Outsourced CFO & Accounting Services in Garland
Financial leadership built for industrial economics. Expert outsourced finance for defense electronics subcontractors, manufacturing companies, food processors, and logistics operations navigating government contract compliance, thin-margin production economics, and the competitive dynamics of operating in DFW's most cost-effective industrial corridor.
The Garland Business Landscape
Garland is the industrial backbone of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex's eastern flank. With more than 240,000 residents and an extensive base of manufacturing, distribution, and food processing facilities, the city produces everything from defense electronics and circuit board assemblies to injection-molded plastics, processed foods, and fabricated metal components. While flashier DFW suburbs attract corporate headquarters and technology companies, Garland is where physical products get made, warehoused, and shipped—and the economics of that work require a fundamentally different kind of financial management than what a software company or corporate office needs.
The defense electronics heritage runs deep. Raytheon's longtime presence in Garland established the city as a center for military electronics manufacturing, and although the specific corporate entities have evolved through decades of defense industry consolidation, the ecosystem remains intact. A network of subcontractors and specialized manufacturers in Garland produces circuit board assemblies, cable harnesses, power supply units, electro-optical systems, and other components for military and aerospace programs that flow through Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, L3Harris, and other prime contractors across North Texas. These companies operate under government accounting rules that bear almost no resemblance to commercial GAAP, and the compliance burden alone can consume a significant share of a small company's administrative resources.
Beyond defense, Garland's strategic position along I-30 and I-635 makes it a natural hub for distribution and logistics operations that supply the broader DFW market. Baylor Scott & White Medical Center at Garland anchors the healthcare sector. A growing food processing cluster takes advantage of the city's industrial zoning, lower operating costs compared to central Dallas, and proximity to a metro area of 8 million consumers. For business owners managing $5M to $50M in revenue, Garland offers access to DFW's enormous customer base at industrial operating costs that are 30% to 50% below core Dallas—but capturing that value requires financial systems that can handle the complexity of government contracts, manufacturing cost accounting, and multi-channel distribution.
Defense Electronics
Raytheon Heritage
Deep subcontractor network
240K+ Residents
Major DFW City
Eastern industrial corridor
I-30 & I-635
Logistics Crossroads
DFW distribution hub
Defense Contract Accounting and DCAA Compliance
For Garland's defense electronics subcontractors, the accounting system is not just a management tool—it is a regulatory requirement subject to government audit. The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) can audit any company holding a government contract or subcontract, and the accounting system must comply with Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) and Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 31. These rules govern how costs are classified (direct versus indirect), how indirect cost pools are structured, how costs are allocated to specific contracts, and which costs are allowable versus unallowable for government reimbursement.
The practical implications for a $5M to $25M defense subcontractor in Garland are significant. Every expense must be classified at the point of entry: is this a direct cost charged to a specific contract, or an indirect cost allocated across all contracts? Indirect costs must be organized into pools—typically fringe benefits, overhead, and general and administrative—with allocation bases that are defensible under audit. Provisional billing rates must be calculated annually, used for interim billing, and then reconciled against actual rates in an incurred cost submission that can be audited years after the costs were incurred. Entertainment expenses, alcoholic beverages, donations, lobbying costs, and certain other categories are expressly unallowable and must be excluded from any pool that touches government work.
The penalties for non-compliance range from billing adjustments and rate disputes to contract termination and debarment from future government contracting. For a company whose revenue depends on defense work, debarment is effectively a death sentence. Yet many small and mid-size subcontractors in Garland attempt to manage DCAA compliance with general-purpose accounting software and staff who have no government accounting training. An outsourced finance team with specific DCAA experience can establish compliant cost accounting structures from the outset, prepare incurred cost submissions on schedule, and respond to DCAA audits with the documentation and rate calculations that auditors expect—at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time government accounting specialist at DFW salary levels.
