Part-Time Staff Accountant (Client Portfolio Manager)

Part-Time Staff Accountant (Client Portfolio Manager)

Remote — US only · East Coast time zone strongly preferred $28–$32/hour · ~25 hours per week

About Us

Cornerstone Accounting Solutions is a small Savannah-based public accounting firm serving 120 owner-led small business clients. We are a five-person team. We do monthly accounting, cleanup, and advisory work for clients ranging from straightforward retail businesses to multi-entity property management and construction operations.

We are not a large firm. You will work directly with the owner, the team, and the clients. Decisions happen quickly. There is no layer of management between you and the work.

What This Role Actually Is

This is a portfolio ownership role — you manage it end-to-end and do the work. You are not a preparer who hands off to a reviewer. You are not an oversight role who delegates the work. You are a senior individual contributor who owns your clients completely: the books, the relationship, the communication, the deliverables.

You will own a recurring monthly portfolio of small business clients. That means you handle the work — reconciliations, journal entries, transactional posting, cleanup — and you manage the client: their needs, their timelines, their questions, their financial picture. You communicate with them directly. You anticipate what they need. You surface risks before they become problems.

If "I want to manage but not do the data entry" or "I want to do the work but not deal with clients" describes you, this is not the role for you.

What Communication and Ownership Mean Here

These are not soft skills in our firm. They are core job requirements, ranked alongside technical accuracy.

In practice, this means:

• If a client is unresponsive, we want to hear about it before the close is at risk, not after.
• If you lose system access, that is escalated to the owner the day you discover it, in writing.
• If a deadline is in question, we want a heads-up with an ETA, not an explanation after the fact.
• If a client is unhappy or a relationship is drifting, we want to talk about it early, not at the exit.
• When you make a mistake, we expect direct ownership — what happened, why, and what you are putting in place to prevent it.

We operate from documented SOPs. You will be expected to follow them, contribute to them, and use them. People who prefer to work around documented systems will not be a fit.

Feedback Culture

You will receive direct feedback when work is incomplete or inaccurate. We expect professional, mature engagement with feedback as part of how you grow in the role. Defensiveness, deflection, or disengagement when feedback comes is not a fit for this team.

What You Will Own

• Full month-end close, on schedule
• Reconciliations, journal entries, transactional posting, cleanup
• Multi-entity and intercompany accounting
• Compliance-heavy work including property management trust/escrow, construction WIP and retainage, and other segregated-fund industries
• Preparation and presentation of meaningful monthly financial reports to business owners
• Direct client communication, problem resolution, and relationship management
• Active contribution to firm SOPs and documentation

What You Bring

• 5 years of hands-on accounting experience
• Direct experience owning a recurring client portfolio (not assisting on one)
• Experience in at least one complex/compliance-heavy industry
• Cleanup and diagnostic capability across full general ledgers
• Ability to explain financials clearly to non-accountant business owners
• A proactive communication style — you anticipate needs and surface risks early
• Comfort working from documented SOPs and contributing to them
• Comfort with hands-on data entry as part of regular work

Technology

Working knowledge of QuickBooks Online required. Exposure to AppFolio, RentVine, Bill.com, Divvy, Shopify, Keeper, Gusto, Sage, and similar cloud-based systems is a strong plus.

Work Arrangement

Fully remote. East Coast time zone strongly preferred — we need overlap with our team and our clients during standard business hours.

Onboarding

The first two weeks are structured. You'll meet the team, walk through our SOPs and systems, shadow live client work, and begin taking on portfolio clients on a defined ramp. We have documented processes for everything you'll be doing. You won't be sink-or-swim, but you will be expected to come up to speed quickly given your experience level.

To Apply

Please include with your application:

1. The maximum number of recurring monthly clients you have personally owned at one time
2. The complex/compliance-heavy industry you have the most experience in

We will respond to applicants whose experience aligns with what is described above.

• If the way this role is described gave you pause — particularly around hands-on data entry, direct client ownership, or working within documented systems — this may not be the right fit, and we encourage you to consider that before applying.