Outsourced CFO & Accounting Services in Orlando
Financial leadership for the Theme Park Capital and beyond. Expert outsourced finance for tourism suppliers, military simulation companies, healthcare providers, and construction firms navigating the seasonal revenue cycles, defense compliance requirements, and rapid growth dynamics of Central Florida.
The Orlando Business Landscape
Orlando attracts more than 75 million visitors per year, making it the most-visited destination in the United States. But the business economy that supports this tourism machine extends far deeper than the theme parks themselves. Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando Resort, and SeaWorld are the visible headliners, but the real economic story lies in the thousands of companies that power the visitor experience from behind the scenes: hospitality staffing agencies that deploy tens of thousands of temporary workers during peak seasons, food service distributors that supply hundreds of restaurants and hotel kitchens, specialty construction contractors that build and renovate attraction infrastructure, event production companies that stage conventions at the Orange County Convention Center (the second-largest convention facility in the nation), and transportation operators that move visitors between airports, hotels, and attractions. This supplier ecosystem generates billions in annual revenue and employs far more people than the parks themselves.
What most people outside Central Florida do not realize is that Orlando has quietly become America's capital for military simulation and training technology. The U.S. Army's Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation (PEO STRI) is headquartered at the Central Florida Research Park adjacent to the University of Central Florida. L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and CAE all maintain major simulation operations in Orlando, and hundreds of mid-market defense companies have clustered around them. The National Center for Simulation generates over $6 billion in annual economic impact, supporting an industry that develops everything from flight simulators and virtual reality training systems to live-fire range instrumentation and medical training devices. Add AdventHealth (the region's largest private employer with over 30,000 employees), Orlando Health, and a growing network of independent practices, and Orlando's economy is far more diversified than its theme-park reputation suggests.
For business owners managing $5M to $50M in revenue, Orlando presents a set of financial challenges that are genuinely complex. Tourism suppliers must manage revenue streams that can vary by 60% between peak and off-peak months. Defense contractors must maintain DCAA-compliant accounting systems while simultaneously running commercial operations under standard GAAP. Healthcare companies are expanding into a metro area that has grown to 2.7 million people and shows no signs of slowing. And construction companies are building in a hurricane zone where insurance costs, weather delays, and building code requirements add layers of financial risk that mainland markets do not face. The companies that succeed here are the ones whose financial leadership is as sophisticated as their operating environment demands.
75M+ Visitors
Annual Tourism
Most-visited US destination
$6B+ Impact
Simulation Industry
America's training tech capital
AdventHealth
30,000+ Employees
Region's largest private employer
Tourism Supplier Economics: The Revenue Roller Coaster
The financial reality of being a tourism supplier in Orlando is that your revenue follows a seasonal pattern shaped by school calendars, holiday schedules, and weather. The peak season runs from mid-June through mid-August (summer break), with a secondary peak during Thanksgiving through New Year's. Spring break (March through April) generates a moderate uptick, while September through early November represents the slowest period, when theme parks reduce operating hours and convention bookings thin out. For a hospitality staffing company, a food distributor, or an event production firm generating $5M to $30M in revenue, this means that as much as 55% to 65% of annual revenue may concentrate into five months—while fixed costs (facility leases, salaried management, insurance, equipment) run twelve months a year.
Cash flow management in this environment requires a forecasting discipline that goes far beyond looking at last year's numbers. A staffing agency must model deployment volumes against seasonal demand curves, accounting for the lead time required to recruit, screen, and onboard temporary workers before peak season begins—a process that incurs cost weeks before the associated revenue materializes. A food service distributor must build inventory ahead of peak demand periods, tying up working capital in product that will not generate receivables for 30 to 60 days. And every tourism supplier faces the concentration risk of depending on a small number of very large customers: when Disney or Universal represents 40% or more of your revenue, any change in their purchasing patterns—whether from a shift in visitation, a budget cut, or a supplier consolidation initiative—can reshape your financial outlook overnight.
