The bigger a business grows, the more complex their accounting becomes. Despite this, I often encounter business owners who would rather do their accounting themselves than seek the help of a professional.
DIY accounting might’ve worked fine when you’re just starting out. Revenue is simple. Expenses are predictable. You can handle everything in a weekend and still have time for actual business building.
But here’s what happens as you scale: The accounting grows faster than the business.
Now, you may be asking, “Would it be a problem? I have a QuickBooks subscription, and it has features that make my accounting work a lot faster and easier.”
To be clear, the problem isn’t the software. It’s still YOU doing the work.
Those “streamlined processes” still require your time. Your attention. Your mental bandwidth. Hours every week that you’re not spending on the work that actually grows revenue.
At some point, efficiency isn’t enough. You need a solid CFO-driven strategy.
What You’re Really Getting Into with the DIY Accounting Approach
DIY accounting feels like the natural choice for most business owners. You built the company from scratch. You know every transaction, every client, every expense. Why wouldn’t you handle your own books?
There are real advantages here. And there are hidden costs that most people don’t see until it’s too late.
DIY Accounting Can Work at the Earliest Stage of Your Business
- Complete Control Over Your Numbers
When you manage your own accounting, you see every transaction as it happens. There’s no delay, no translation, no wondering what that expense category really means. You know exactly where the money is going because you’re the one putting it there.
For many business owners, this control feels essential. You’re not waiting for someone else to close the books or explain why cash flow looks tight. The numbers are yours, updated in real time, accessible whenever you need them.
- Lower Upfront Costs
The math seems simple. QuickBooks costs $38 to $275 monthly*. Add payroll and tracking features, and you’re still under $500.
The cost of a fractional CFO? It can range between $1,000 and $5,000 per month.
For smaller businesses, this gap feels impossible to justify. Why spend thousands on financial expertise when software costs cheaper?
But the real question isn’t what you’re spending. It’s what you’re not making due to the lack of clear financial strategy.
*The prices are up-to-date as of August 2025 but may change based on the software provider’s discretion.
- Deep Understanding of Your Business Model
You know every revenue stream. Every expense pattern. Every cash flow cycle.
When you handle your own books, you see the money as it moves. You understand which clients pay fast and which ones drag their feet. You spot seasonal trends before they hit your reports.
This operational intelligence is real, valuable, and something you can even find hard to let go.
- Flexibility and Speed
When you need to run a quick report or check your cash position, there’s no waiting. No scheduling calls with your accountant. No wondering if they understand your business well enough to give you the right answer.
DIY accounting lets you pivot quickly. You make the decisions right when you need it without waiting for anyone else’s input or approval.
But DIY Accounting isn’t Sustainable in the Long Run
- Time Is Your Scarcest Resource
For most successful business owners, the real cost of DIY accounting isn’t the software subscription. It’s everything else you didn’t do because you were buried in QuickBooks.
Here’s what you must always include in the equation: The opportunity cost of doing your own books.
If you’re spending 10 hours per week on accounting, payroll, and financial admin, that’s 520 hours per year.
At your hourly rate as a business owner, what’s that time actually worth? What could you have accomplished with those hours instead?
- Limited Strategic Insight
Accounting software like QuickBooks is excellent at tracking what happened. However, it cannot show you the next steps to take based on the information it provided.
Yes, you can see your profit and loss statement. But you can’t model what happens if you raise prices by 15% or what your cash flow will look like if accounts receivable slows down.
This reactive approach to financial management works fine when business is simple. But as you scale, the questions get more complex. And spreadsheets don’t give you the answers you need.
- Compliance and Tax Risks
Business tax law is complicated. Deduction rules change, state regulations vary, and the penalty for noncompliance is expensive.
Unless you’re an accountant by profession, dealing with taxes can be too complex. In fact, even accountants spend a significant time getting everything sorted out before filing business taxes to the IRS.
Another thing:
Compliance is not your sole concern. Without an expert-driven tax strategy, you may be paying taxes more than what you need to.
The cost of this uncertainty is often much higher than you realize. It’s not just in missed tax savings, but in the stress and risk that comes with financial uncertainty.
- No Separation of Duties
When you handle all the financial functions yourself, there’s no checks and balances system. Mistakes compound. Blind spots persist. No one is telling you if you’re doing the right thing or you’ve already lost direction.
This lack of oversight might not matter when business is small. But as revenue grows and transactions multiply, the risk of errors increases exponentially.
Why You Should Shift to a CFO-Driven Accounting
Working with a CFO represents a fundamentally different approach to business finance. Instead of just tracking numbers, you’re building a financial system designed to drive growth.
This isn’t about hiring someone to do what you were doing before. It’s about upgrading your entire approach to financial management.
The Advantages of Working with a CFO
- Expert Financial Planning
A strategic CFO doesn’t just report on last month’s performance. They make educated projections to help you understand what’s coming next.
Here’s what they do:
- Show you what happens to your cash flow with every hiring decision you make.
- Model the impact of different pricing strategies.
- Help you decide if you planned major purchases make sense or if you need to put them on hold for a while.
CFOs don’t rely on their gut feeling when creating forecasts and financial plans. They use hard data and translate what your numbers actually mean into meaningful insights.
