Outsourced CFO & Accounting Services in Dallas
Financial leadership built for America's corporate relocation capital. Expert outsourced finance for construction companies, healthcare practices, professional services firms, and corporate suppliers navigating rapid growth, enterprise vendor compliance, and the Texas tax environment across the DFW metroplex.
The Dallas Business Landscape
Dallas is where corporate America has chosen to plant its flag for the 21st century. More Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex than in any other American metro, and the list keeps growing. AT&T, McKesson, Tenet Healthcare, Texas Instruments, and Kimberly-Clark are longstanding residents. But the real story is the relocation wave: Goldman Sachs, Charles Schwab, Caterpillar, and PGA of America have all moved headquarters or major operations to DFW in recent years, drawn by zero state income tax, lower operating costs, a central geographic position, and DFW International Airport's unmatched connectivity. Each corporate arrival brings not just the company itself but an ecosystem of demand for construction, professional services, healthcare, and every category of supplier that a large enterprise requires.
The scale of the DFW economy is staggering. The metro area generates over $600 billion in GDP, making it larger than the economies of most countries. Nearly eight million people live in the metroplex, and the population continues to grow by over 100,000 per year. This growth drives a construction industry that has maintained a perpetual boom for over a decade, with commercial office space, corporate campuses, data centers, residential developments, and infrastructure projects running simultaneously across every corner of the metro. Healthcare has expanded just as rapidly: Baylor Scott & White, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Texas Health Resources, and Parkland Health anchor a medical economy that serves the fastest-growing major metro in the country.
For business owners managing $5M to $50M in revenue, Dallas offers a growth trajectory that is difficult to find anywhere else in America. But growth in Dallas comes with its own financial complexity. The speed of expansion can outstrip a company's financial infrastructure, the competition for talent drives up compensation costs, the Texas franchise tax and property tax system creates obligations that out-of-state transplants often underestimate, and the enterprise customers that make Dallas so attractive impose vendor compliance standards that require sophisticated financial operations. The companies that capture the most growth are the ones whose finance function is built to operate at DFW speed.
Most Fortune 500
HQs in America
Corporate relocation capital
$600B+ GDP
Metro Economy
Larger than most countries
100,000+
Annual Population Growth
Fastest-growing major metro
Construction in a Perpetual Boom: Job Costing at Scale
Dallas has been one of the most active construction markets in the United States for over a decade, and the pipeline shows no signs of slowing. Corporate campus projects for newly relocated headquarters, data center construction driven by the explosion in cloud computing and AI infrastructure, mixed-use developments across Uptown, Deep Ellum, and the Design District, and a regional transportation expansion that includes highway widening, DART rail extensions, and the planned high-speed rail link to Houston all create sustained demand for general contractors, specialty trades, and engineering firms. For a construction company managing $5M to $50M in revenue, the opportunity is enormous—but so are the financial risks inherent in running multiple large projects simultaneously.
Job costing discipline is what separates profitable construction companies from those that win work and still lose money. Every project must be tracked individually with accurate cost-to-complete estimates updated regularly. Percentage-of-completion revenue recognition—the standard for construction accounting under ASC 606—requires that these estimates be reliable, because over-estimating completion percentage on one project can mask problems that do not become apparent until the project is nearly finished and the losses are locked in. Retention receivables, which typically represent 5% to 10% of contract value held back until project completion, create a persistent working capital drain that must be managed across the entire project portfolio.
Bonding capacity is another critical financial dimension for Dallas construction companies. Surety companies evaluate a contractor's financial statements, working capital position, and backlog-to-equity ratio when setting bonding limits. A company that wants to bid on a $15M project needs the financial infrastructure to demonstrate it can support the bond. This means clean, timely financial statements (often CPA-reviewed or audited), a well-managed balance sheet, and working capital ratios that fall within surety company guidelines. For growing contractors, the frustrating reality is that financial infrastructure limitations can cap growth just as effectively as a shortage of project managers or skilled labor. An outsourced finance team that understands construction accounting can build the financial foundation that supports increasing bonding capacity and, with it, the ability to pursue larger and more profitable work.
