Outsourced CFO & Accounting Services in Los Angeles
Financial leadership for the most economically diverse metro in the world. Expert outsourced finance for entertainment production companies, fashion and apparel brands, aerospace suppliers, international trade businesses, and healthcare practices navigating California's complex regulatory environment while scaling from $5M to $50M.
The Los Angeles Business Landscape
No city on earth matches the economic breadth of Los Angeles. The metro area's GDP exceeds $450 billion, larger than the national economies of most countries, and it generates that output across an astonishing range of industries. Production companies shoot on soundstages in Burbank and Culver City while fashion brands design and manufacture in the downtown garment district. Aerospace suppliers in El Segundo and Hawthorne build satellite components for Northrop Grumman, spacecraft for SpaceX, and avionics systems for the Department of Defense. The Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach together form the largest container port complex in the Western Hemisphere, moving over $500 billion in annual trade value and feeding an import/export ecosystem that connects every American consumer to Asian manufacturing. Food manufacturers in Vernon and the San Fernando Valley supply national restaurant chains and grocery retailers.
The healthcare sector alone would rank as a top industry in most cities. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, UCLA Health, Kaiser Permanente, and Providence collectively serve a metro population of nearly 13 million people, creating a vast network of affiliated physician practices, specialty clinics, outpatient surgery centers, diagnostic facilities, and healthcare technology companies. The professional services sector—law firms, accounting firms, consulting practices, architectural firms, engineering companies—thrives on the legal and financial complexity of serving all of these industries in a state whose regulatory environment is the most demanding in the nation.
For business owners managing $5M to $50M in revenue, Los Angeles is simultaneously the land of opportunity and the land of complexity. The market is enormous, the talent pool is deep, and the customer base is global. But California's tax burden, labor regulations, environmental requirements, and local business taxes create operating costs that punish companies without strong financial discipline. The businesses that scale successfully in LA are the ones whose finance function can manage this complexity proactively—turning California's regulatory maze from a cost of doing business into a competitive moat that deters less capable competitors.
$450B+ GDP
Metro Economy
Larger than most countries
#1 Creative
Economy Globally
Entertainment & fashion capital
#1 Port Complex
Western Hemisphere
$500B+ annual trade value
Entertainment and Media Production Finance
Entertainment is the industry most uniquely associated with Los Angeles, and its financial management challenges are unlike anything faced by businesses in any other sector. Production companies operate on a project-by-project basis with wildly irregular cash flows. A company might collect $3 million in production funding in January, spend it over a four-month shoot, deliver the finished product in June, and not see another major payment until a new project greenlights in the fall. Between those cash events, the company carries fixed overhead—development staff, office leases, insurance, and the relationships that generate future work. Cash flow forecasting in entertainment is not about smoothing seasonal variation; it is about managing a sequence of financial peaks and valleys that can differ by millions of dollars from one month to the next.
The accounting complexity is equally demanding. Production tax credits—offered by California, Georgia, New Mexico, the UK, Canada, and dozens of other jurisdictions—can represent 20% to 30% of qualifying production expenditures, but each jurisdiction has its own rules about what qualifies, how to apply, and when the credits are actually received. Guild and union requirements under SAG-AFTRA, IATSE, DGA, and WGA contracts impose specific payment schedules, pension and health fund contributions, and residual obligations that extend for years after a production wraps. Co-production deals between multiple studios or financiers require allocation of revenues and costs according to complex waterfall structures. And the shift toward streaming has fundamentally changed revenue recognition as subscription models replace per-unit sales and licensing.
For a production company managing $5M to $50M in annual revenue, the finance function must simultaneously manage project-level budgets with line-item precision, company-level cash flow across multiple overlapping projects, multi-jurisdiction tax credit applications and monetization, guild compliance and residual tracking, and investor or financier reporting that satisfies increasingly sophisticated capital providers. An outsourced finance team with entertainment industry experience can handle this full spectrum at a cost that makes sense for mid-sized production companies that cannot justify the overhead of a full internal finance department.
California's Tax and Regulatory Complexity
Every business in Los Angeles operates within the most complex state tax and regulatory environment in the country. California's franchise tax imposes a minimum $800 annual obligation on every entity, with income-based taxes that reach an 8.84% corporate rate or a graduated rate for individuals and pass-through entities that tops out at 13.3%—the highest state income tax rate in the nation. Sales tax in Los Angeles County exceeds 10% when state, county, city, and special district rates are combined. The city of Los Angeles imposes its own gross receipts tax on businesses operating within city limits, with rates varying by industry classification. And these are just the tax obligations; the regulatory costs add another substantial layer.
AB5, California's worker classification law, reshaped the cost structure of industries across Los Angeles. Production companies that relied on independent contractor crews, trucking companies that used owner-operators, and professional services firms that engaged freelance consultants all had to reevaluate their workforce models. The financial consequences of misclassification include retroactive payroll taxes, penalties, workers' compensation audit adjustments, and private lawsuits under the Private Attorneys General Act. For a growing company with 50 to 200 workers, the difference between correct and incorrect classification can represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual exposure.
