Kaizen CFO/blog
Home Services Controller

Controller Services for Home Services Companies


Your field software knows every call and every membership; your accounting software knows whatever got exported last. A controller closes that gap every month and reviews the numbers — so the P&L finally matches the dispatch board and you know which trades and techs actually pay.

Home service technician with a tablet at a door

The field data and the books have to reconcile

ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, and Jobber capture revenue in detail; the accounting captures what got exported and coded. Across a busy season those two drift, and you end up managing off a field dashboard while the financials say something else. A controller reconciles them monthly, so revenue, memberships, and the ledger tell one story.

Recurring revenue is the piece most owners get wrong. Membership and service-agreement money collected up front is a liability earned over the plan — booked as revenue on signup, it overstates today and hides the recurring base that makes the company valuable. A controller keeps that honest.

What a controller adds over a bookkeeper

A bookkeeper records the transactions. A controller makes them right and turns them into a reviewed package: margin by trade, call type, and tech; membership-liability discipline; and the recurring-versus-one-off split that tells you what the business is really worth.

As you add trades or locations, standardized reporting lets you compare them fairly and catch the branch or trade quietly losing money before it hides in the total.

How Kaizen runs it

We sit on top of your bookkeeping — ours or yours — and run a documented monthly close on the same date every month. Field-software revenue and memberships get reconciled to the accounting so dispatch, deposits, and the ledger agree.

Then the improvement part we're named for: each month the field-to-books reconciliation tightens and the review catches more before it reaches you. Controller judgment without the salary or the eventual two-week notice.

What's included

  • Reviewed monthly financials with a documented, same-date close
  • Field-software-to-books reconciliation — ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber
  • Margin by trade, call type, and tech
  • Membership and service-agreement liability reviewed over the plan
  • Recurring vs. one-off revenue split so the recurring base is clear
  • AR aging watched before it goes stale
  • Standardized reporting across trades and locations
  • Oversight of your bookkeeper or bookkeeping team — a second set of senior eyes
New engagements usually begin with the 1-2-3 CFO™ Reset: Month 1 clean and reconcile to the field software, Month 2 stand up margin-by-trade and membership discipline, Month 3 systems and a budget.

Pricing

$3,000–6,000/moscoped to trades, locations, and volume · no contract
~$120K+/yrwhat a full-time controller costs fully loaded — a lot of service calls to cover that
One hire, one riskan in-house controller who needs managing and takes your reporting with them when they leave
Team + reviewcontroller oversight plus a bookkeeping team that ties to the field data

Straight answers

We have a bookkeeper. Why a controller?

A bookkeeper records; a controller reconciles the field data, keeps membership liability honest, and produces margin by trade you can manage on. Many owners keep their bookkeeper and add us for oversight.

Do you reconcile ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, or Jobber?

Yes — that monthly reconciliation is core to home-services controllership. It's the step that keeps your financials and your dispatch board telling the same story.

How should membership revenue be handled?

As a liability recognized over the plan, not on signup — reviewed each close so today's P&L is honest and the recurring base is visible.

Single trade, low volume. Overkill?

Often, and we'll say so. A good bookkeeper is enough until you're multi-trade with memberships and field software drifting from the books.

Free 20-minute books assessment

We'll show you the five things we'd fix first in your books — useful whether you hire us, hire someone, or do neither.

Talk to Sales

Or call us directly: +1 786 789 0969