Healthcare Expansion Across the Metroplex
Healthcare in Dallas is not just a large sector—it is one of the most competitive healthcare markets in the United States. Baylor Scott & White is the largest not-for-profit hospital system in Texas. UT Southwestern Medical Center is a top-ranked academic medical center and research institution. Texas Health Resources operates more than two dozen hospitals and hundreds of care delivery points. Parkland Health runs one of the busiest public hospital systems in the country. Medical City Healthcare, Methodist Health System, and Children's Health add further depth. This institutional density creates both opportunity and competitive pressure for independent practices, surgical centers, and healthcare services companies that operate alongside and between these systems.
For healthcare businesses managing $5M to $30M in revenue, the financial management requirements are demanding. Revenue cycle optimization in Dallas means navigating a payer landscape that includes every major national insurer, Texas-specific plans like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas (the largest health insurer in the state), a substantial Medicaid managed care population, and self-insured employer plans from the Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the metro. Each payer has different reimbursement rates, different authorization requirements, and different appeal processes. A practice that is not tracking denial rates by payer, analyzing days in accounts receivable by payer category, and actively managing its payer contracts is almost certainly leaving revenue on the table.
Multi-location expansion is the primary growth strategy for successful Dallas healthcare businesses, and it introduces financial complexity that many practices are unprepared for. Opening a second or third location in fast-growing suburbs like Frisco, McKinney, or Prosper requires modeling the economics of each site independently: different commercial lease rates (which vary dramatically across the metroplex), different staffing models based on projected patient volumes, different payer mixes driven by the demographics and insurance coverage patterns of each area, and shared overhead costs that must be allocated to determine true site-level profitability. A finance team that can build these multi-site models and update them as actual performance data comes in gives practice owners the visibility to expand confidently rather than discovering six months after opening that a new location is diluting the overall business.
Corporate Supplier Compliance: The Price of Access
The concentration of Fortune 500 headquarters in Dallas creates an extraordinary market for mid-size companies that sell services and products to large enterprises. But enterprise procurement is not small business purchasing. When AT&T, Goldman Sachs, or McKesson evaluates a potential vendor, they are not just comparing prices and capabilities. They are assessing financial stability, operational controls, and compliance infrastructure. A $10M professional services firm that wants to win a seven-figure contract from a Dallas-based Fortune 500 company will need to demonstrate that its financial house is in order through audited or reviewed financial statements, SOC compliance evidence, adequate insurance coverage, and working capital sufficient to fund the engagement before payment arrives.
These requirements represent a genuine barrier to entry for growing companies. Producing audited financial statements requires an accounting system that captures transactions accurately, categorizes them correctly, and generates the reports that an external auditor needs to complete their work efficiently. SOC 2 compliance—increasingly required by enterprises for any vendor handling data or accessing systems—requires documented internal controls over financial reporting, data security, and operational processes. For a company that has been managing its finances with QuickBooks and a part-time bookkeeper, the gap between current capabilities and enterprise vendor requirements can seem insurmountable.
But this is exactly where the investment in financial infrastructure pays for itself. A company that can pass enterprise vendor audits gains access to customers that spend millions annually on the services it provides. The same financial systems that satisfy enterprise requirements also produce the management reporting, cash flow forecasting, and profitability analysis that help business owners make better decisions about pricing, staffing, and growth. An outsourced finance team can build this infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of hiring a controller and CFO in-house—and at Dallas salary levels, that cost difference is significant. The return on investment comes not just from the vendor compliance itself but from the strategic visibility that enterprise-grade financial operations provide to the business owner.
The Texas Tax Environment: Simpler Than You Think, Until It Isn't
Zero state income tax is the headline that draws companies to Texas, and it is a genuine advantage. But business owners who assume that zero income tax means a simple tax environment are in for a surprise. Texas imposes a franchise tax (officially the Texas Margin Tax) on businesses with revenue exceeding $2.47 million. The tax is calculated on the lesser of 70% of total revenue, total revenue minus cost of goods sold, total revenue minus compensation, or $1 million. The complexity is in the calculation options, each of which produces a different result depending on the company's cost structure. Choosing the wrong calculation method can result in overpaying by tens of thousands of dollars annually.
