Manual journals everywhere
Accruals, reclasses and allocations built by hand in spreadsheets, with no reliable audit trail and a lot of copy-paste risk.
The AI finance-ops teardown
The finance-ops teardown for CFOs. Run a free Close Flight Check.
An adaptive diagnostic that maps where your month-end close actually leaks time and cash — every finding confidence-labelled, and an honest "not enough evidence yet" where that's the truth. Continue into a fixed-price Finance Operations Assessment when the payback is clear. We assess before we build.
Finance-automation practice by BetterWrk · No logins, credentials or ledger data · Your result before any email
Sample · Close Flight Check
Illustrative
72Flight Readiness
Solid close, room to tighten
4 findings · medium confidence
8dDays to close
6dBenchmark
~150Manual JEs / close
Estimated leak to manual finance work
~$110,000 / year
Illustrative estimate — not a customer result.
Where the close breaks down
The month-end close is where finance ops quietly leak time and cash.
A tidy P&L hides how it was produced. FlyCFO turns that hidden effort into graded findings, an estimate of what it's costing, and a clear first automation to fix.
Systems that don't talk
ERP, AP, payroll, cards, expenses and the bank each hold a piece of the truth — and someone reconciles them by hand every month.
A close only one person can run
The numbers depend on tribal knowledge and a single heroic controller. When they're out, the close stalls.
No objective benchmark
Is a nine-day close good or bad for your size and complexity? Without a comparison, you can't tell what's worth fixing first.
One measured path
From a free Flight Check to a proven, deployed automation
Every stage produces something concrete — a finding, a report, a working skill, a live automation — not a slide.
- Flight CheckFree diagnostic
- DiagnoseMap manual steps
- FindingsBoard-ready report
- SkillCited finance skill
- AutomateDeploy one workflow
- VerifyMeasure the savings
- OperateManaged operations
The free diagnostic
See where your close leaks — before you talk to anyone.
The Flight Check is a short adaptive questionnaire, not a lead form. It asks about your close the way an experienced controller would, then returns confidence-labelled findings you can act on — including an honest "there isn't enough evidence here yet" where that's the truth.
Live now
Close Flight Check
Map the dependencies, manual journals, reconciliations and review bottlenecks behind your period-end timeline. Adaptive questions, a real analysis, and a result before any email.
- No logins, credentials or ledger data — structure and evidence you already have
- A meaningful preview before we ask you for anything
- Every finding graded by confidence, with its assumptions shown
- Refreshing the page won't lose your progress
Prefer to talk it through? Book 20 minutes with a finance-ops specialist — no Flight Check required.
Estimates, computed transparently
The Flight Check runs versioned, deterministic rules over the answers and evidence you provide — not a language model guessing. Findings are directional and confidence-labelled, never an audit, a valuation or a guarantee. The paid assessment is what replaces them with verified figures.
The paid next step
The $1,500 Finance Operations Assessment
Not a slide deck. A fixed-price engagement that produces four concrete things — and the fee is credited in full to your automation build.
01 Findings
Board-ready findings. A written teardown of your close: where time and cash leak, ranked by payback, in language your board and audit committee can act on.
02 Skill
A working, cited AI finance skill. A finance AI skill built and grounded in your own numbers and policies — every answer cited back to its source, not a black box.
03 Automation
One deployed, managed automation. We don't just recommend — we deploy your highest-payback automation and keep it running, so the assessment ships value, not homework.
04 Savings
Verified savings. The hours and dollars the automation actually returns — measured, not projected — so the business case is proven before any larger build.
$1,500 one-time · 100% credited toward your automation build
Evidence before reliance
Every number is scored, sourced and labelled.
FlyCFO is an evidence-first practice. We don't publish invented customer logos or case-study numbers. Instead we show the method: how the Close Flight Check computes its findings, how the AI finance skill cites its sources, and how savings are verified rather than promised.
Sample finding · illustrative
CITED
Bank-to-ledger reconciliation is 3 manual hours per entity, per close
Observed stepQuantifiedAutomation candidate
- Evidence grade
- Estimate
- Source
- Scoring rules v1
- Entities affected
- Disclosed
- Manual hours / close
- Quantified
- Automation
- Bounded, testable
- Savings
- Verified post-deploy
Illustrative finding — not a customer result. Real findings are graded and cited to your own data.
More than a dashboard
A dashboard shows you the problem. FlyCFO ships the fix.