Thin-Margin Manufacturing: Where Every Dollar of Cost Matters
Garland's commercial manufacturers—electronics assemblers, injection molders, metal fabricators, and precision component makers—operate in a financial environment where margins of 8% to 15% are the norm and cost accounting errors can easily erase an entire quarter's profit. These companies compete on precision, reliability, and price, and their customers (often large OEMs or distributors) negotiate aggressively on cost and demand year-over-year price reductions. In this environment, financial visibility into true production costs at the job level is not a luxury; it is the information that determines whether the company quotes work profitably or slowly bleeds money on contracts that looked good on the bid sheet.
Proper job costing requires capturing labor time by job (not just by employee), tracking material usage against the bill of materials for each product, allocating overhead to jobs based on a defensible methodology (machine hours, direct labor hours, or some other measure that reflects actual resource consumption), and monitoring scrap and rework rates that represent real but often untracked costs. A circuit board assembler running 50 active jobs simultaneously needs financial systems that produce job-level profitability reports within days of job completion, not weeks or months later when the information is interesting but no longer actionable.
Equipment investment decisions compound the complexity. A new CNC machine, a pick-and-place system, or a molding press represents a capital expenditure of $200,000 to $1M+ that must generate returns over its productive life. Finance leadership needs to model the utilization rate required to justify the investment, calculate the impact on overhead rates when new equipment is added, evaluate lease versus purchase options based on the company's tax position and cash flow, and determine whether the equipment enables the company to take on new types of work that improve the overall product mix. These are strategic decisions with multi-year financial implications, and they deserve analysis that goes beyond the sales representative's ROI spreadsheet.
Food Processing in DFW's Industrial Core
Garland's food processing sector has grown steadily as companies recognize the advantages of producing food products in a city with abundant industrial space, relatively affordable energy and labor costs (compared to coastal markets), and direct distribution access to the fourth-largest metro area in the United States. Operations range from tortilla manufacturers and bakeries serving the Hispanic market to Asian sauce producers, meat processors, and snack food companies distributing regionally and nationally. These businesses combine the financial challenges of manufacturing (batch costing, yield tracking, equipment investment) with the regulatory demands of food production (FDA compliance, USDA inspection, food safety certifications).
The economics of food processing reward precision. A tortilla manufacturer running two production lines for 16 hours a day must track the cost of corn masa, cooking oil, and packaging materials at the batch level because ingredient prices fluctuate weekly and production yields vary with equipment condition and raw material quality. A 2% yield improvement on a line producing 50,000 tortillas per shift translates to thousands of dollars in monthly savings—but that improvement is invisible without batch-level cost tracking. Similarly, a company producing for private-label retail customers needs to understand the true cost of each SKU including production, packaging, labeling, and compliance overhead to negotiate pricing that protects margins rather than accepting whatever the retailer proposes.
FSMA compliance, HACCP plan maintenance, and the growing retailer demand for SQF or BRC certification create ongoing costs that many food processors underbudget. Facility upgrades required to pass third-party audits can run $50,000 to $300,000 depending on the scope. Annual audit fees, testing protocols, environmental monitoring, and recall readiness programs add recurring costs. Texas Department of State Health Services inspections and federal regulatory oversight require documentation and recordkeeping that consume administrative time. A finance team that treats food safety compliance as an operational cost rather than a strategic investment will consistently underprice the company's products relative to the true cost of producing them safely and legally.
Logistics, Distribution, and Working Capital Management
Garland's location at the intersection of I-30 and I-635, with proximity to both DFW International Airport and multiple intermodal rail facilities, has made it a natural home for distribution and logistics companies. Warehouse operators, third-party logistics providers, trucking companies, and last-mile delivery services use Garland as a base to serve the DFW metroplex and beyond. The economics of these businesses revolve around a single financial metric: how efficiently they convert assets (trucks, warehouse space, labor, inventory) into revenue.
Working capital management is the defining financial challenge for distribution companies. A typical Garland distributor carries 60 to 90 days of inventory, extends 30-day payment terms to customers, and receives 15- to 30-day terms from suppliers. This creates a cash conversion cycle where the company has paid for goods weeks or months before it collects payment from the customers who purchased them. For a distributor doing $15M in revenue with 75-day average inventory, the working capital tied up in the cash conversion cycle can exceed $3M—capital that must be financed through either internal cash generation or revolving credit facilities that carry interest costs and covenant restrictions.