The most sophisticated Orlando tourism suppliers manage this seasonality through a combination of cash reserve building during peak months, revolving credit facilities sized to cover off-peak operating costs, and diversification strategies that reduce customer concentration. Some expand into convention and meeting services, which follow a different seasonal pattern than leisure tourism. Others develop relationships with multiple attraction operators to spread risk. The financial modeling required to optimize these strategies—determining the right cash reserve level, the optimal credit facility size, the break-even point for diversification investments—is exactly the kind of strategic finance work that separates thriving companies from ones that simply survive the cycles.
Military Simulation and Defense Contracting
Orlando's simulation and training industry represents one of the most unusual defense ecosystems in the country. Unlike defense hubs that are organized around a military installation (like San Diego around Navy or Oklahoma City around Tinker AFB), Orlando's defense economy is organized around a technology discipline: simulation. PEO STRI serves as the Army's acquisition center for simulation and training technology, and its presence has attracted a constellation of defense contractors ranging from global primes like L3Harris (whose corporate headquarters is in Melbourne, just an hour east) and Lockheed Martin to mid-market companies with $10M to $100M in defense simulation revenue. Many of these companies operate in the Central Florida Research Park, which has grown to become the largest research park in Florida and one of the largest in the nation.
For companies in this ecosystem generating $5M to $50M in revenue, the financial management requirements are defined by federal procurement rules that are unforgiving in their specificity. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) govern everything from how costs are classified to how overhead rates are calculated to how profit is determined on cost-type contracts. Companies must maintain a compliant accounting system that can track direct costs to individual contracts, allocate indirect costs across cost pools using consistently applied allocation bases, and produce an annual Incurred Cost Submission (ICS) that reconciles all of this into a format the DCAA can audit. The system must also support different contract types simultaneously: a company might have fixed-price contracts (where the financial risk is on the contractor), cost-plus contracts (where the government reimburses costs plus a negotiated fee), and time-and-materials contracts (where billing is based on labor rates and direct costs) all running at the same time.
The growth inflection point for Orlando defense companies often comes when they transition from being a subcontractor on larger programs to becoming a prime contractor. As a sub, the financial requirements are significant but the prime contractor bears much of the compliance burden. As a prime, the company must manage the entire contract lifecycle—from proposal cost volume development through contract execution and closeout—and must maintain the financial infrastructure to manage subcontractors, handle government property accounting, and respond to audit requests. Companies that anticipate this transition and invest in their financial systems beforehand are far more likely to win their first prime contract, because the government evaluates the adequacy of a company's accounting and financial management systems as part of the pre-award assessment.
Healthcare Expansion in a Booming Metro
Orlando's population growth has been among the fastest in the nation for the past decade, and the healthcare sector is expanding rapidly to keep pace. AdventHealth, a faith-based system with over 30,000 employees in the Orlando area, operates multiple hospitals and hundreds of outpatient facilities across Central Florida. Orlando Health operates Orlando Regional Medical Center, one of the state's busiest Level I trauma centers, along with a network of community hospitals and physician practices. For independent medical groups, specialty practices, urgent care operators, and healthcare services companies generating $5M to $30M in revenue, this growth environment creates opportunity—but also competitive dynamics that demand financial precision.
The payer mix in Orlando reflects the metro's demographic diversity. Florida did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which means a significant portion of the population remains uninsured or underinsured. For healthcare providers, this translates into a payer mix that includes commercial insurance (with widely varying reimbursement rates depending on the carrier and plan), Medicare (a major payer given Florida's retiree population, even in Orlando's younger-skewing metro), Medicaid (at some of the lowest reimbursement rates in the nation), and self-pay patients who may generate revenue through negotiated cash prices, payment plans, or not at all. Managing this payer mix requires revenue cycle infrastructure that minimizes claim denials, accelerates collections, and accurately models the financial impact of patient volume changes by payer type.
