Supporting Strategies | Brooklyn - Staten Island, NY

Supporting Strategies | Brooklyn - Staten Island, NY is an outsourced bookkeeping and operational support firm serving small and mid-sized businesses across two of New York City's largest boroughs. The office operates at 2383 McDonald Ave in Brooklyn, in the Gravesend area near the border with Bensonhurst and Midwood, and can be reached at +1 718-504-5643. The practice is led by Jane Lvovskiy, who manages a team of bookkeepers and controllers handling day to day accounting functions for client companies throughout Brooklyn, Staten Island and the surrounding metropolitan area.

The office is part of Supporting Strategies, a national provider of outsourced bookkeeping and controller services founded in 2004. The company built its model around remote and cloud based accounting well before that approach became common, and it expanded through a network of independently operated regional offices beginning in 2013. Each office is staffed locally and supported by the national organization's technology platform, quality control standards and training resources. The Brooklyn and Staten Island territory covers a dense and varied business community that includes construction and trades, professional services, healthcare practices, nonprofits, real estate management, retail, e-commerce and hospitality.

Services Offered

The firm functions as an outsourced accounting department rather than a seasonal tax preparer. Clients typically engage the office on an ongoing monthly basis and hand over some or all of the recurring financial tasks that would otherwise fall to an owner, an office manager or an in-house hire. Common engagements include:

• Day to day bookkeeping, including transaction coding, bank and credit card reconciliations and general ledger maintenance
• Accounts payable management, bill approval workflows and vendor payment processing
• Accounts receivable, invoicing, collections follow up and payment application
• Payroll coordination and integration with third party payroll providers
• Month end close procedures and preparation of financial statements
• Customized monthly and quarterly reporting packages built around the metrics an owner actually uses
• Budgeting, cash flow forecasting and variance analysis
• Controller level oversight, including review of work performed by junior staff and guidance on internal controls
• QuickBooks Online setup, cleanup, catch up work and ongoing maintenance
• Preparation of year end books and supporting schedules for delivery to a CPA or tax preparer
• Assistance with documentation requested by lenders, auditors, insurers or investors
• Support during transitions such as a change in accounting staff, a system migration or rapid growth

Engagements are generally scoped to the size and complexity of the business, so a solo practitioner with a few dozen monthly transactions and a multi entity operation with several bank accounts receive different levels of support. Because the work is delivered by a team rather than a single individual, coverage continues during vacations, illness and busy periods, which is a practical difference from relying on one part time bookkeeper.

Approach and Technology

The office works primarily in cloud based accounting environments, with QuickBooks Online as the most common platform, supplemented by bill payment, expense management, document storage and payroll applications that connect to the ledger. This setup allows the bookkeeping team to work with source documents electronically and gives owners access to their own books at any time without keeping paper files or a dedicated workstation.

A significant portion of the work involves establishing or repairing the underlying structure of a client's records. That can mean rebuilding a chart of accounts so that reports separate meaningful categories of revenue and expense, setting up class or job tracking for companies that need profitability by project or location, reconciling accounts that have drifted out of balance over several years, or documenting a repeatable monthly close process where none existed. Once the foundation is stable, the ongoing service focuses on keeping records current and producing reporting that is timely enough to be useful for decisions rather than only for tax filing.

Reporting is treated as a deliverable in its own right. Rather than sending a standard profit and loss statement and leaving interpretation to the client, the team tends to build report packages around the questions an individual owner asks most often, then walk through the numbers so the figures connect to operations. This is often the point where the bookkeeping relationship shades into advisory work, with discussions about pricing, staffing costs, cash timing, financing options and the financial implications of expansion.

Who the Firm Works With

Typical clients are businesses that have outgrown do it yourself bookkeeping but are not ready to employ a full time accountant. That includes owners who have been managing their own books in spreadsheets or a neglected QuickBooks file, companies whose bookkeeper has left, organizations that need a second set of eyes and better internal controls, and growing firms that want controller level insight without a senior salary on the payroll. Nonprofit organizations with grant and fund tracking requirements and professional service firms that bill by project or hour are also well suited to the model.

The firm regularly works alongside a client's existing CPA, tax attorney or financial advisor. The bookkeeping team maintains the records throughout the year and delivers organized, reconciled books and supporting documentation at year end, which generally shortens the tax preparation process and reduces the volume of questions coming back from the accountant.

Location and Getting Started

The McDonald Avenue office sits along a commercial corridor served by the F train and several bus routes, with street parking available in the surrounding residential blocks. Much of the client work is performed remotely, so businesses in Staten Island, elsewhere in Brooklyn and in neighboring boroughs can be served without regular in person visits, though meetings can be arranged for onboarding, planning sessions and periodic reviews.

New engagements usually begin with a conversation about the current state of the books, the software in use, the volume and type of transactions, and what the owner wants to be able to see each month. From there the office proposes a scope of work and a recurring fee, which allows costs to be budgeted rather than billed unpredictably by the hour. Prospective clients may want to gather recent bank statements, access to their accounting file, a list of vendors and customers, and copies of the most recent tax return before the first meeting, since those documents give the team a clear picture of what cleanup, if any, is needed before ongoing service begins.