Property taxes are where Texas businesses often feel the greatest impact. Texas relies heavily on property taxes to fund schools, cities, counties, and special districts, and the total rate in many Dallas-area jurisdictions exceeds 2.5% of appraised value annually. For a company that owns commercial real estate or significant business personal property (equipment, fixtures, inventory), the property tax bill can represent a major line item. Appraised values are set annually by county appraisal districts, and challenging those appraisals through the protest process is not optional—it is a standard practice that most savvy Dallas business owners pursue every year. Companies that do not protest their property tax valuations consistently overpay.
Sales and use tax adds another layer. Texas's 6.25% state rate plus local additions push the combined rate in most Dallas-area jurisdictions to 8.25%. Determining which transactions are taxable, which exemptions apply, and how to handle sales to customers in other states (with their own nexus and collection requirements) is an ongoing compliance obligation. For companies with multi-state customer bases—which describes most growing Dallas businesses, given the metro's role as a regional and national headquarters hub—sales tax compliance across dozens of jurisdictions is a full-time activity. A finance team that stays on top of these obligations and identifies the available optimization strategies saves real money while keeping the company out of audit trouble.
Professional Services in the Fortune 500 Ecosystem
The concentration of corporate headquarters in Dallas has created one of the deepest professional services markets in the country. Law firms, accounting firms, management consultants, IT services providers, staffing companies, and marketing agencies all serve the enterprise ecosystem, and mid-size firms in the $5M to $50M range occupy a competitive sweet spot. They are large enough to handle significant engagements but nimble enough to provide the personalized service and senior-level attention that Fortune 500 clients often cannot get from the largest global firms.
The financial management challenges for professional services firms center on utilization, project profitability, and cash flow timing. Utilization rate—the percentage of available hours that are billed to clients—is the single most important metric for any professional services company, because the primary cost is labor and labor costs are largely fixed regardless of whether the hours are billable. A firm running at 70% utilization is dramatically less profitable than one running at 80%, even though the revenue difference may appear modest. Tracking utilization by practice area, by team, and by individual—and identifying the root causes when it drops (poor scoping, client delays, insufficient pipeline, or administrative burden)—requires financial systems and analysis that go well beyond standard accounting.
Project profitability analysis is equally important. Not every client engagement is equally profitable, and the differences often are not visible until you track time, expenses, and realization rates at the project level. A $500,000 engagement that requires $450,000 in labor and out-of-pocket costs is far less valuable than a $300,000 engagement that requires $180,000. Professional services firms that do not analyze profitability at the project and client level end up subsidizing their worst clients with profits from their best ones—and often do not realize it until the best clients are gone and the margins have collapsed. A finance team that builds project-level profitability tracking gives firm leadership the data to make intelligent decisions about pricing, scoping, and client selection that protect the firm's financial health as it grows.
What Growing Dallas Businesses Need from a Finance Partner
Dallas moves fast, and the companies that succeed here are the ones whose financial operations can keep pace. When a construction company wins a major contract and needs to demonstrate bonding capacity within weeks, a finance team that has been maintaining audit-ready financials is the difference between seizing the opportunity and watching it go to a competitor. When a healthcare practice needs to model whether a new Frisco location will be profitable before signing a ten-year lease, sophisticated financial modeling saves hundreds of thousands in potential losses. When a professional services firm needs to pass an enterprise vendor audit to land its largest client, the investment in financial infrastructure generates returns that dwarf its cost.
A finance partner serving Dallas businesses needs to understand that this market does not reward caution. It rewards preparedness. The financial systems, reporting capabilities, and strategic planning that support rapid growth must be in place before the growth opportunities arrive, because in Dallas they arrive frequently and they do not wait. Building financial infrastructure reactively—scrambling to produce clean financials for a lender when you need a credit line, or trying to set up job costing after you have already started a major project—means you are always a step behind.
The best Dallas businesses also recognize that financial leadership is a competitive weapon, not just a cost center. The construction company with superior job costing wins more profitable bids. The healthcare practice with precise payer analytics collects more revenue per encounter. The professional services firm with project-level profitability data makes better decisions about which engagements to pursue. In a market as competitive and fast-moving as Dallas, these advantages compound over time—and the companies that invest in finance leadership early are the ones that capture the most growth from America's most dynamic business environment.
Scale Your Dallas Business with Confidence
Get finance leadership that understands construction accounting, enterprise vendor compliance, healthcare revenue cycles, and the Texas tax environment. We work with Dallas businesses from $5M to $50M in revenue.