Convenient Accounting provides three integrated services to owner-operated businesses in Santa Barbara: QuickBooks-based accounting, outsourced CFO advisory, and proactive tax planning. Most clients engage all three together — one firm, one source of truth, year-round attention.
Clean books done inside QuickBooks Online — the system of record everything else depends on. Our Santa Barbara accounting practice begins with the close: monthly, reconciled to the bank, audit-ready, and structured to actually answer the questions an owner asks.
A Santa Barbara outsourced CFO who knows your numbers because we run them every week. Because we are already in your QuickBooks file, the monthly advisory call begins with what actually happened in the numbers — not a sanitized summary.
Proactive Santa Barbara tax planning in Q2 and Q3 — not panic in April. The plan adjusts to actual numbers in QuickBooks in real time. Cost segregation, retirement plan setup, S-Corp optimization, accountable plans, and Section 179 timing all get scheduled before they become fire drills.
| Convenient Accounting | Bookkeeper | Tax-Only CPA | Generic Fractional CFO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works in your QuickBooks file | ● | ● | — | — |
| Year-round tax strategy | ● | — | — | — |
| Files your federal & California returns | ● | — | ● | — |
| CFO-level advisory & forecasting | ● | — | — | ● |
| Cost seg / pension / entity planning | ● | — | Sometimes | — |
| Local Santa Barbara knowledge | ● | Maybe | Maybe | — |
| Single source of truth | ● | — | — | — |
General and specialty contractors, builders, and trades operating across Santa Barbara, Goleta, Carpinteria, and the surrounding area. Job costing, retainage, contractor 1099s, and CA license renewals built in.
Santa Barbara real estate operators, short-term rental owners, and owners of owner-occupied buildings. Cost segregation studies, depreciation strategy, and 1031 exchange planning.
Santa Barbara law firms, dental and medical practices, therapists, and consultants. Reasonable comp, S-Corp optimization, retirement plan design, and accountable plans.
Custom home builders, remodel contractors, and small developers serving Santa Barbara, Montecito, and Hope Ranch. WIP accounting, project cash flow, and developer entity structuring.
Santa Barbara restaurants, hotels, vacation rentals, and tasting rooms. Daily sales reconciliation, food cost tracking, tip pool compliance, and Transient Occupancy Tax filings.
Santa Barbara families with multiple operating entities, real estate holdings, and complex personal returns. Consolidated reporting, intercompany clean-up, and estate-aligned tax planning.
Our practice is Santa Barbara–based and most clients are within Santa Barbara County, but we also serve owner-operated businesses in Goleta, Carpinteria, Montecito, Summerland, and the immediately surrounding area. The work is mostly remote inside QuickBooks Online, with quarterly in-person sessions for clients who want them.
Yes. We are an Intuit-trained QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor and run our entire practice in QuickBooks Online. If your business is on QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Wave, or spreadsheets, we'll convert and clean as part of onboarding.
Most Santa Barbara CPA firms file taxes once a year. We file taxes too — but the bigger work is year-round: monthly bookkeeping, monthly advisory, and tax planning that happens in Q2/Q3, not the night before April 15. One firm doing the work three vendors usually split.
Yes. All of our tax work is California-aware: FTB filings, LLC fee, S-Corp franchise tax, sales/use tax, and locality issues specific to the Santa Barbara area. Your federal and California returns are filed together.
Engagements are scoped to the work involved. Most clients land between a small monthly retainer for accounting alone and a larger retainer for the full integrated practice (accounting + CFO + tax). We share specifics on a discovery call once we understand your situation.
Selectively. The roster is intentionally small to keep the work hands-on. The fastest way to know is a thirty-minute discovery call — if we are a fit, we move forward; if not, we point you to who can help.
