Client Business Advisor

About The Plain Office

The Plain Office provides bookkeeping, financial reporting, office support, and practical technology-enabled services to small businesses, initially focused on Amish and Old Order Mennonite business owners in the United States. We combine respectful personal service with capable international teams, sound business judgment, and modern AI-enabled systems.

Position summary

The Client Business Advisor owns the successful delivery of services across a portfolio of small-business clients. You will take over after initial discovery, gather and organize the remaining details, translate needs into a service plan, coordinate the accounting team, review monthly financial output for reasonableness, ensure reports are delivered on time, resolve breakdowns, and identify additional ways we can help each client. This is not a traditional bookkeeping role. It requires ownership, judgment, communication, and the ability to understand what the numbers mean for a business owner.

Reports to:

Key responsibilities

• Lead detailed onboarding and service handoff after the initial sales conversation.
• Coordinate recurring work across approximately four accounting professionals and, over time, a portfolio of roughly 40-50 standardized small-business clients.
• Ensure monthly close activities, reports, and client deliverables are completed accurately and on schedule.
• Review P&Ls, balance sheets, reconciliations, job-costing reports, and management information for anomalies and commercial reasonableness.
• Ask insightful questions, obtain missing information, and drive issues to resolution.
• Coordinate the Chartered Accountants involvement in technical reviews and higher-level client discussions.
• Communicate directly with U.S. clients by phone, Zoom, and written channels in clear, understandable English.
• Identify additional bookkeeping, reporting, office-support, staffing, process-improvement, and automation opportunities.
• Use Claude, ChatGPT, spreadsheets, and AI-assisted tools to improve analysis, reports, procedures, and workflows.
• Provide clear operational direction and feedback to assigned accounting team members.
• Improve systems when recurring problems appear and escalate material risks early.
• Serve clients with patience, respect, confidentiality, and practical judgment.

Required qualifications

• Bachelors or masters degree in accounting, commerce, finance, business, economics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Approximately 7+ years of relevant experience in accounting operations, controllership, outsourced finance, client advisory, professional services, business operations, or small-business leadership.
• Strong spoken and written English with the confidence to lead U.S. client conversations.
• Demonstrated ability to interpret financial statements and identify when results do not make business sense.
• Experience coordinating multiple people, deadlines, and client deliverables.
• High personal ownership, sound judgment, structured follow-up, and comfort addressing performance or quality issues.
• Working knowledge of month-end close, reconciliations, cash versus accrual accounting, and job costing.
• Comfort using modern AI tools and spreadsheets to solve business problems.

Preferred qualifications

• CA, CMA, MBA, M.Com, CPA-track, or comparable finance/business qualification.
• Experience serving U.S., Canadian, U.K., or Australian clients.
• Experience managing outsourced accounting teams or a portfolio of small-business clients.
• Experience as a controller, finance manager, advisory manager, operations manager, or former business owner.
• Ability to build scalable processes and develop future advisors or team leads.
• Existing U.S. visa is helpful but not required.

What success looks like

Clients are served proactively; reports are accurate, useful, and on time; problems are resolved before clients or senior leaders must intervene; team members understand their responsibilities; open items are followed through; systems improve; and valuable additional-service opportunities are consistently identified.