Diagnosing the close is the easy part. What matters is what happens next — findings you can act on, a skill grounded in your numbers, and an automation that's actually deployed and measured.
| Reporting dashboard | Fractional CFO | Transformation project | FlyCFO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evidence-graded close diagnostic | Metrics only | Opinion | Eventually | Free, before you talk to anyone |
| Board-ready findings | You interpret | Sometimes | Months later | In the assessment |
| Cited AI finance skill | No | No | Rare | Built & grounded |
| Deployed automation | No | Advises | Big-bang | One, live & managed |
| Verified savings | No | Estimated | Business case | Measured post-deploy |
| Entry price | Subscription | Monthly retainer | Six figures | $1,500, credited |
Honest fit
Sometimes the right answer is "you're already lean".
A small, well-run close on connected systems may not need us yet. The Close Flight Check is built to tell you that honestly — not to push every visitor into an engagement.
Worth a teardown
- The close takes longer than you'd like and you're not sure why
- Reconciliations and journals lean heavily on spreadsheets
- Several finance systems don't talk to each other
- Reporting is rebuilt by hand every month
- You want automation, but need the business case proven first
Probably fine as-is
- Your close is already fast and calmly repeatable
- Core systems are connected and reconciliations are largely automated
- Manual journal volume is low and well controlled
- Finance has the capacity it needs without heroics
- There's no clear payback from automating further right now
A specialist practice, an accountable team
FlyCFO is a finance-automation practice by BetterWrk.
BetterWrk provides the engineering, delivery and operational foundation. FlyCFO provides a focused finance-ops method, the Close Flight Check and the AI finance skills. You get a productized way to modernise the close, backed by a real engineering organisation.
Independent and honest by design
We're not selling seats of a particular accounting system, and we're allowed to tell you not to automate yet. Third-party product names — QuickBooks, NetSuite, Stripe and others — identify the systems we work with and remain the property of their owners.
Delivery & contracting: BetterWrk · Austin, Texas
After the assessment
The assessment ends. The automation still needs an owner.
Once your first automation is live, FlyCFO Managed keeps it healthy — monitoring runs, handling source and credential changes, and improving the close every month. Sarah — the AI operator that guided your intake — stays on, with a human specialist still owning the judgment calls.
Automation monitoring
Every run is watched, so a quiet failure doesn't surface as a missed accrual three weeks later.
Systems & credentials
When an ERP, bank or card feed changes, we keep the automation and the close working.
Monthly improvement
Reserved capacity to extend the finance skill and automate the next step of the close.
Questions, answered
The things finance leaders ask first.
How does the Close Flight Check work?
It's a short adaptive questionnaire — about your company, your close baseline, your workflow, and any evidence you'd like to add. Questions change based on your answers, so you only see what's relevant. Versioned, deterministic rules then produce findings, each graded by how much confidence the available evidence supports. No language model guessing, and the same inputs always produce the same result.
Is this a real audit or valuation?
No. Flight Check findings and any dollar figures are estimates to help you prioritise — clearly labelled as such, with their assumptions shown. Verified numbers come from the paid Finance Operations Assessment, which works with your actual data under an agreed access model.
What exactly is in the $1,500 assessment?
Four things: board-ready findings on where your close leaks time and cash; a working AI finance skill grounded and cited to your own numbers; one deployed, managed automation targeting your highest-payback step; and verified savings measured after it's live. The $1,500 is credited in full toward a larger automation build if you proceed.
Is the fee really credited?
Yes. The $1,500 is a one-time fee credited in full against your automation build if you continue. If the assessment concludes you're already lean and don't need to build, you still keep the findings and the working skill.
Do you need our logins or credentials to run the Flight Check?
No. The Flight Check never asks for passwords, tokens or ledger data — only structure, ranges and any evidence you already have to hand, like a close checklist or task export. When the paid assessment needs system access, it uses a least-privilege, agreed and revocable access model, documented before anything is connected.
What is the "AI finance skill"?
A finance-specific AI skill built and grounded in your own numbers, policies and definitions, so it answers finance questions and drafts work with citations back to the source — not a generic chatbot guessing. It's yours to keep after the assessment.
Which finance systems do you support?
Common stacks including QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Bill.com, Stripe, Ramp, Brex, Expensify, ADP, Gusto and spreadsheets — plus others via their APIs. If something is niche, we verify the integration before promising an automation rather than assuming it works.
I'm a controller, not the CFO. Is this for me?
Yes — controllers and finance managers are usually the people who feel this first and know where the real bottlenecks are. The Flight Check is built to be run by whoever actually owns the close. The output is deliberately written so it stands up when you take it to your CFO, board or audit committee.
What if we're not ready to buy anything?
That's a normal outcome. The Flight Check is free and gives you a usable read either way — including "you're already lean, don't automate yet". There's no obligation to continue, and we'd rather tell you that honestly than sell you an engagement you don't need.
Start with evidence
Diagnose your close before you spend a dollar on automation.
Run the free Close Flight Check and see where the time and cash actually go. Continue into a $1,500 assessment when the payback is clear — credited in full to your build.