- Well-Founded Business Partnership
The best CFOs operate as strategic partners, not just service providers.
Instead of simply getting your books in order, as bookkeepers and accountants usually do, CFOs focus on a much bigger picture. They make use of their experience and expertise to develop financial strategies that are aligned with your business goals.
- Strategic Tax Planning
Doing your taxes for compliance is different from doing it strategically. Focusing on compliance alone can mark you safe from IRS audits but not on potential over payments.
One of our clients realized it the hard way.
In 2022, they received a $352,730 federal tax bill. The following year, their liability increased to $402,195.
To understand the root cause of this concern, we did a full audit of their financials and tax filings then built a tax strategy that’s unique to their business.
The result? Their two-year tax liabilities amounting to over $750K have been eliminated. And it’s not the end of their story. They even got a refund.
That’s exactly what having a CFO can do to your business.
- Scalable Financial Infrastructure
Your financial needs become more complex the bigger your business grows.
At this point, you’re potentially dealing with:
- Multiple revenue streams
- Inventory management
- Contractor relationships
- Employee benefits
- More complex transactions
All of these would then require sophisticated financial systems, and it’s something a CFO can help you with.
A CFO can build your financial infrastructure that scales with your business, which includes implementing systems, processes, and controls that work whether you’re doing $1M or $10M in revenue.
- Data-Driven Decision Making
CFOs have the needed expertise and tools to identify what your business needs to do based on its key metrics. They excel at developing data-driven approaches focused on logic rather than emotion and guesswork.
Among the steps they do include:
- Measuring your ROI on marketing spend
- Analyzing client lifetime value
- Tracking key performance indicators
- Identifying trends that impact profitability
Through these extra initiatives, they can give you precise analysis that are critical for making key business decisions. In return, you’ll be more assured of making choices based on solid analysis rather than gut instinct.
QuickBooks vs CFO Strategy: Why CFO-Level Insights Matter for $1M to $10M Businesses
If your business is running well, choosing between DIY accounting (through the use of accounting software like QuickBooks) and CFO-driven strategy isn’t really about accounting at all.
Instead, it’s about how you want to spend your time, where you want to invest your mental energy, and what kind of business you’re trying to build.
- The Opportunity Cost Is Too High
Let’s be honest about what DIY accounting really costs you.
Those 10-15 hours per week you spend on financial tasks aren’t just administrative time. They’re your most valuable hours as a business owner. Those are the same hours you could spend on client development, team leadership, strategic planning, or business development.
When you calculate your effective hourly rate as a business owner, which is equivalent to an executive-level role, DIY accounting becomes one of the most expensive activities you can pursue. The reason? It’s because you’re paying executive-level compensation for bookkeeping work.
More importantly, you’re sacrificing the strategic thinking that actually grows businesses. While you’re reconciling bank statements, your competitors are analyzing market opportunities, developing new service offerings, and building systems that scale.
- Financial Complexity Grows Faster Than Revenue
When you go from $500K to $1M in revenue, your financial complexity doesn’t just double; the administrative burden that comes with it also grows exponentially. Just think of dealing with more vendors, more employees, more tax obligations, more compliance requirements, and the need for more strategic decisions.
The cost of financial mistakes also increases dramatically.
For example, a tax planning error that costs a $300K business $5,000 might cost a $1.5M business $25,000. Cash flow miscalculations that create minor inconveniences at smaller scales can threaten the survival of larger operations.
When the stakes are low, just as how things were when you’re starting out, DIY accounting works fine. But once your business reaches seven figures, the risks become greater.
- Strategic Decisions Require Strategic Thinking
QuickBooks is transactional. It can process your numbers fast and provide you a snapshot of your finances, but it cannot tell you what you should do with those figures, having a specialized expertise can be more helpful.
And I’m not talking about accounting knowledge per se, but strategic business acumen. The benefits you can get from making the right calls far outweigh the “savings” you think you’re getting from DIY accounting.
- The Network Effect of Professional Relationships
Before CFOs reach their level, they have experienced working first with different types of professionals: accountants, auditors, business owners, you name it. Once they’re at the executive level, they start dealing with the top management, attorneys, bankers, insurance professionals, and other service providers who work with businesses like yours.
Working with quality financial professionals connects you to this broad network of expertise.
This network, which is something you simply can’t replicate with DIY accounting, becomes increasingly necessary as your business grows. Whether you need financing, legal advice, or strategic partnerships, your financial team can make introductions and provide recommendations.
Are You Ready to Make the Strategic Transition?
At Bennett Financials, we’ve helped hundreds of $1M to $10M service businesses transition from DIY accounting to strategic finance with ease.
We provide CFO-level strategic finance support for growing companies who want financial clarity, operational efficiency, and strategic guidance.
Our approach goes beyond bookkeeping and compliance.
Rather than doing books alone, we build financial systems that support growth. We’ve helped businesses optimize their tax strategies and save hundreds of thousands in their federal tax bill. And of course, we aim to continue doing the same thing for your business. We’re here to help you achieve the strategic insights you need to make confident decisions.
If you’re ready to move beyond QuickBooks and implement strategic finance that actually drives growth, let’s talk about what that looks like for your business.
