting, plainly and without drama. That mutual visibility is what keeps a partnership from quietly degrading into a vendor relationship.
If you are coming from a bookkeeper-plus-year-end-accountant setup, the day-to-day difference is the part you will feel first: one accountable owner for every task instead of a gap between providers. We cover the warning signs of the old model in has your business outgrown year-end accounting, and the mechanics of switching in how to transition from separate providers to one coordinated finance partner.
What moves the line, and how we set it for your business
The dividing line above is our default, but five facts move it one way or the other, and we set it deliberately during onboarding:
- Internal staff. If you have a capable office manager or bookkeeper, they keep the daily operational layer and we own everything from the close up, with their work reviewed inside our rhythm.
- Approval appetite. Some owners want to release every payment; others delegate below a threshold. Either works; it just has to be written down.
- Customer contact. Some businesses want us chasing every receivable directly; others keep client-facing contact entirely in-house.
- Entity count and complexity. Holding companies, related entities and intercompany charges push more coordination onto our side of the table.
- Where you are headed. A business preparing for financing, succession or sale needs the shared zone running deeper and more often than one in steady state.
The line gets drawn precisely, in writing, after a free 15-minute discovery call: which tasks are ours, which are yours, which are shared, and on what dates everything lands. If you want to see the division before talking to anyone, ask us for a sample engagement schedule and a sample monthly package, and compare them against whatever you have today. The difference between a finance function with a drawn line and one without is usually the difference between a partnership and a pile of assumptions.
