Aelign

Financial expertise

for Main Street
Matthew Carter, PhD MBA has been a reliable and responsive financial expert to organizations of all sizes—from sole proprietors to the United States Coast Guard.

Drive better decisions by working directly with a finance expert for accurate financials and thoughtful analysis.
Accounting

Tax-ready financial statements

Bank account reconciliation

Accrual basis accounting

Bookkeeping

Financial reviews and coaching

A/P and A/R management

Tax planning & strategy

S-Corp elections

1099 Issuance

Tax preparation

Fractional Controller
Finance

Financial health & variance analysis

Budgeting & forecasting

Financial modeling & valuation

Cash flow analysis & forecasting

Software solution implementation

Capital investment analysis

Financial planning & analysis

Merger & acquisition analysis

Data analytics and advanced reporting

Fractional CFO

Interested? Please get in touch!

Leverage My Expertise

I'm a graduate of Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Cardiff Universities. I've earned an MS in data analytics, an MBA in finance, and a PhD in demographic economics.

I served as a Finance Staff Officer and eventually as the Division Chief for Measurement Research within the US Coast Guard. I've also been a consultant to Fortune 500 companies like insurance giant Aon and health products multinational Bausch + Lomb.

I'm an experienced numbers and finance guy who has taught these subjects in classrooms, presented them in boardrooms, and spoken about them in auditoriums. Then I made a course correction.

I started this service to instead work directly with the folks who grow our great country's economy. I want to partner with privately held companies to bring my expertise to bear on their finances and operations.

Sound good? Please get in touch!

My Approach

Old-Fashioned Service

I tailor my services to align with your business needs.

I am your primary point of contact and hold myself accountable for your success.

No cookie-cutter packages. That said, there are three primary ways my services are used. Project-based One-off solving a specific problem. $500/hr. Ongoing bookkeeping & accounting $150-$2500/mo. (Check bookkeeping doctor et al wrt controller) Ongoing finance work/fractional CFO services $2500-5500/mo.

Curious? Please reach out.

Case Spotlights

Small Church

How valuable can expert finance advice be for an organization?

A small church had just reached a legal settlement to leave their denomination with their church building by agreeing to pay them $100,000 every year for the next 10 years. If they ever missed a payment, the building would revert back to the big denomination.

The church had fundraised the entire $1 million prior to the settlement. Its board wanted to payoff their exit fee immediately to avoid the risk of future nonpayment. They were worried, frustrated and felt out of their depth.

So I advised them to purchase a 10-year annuity that pays $100,000 every year. The cost of that annuity was only $930,000, and the nonpayment risk was now covered.

By saving $70,000, my advice was theoretically worth that much to them. But a few years later that same small church had a significant cashflow problem and that $100,000 annual payment would not have been paid. Thanks to my annuity advice solving their risk problem, their building was saved. The real life value of expert finance advice can be the organization's continuing viability.
Coast Guard

How can you value the qualitative elements?

CG budget & valuation innovation & results. Goal was to quantify the qualitative to aid strategic decision making. It's about the numbers to support not supplant the decisions. Tools & models: statementics, lehjr

Interested? Please get in touch!

Ask My Clients

Testimonials and References

Dr. Stanley Greenspan

Ask Them

CFO. The family office of a famous and highly regarded child psychiatrist wanted to train and equip other therapists in his evidence-based therapies. We created and manage an online professional education and certification program with more than 11,000 participants.
We also developed several Wordpress plugins for this client. Additionally, we created and manage a web app that enables parents to submit videos for their child's theapist to review and annotate.
PGG & H

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Bookkeeping. A Pittsburgh gas plumber with a simple few page website hosted at GoDaddy wanted more leads. His budget was limited.

We redesigned and hosted his website. We connected him to social media and lead generating platforms like Yelp. We also began a targeted weekly SEO campaign that fit his budget and built him a simple lead management dashboard.
A year later, he had almost more quality leads than he could handle. He closed his physical storefront and became an online-only operation.
Caron Collection

Ask Them

Controller accounting. A regional specialty food manufacturer asked us to help align their digital marketing with their strategic goal of expanding into nationwide e-commerce. We combined an e-commerce platform with recipes, how-to videos and social media tie-ins.

After setting it all up, we trained their staff to run it themsleves. Their online store is now a significant revenue driver for their company.
Website Engineering

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CFO. We designed and developed a unique dyslexia-friendly website of the Bible. With a global reach, it's the most used assistive technology version of the Bible in the world.

It features a customized version of the Comic Sans font, a table of contents modeled after the periodic table of the elements, and a patent pending color-shifting text rendering technology that greatly enhances readability for those with dyslexia.
Beechberry

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full charge Accountant. Restaurant
Alterlingua

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CFO. For The Alterlingua Center we did indepth SEO writing for a professional therapist audience. We also translated research findings on autism for concerned parents. These website efforts helped their team launch a new center in Virginia.