For trucking and fleet operations, asset utilization analysis determines profitability. Each truck represents $150,000 to $200,000 in capital investment that generates revenue only when it is loaded and moving. Deadhead miles (driving empty to the next pickup), maintenance downtime, driver shortage, and inefficient routing all reduce utilization and erode the return on the fleet investment. Lane profitability analysis—evaluating which origin-destination pairs generate adequate revenue per mile after accounting for fuel, tolls, driver time, and repositioning costs—is essential for a trucking company making decisions about which freight to accept and which to decline. Finance leadership turns these operational metrics into financial models that guide fleet sizing, equipment replacement, and pricing decisions.
Texas Franchise Tax and Property Tax Considerations
Texas's lack of a state income tax draws significant attention from businesses relocating from high-tax states, but the franchise tax (also called the margins tax) still represents a meaningful obligation for growing companies. The franchise tax applies to most businesses operating in Texas and is calculated as a percentage of the lesser of three formulas: 70% of total revenue, total revenue minus cost of goods sold, or total revenue minus compensation. For manufacturers and distributors with high cost of goods sold, the COGS subtraction method often produces the lowest tax liability—but properly classifying costs between COGS and operating expenses requires careful analysis because the Texas Comptroller's definition of COGS for franchise tax purposes differs in important ways from GAAP treatment.
Property tax is the more significant concern for Garland businesses with substantial physical operations. Texas relies on property tax rather than income tax to fund local government, and the Dallas County Appraisal District assesses both real property and business personal property (equipment, inventory, furniture) annually. A manufacturing company with $2M in equipment on the factory floor and $500,000 in inventory faces a property tax bill on those assets that many business owners from other states find surprising. Challenging assessments through the appraisal district protest process can yield meaningful savings—particularly on equipment that has depreciated below the district's assessed value—but it requires documentation of asset condition, comparable sales data, and a willingness to go through the formal hearing process.
For companies operating across multiple DFW municipalities, the property tax landscape becomes even more complex. Garland, Dallas, Richardson, and Mesquite all have different overlapping taxing jurisdictions (city, county, school district, special districts) with different rates and different assessment practices. A company evaluating whether to locate a new warehouse in Garland versus an adjacent city needs to model the property tax implications alongside lease rates, utility costs, and logistics efficiency to make a fully informed decision. Finance leadership that understands the DFW property tax environment can identify meaningful savings opportunities that general-purpose accountants often overlook.
What Growing Garland Businesses Need from a Finance Partner
The businesses that define Garland's economy share a common characteristic: they produce, move, or process physical goods, and the financial management of physical operations is fundamentally different from managing a services business or a technology company. Cost of goods sold is not a single line item; it is a complex calculation involving raw materials, direct labor, production overhead, yield rates, and scrap. Revenue recognition may depend on contract terms, customer acceptance criteria, and percentage-of-completion methods. Working capital is tied up in inventory and receivables that must be actively managed rather than passively monitored.
A finance partner serving Garland manufacturers, distributors, and food processors needs to understand these dynamics at an operational level. That means comfort with job costing systems, inventory valuation methods, and the cash flow implications of carrying physical inventory. It means understanding DCAA compliance for companies with government contracts and FDA/USDA compliance for food producers. And it means building financial models that reflect how industrial businesses actually make money—through production efficiency, asset utilization, and cost management—rather than applying service-industry financial frameworks that miss the point.
It also means recognizing the competitive positioning that Garland offers within the DFW market. Companies here chose Garland for a reason: lower operating costs than central Dallas, strong industrial infrastructure, and logistics access that serves the entire metroplex. A finance partner should help these companies quantify and protect that cost advantage, identify opportunities to improve efficiency and margins, and plan for growth that leverages Garland's strengths rather than outgrowing them. Whether the next step is adding a production shift, investing in automation, pursuing government contracts, or expanding into new distribution channels, the financial analysis should lead the decision rather than follow it.
Scale Your Garland Business with Confidence
Get finance leadership that understands defense contract accounting, manufacturing cost systems, food safety compliance, and DFW industrial economics. We work with Garland businesses from $5M to $50M in revenue.