Strategic tax planning in California requires finance leadership that understands how state and federal tax provisions interact. The research and development tax credit is particularly valuable for aerospace, technology, and biotech companies, but California's calculation methodology differs from the federal credit in ways that affect the benefit. The pass-through entity elective tax provides a workaround for the federal SALT deduction cap that can save business owners significant amounts, but the election must be made properly and the payments timed correctly. Entity structure decisions—S-corp versus LLC versus C-corp—have different California implications than they do federally. A finance partner that understands these dynamics can save a $10M company $100,000 or more annually through strategic tax planning alone.
Fashion, Apparel, and Consumer Products
Los Angeles is the largest apparel manufacturing center in the United States, and the downtown fashion district remains the heart of an industry that includes everything from fast-fashion brands producing domestically to luxury labels sourcing from factories in Asia and Europe. The financial dynamics of fashion are driven by seasonal buying cycles, high inventory risk, and a channel mix that has shifted dramatically toward direct-to-consumer e-commerce while still requiring wholesale and retail distribution. A fashion brand managing $5M to $30M in revenue typically commits to production six months before product ships, locks in raw materials and factory capacity based on demand forecasts that are inherently uncertain, and then manages sell-through, markdowns, and closeouts on the back end.
The cash flow implications are severe. A brand placing a spring order in October must pay factory deposits, fabric purchases, and production costs through the winter months while the revenue from those goods does not arrive until March through June—and even then, wholesale customers typically pay on 30 to 60-day terms. Working capital needs can swing by millions of dollars between production seasons. Brands that import from Asia must layer on customs duties (which can range from 5% to 32% depending on the product category and country of origin), freight costs, and the time value of money tied up in goods that are on the water for three to four weeks. Factor financing, purchase order financing, and inventory-based lending are common capital structures, and each comes with costs and covenants that must be managed carefully.
For LA fashion companies, the finance function must bridge creative and commercial realities. Product margin analysis by style, SKU, and channel tells the design team what is actually making money versus what looks good in the showroom but destroys value on the markdown rack. Customer profitability analysis reveals whether a major department store account is actually profitable after accounting for chargebacks, markdown allowances, advertising contributions, and return rates. An outsourced finance team with fashion and consumer products experience can provide these insights while managing the accounting, cash flow planning, and compliance obligations that keep the business operating.
Aerospace, Defense, and International Trade
Los Angeles has been a center of aerospace and defense since World War II, and the industry remains a cornerstone of the regional economy. Northrop Grumman, which assembles the B-21 Raider stealth bomber at its Palmdale facility, maintains major operations throughout LA. SpaceX headquarters and its Hawthorne manufacturing campus produce Falcon rockets and Starship components. Raytheon, L3Harris, and dozens of mid-tier defense contractors operate in the region. The aerospace supply chain—precision machining shops, composite fabricators, electronics manufacturers, testing labs, and engineering services firms—employs tens of thousands of workers across the metro area.
For aerospace suppliers managing $5M to $50M in revenue, the financial requirements are among the most rigorous in any industry. DCAA compliance demands cost accounting systems that segregate government and commercial work, track direct costs by contract, develop defensible indirect cost rates, and produce annual incurred cost submissions. ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) compliance adds another layer for companies producing or handling defense articles. The combination of long program development cycles, progress billing requirements, and the capital investment needed to qualify for new programs creates cash flow challenges that require careful financial planning.
Los Angeles's role as an international trade hub adds yet another dimension. Companies importing through the Port of LA navigate customs duties, tariff classifications, bonded warehouse accounting, foreign trade zone benefits, and multi-currency transactions on every shipment. The tariff environment has been particularly volatile, with Section 301 tariffs, anti-dumping duties, and shifting trade agreements creating uncertainty that directly affects import costs and therefore margins. A finance team that can model landed cost scenarios under different tariff assumptions, optimize duty management strategies, and maintain the documentation required for customs compliance helps trade-dependent businesses protect their margins in an unpredictable policy environment.
What Growing Los Angeles Businesses Need from a Finance Partner
The defining challenge of doing business in Los Angeles is managing extraordinary opportunity alongside extraordinary complexity. The market is massive, the industries are diverse, and the talent pool runs deep. But operating costs are among the highest in the country, the tax and regulatory environment is the most demanding of any state, and the specific financial challenges of LA's key industries—project-based entertainment accounting, seasonal fashion cash flows, DCAA aerospace compliance, international trade finance—require specialized expertise that generic accounting firms cannot provide.
A finance partner serving Los Angeles businesses must understand both the California-wide challenges and the industry-specific dynamics. That means navigating AB5 classification issues for a production company, modeling import duty scenarios for a fashion brand, maintaining DCAA compliance for an aerospace supplier, and optimizing California tax strategy for all of them. It means building financial models with LA-specific cost assumptions—commercial rents that can run $3 to $5 per square foot in desirable areas, salary premiums of 20% to 40% above national averages, and workers' compensation rates that reflect California's claimant-friendly system.
For growing companies in LA, the businesses that scale from $5M to $50M successfully are not the ones that treat finance as a back-office obligation. They are the ones that treat finance as a strategic function—a capability that provides the visibility, compliance infrastructure, and analytical horsepower needed to grow profitably in the most complex and competitive business environment in the country. The cost of getting this wrong in Los Angeles is higher than in almost any other market, which means the return on getting it right is equally significant.
Scale Your Los Angeles Business with Confidence
Get finance leadership that understands entertainment accounting, California tax strategy, international trade compliance, and aerospace contracting. We work with Los Angeles businesses from $5M to $50M in revenue.