Multi-location expansion is where many growing Orlando healthcare businesses face their biggest financial management challenge. Opening a second, third, or fifth location requires capital investment analysis that accounts for leasehold improvements, equipment purchases, staffing ramp-up costs, and the timeline to reach patient volume breakeven. Each location may have a different payer mix depending on its geography: a practice in affluent Winter Park will see a very different insurance profile than one in Kissimmee or Pine Hills. Consolidating financial performance across multiple locations while maintaining the visibility to manage each one individually requires accounting infrastructure and reporting systems that go well beyond what a single-location practice needs. The financial modeling required to determine when, where, and how to open the next location is one of the highest-value activities a finance team can perform for a growing healthcare business.
Construction in Hurricane Country
Orlando sits in the heart of one of the most active hurricane zones in the United States, and this geographic reality shapes every aspect of the construction industry here. Florida's building code, strengthened significantly after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and updated after each subsequent major storm, is among the most stringent in the nation. Wind resistance requirements, impact-rated windows and doors, reinforced roofing systems, and flood zone construction standards all add cost and complexity to projects. For a general contractor or specialty trade company managing $5M to $50M in revenue, these code requirements increase material costs and labor hours compared to construction in non-hurricane markets, and they must be reflected in every estimate and bid.
Insurance is where hurricane exposure hits the income statement hardest. Florida's property insurance market has been in crisis for several years, with multiple carriers withdrawing from the state and premiums for those that remain increasing by 30% to 50% annually. For construction companies, this affects both the cost of insuring their own operations (builder's risk insurance, general liability, commercial property) and the cost environment for the projects they build (since higher insurance costs for building owners affect project feasibility and budgets). Workers' compensation insurance in Florida, while less expensive than California, still represents a significant cost for labor-intensive construction operations. A growing contractor must model these insurance cost escalations into multi-year project budgets and pricing strategies, because a project that pencils out at today's insurance rates may not be profitable if rates increase 20% before completion.
Weather delays create a financial management challenge that is unique to hurricane-zone construction. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June through November, which overlaps with the most productive construction months. A single major hurricane or tropical storm can halt construction across the entire metro for one to three weeks, depending on severity and recovery time. Even near-misses can trigger mandatory evacuations that shut down job sites. These delays ripple through project schedules, extend overhead periods, and push completion dates beyond contract deadlines. A construction company's financial planning must include weather contingencies in every project budget, and the company's cash flow model must account for the possibility of extended periods without progress billing during storm events. Force majeure clauses in construction contracts provide some protection, but negotiating and invoking these clauses effectively requires financial documentation that demonstrates the actual cost impact of weather delays.
Florida's Tax Advantage and Its Hidden Costs
Florida's lack of a state income tax is the headline that attracts business owners from around the country, and it is a genuine competitive advantage. Business owners who relocate from states like California or New York can save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in personal state income tax alone. But Florida's tax environment is not as simple as "no state income tax." The state imposes a corporate income tax of 5.5% on C-corporation income above $50,000, which means the pass-through entity structure that many growing businesses use is not just a preference but a meaningful tax planning strategy. Florida's sales tax rate of 6% (plus county surtaxes that bring the combined rate to 6.5% in Orange County) applies to a broad base of goods and some services, and the state's commercial rent tax—a tax on commercial lease payments that is unique to Florida—adds an additional 2% to the cost of every business lease.
The commercial rent tax is particularly significant for companies in real-estate-intensive industries. A logistics company leasing 100,000 square feet of warehouse space, a medical practice leasing office and clinical space across multiple locations, or a hospitality company leasing restaurant and event venues all pay this tax on every dollar of rent. For a company with $500,000 in annual lease obligations, the commercial rent tax adds $10,000 per year. For a company with $2M in lease costs, it's $40,000. These amounts are not transformative individually, but combined with property taxes, tangible personal property taxes on business equipment, and the various impact fees and assessments that local governments impose in high-growth areas like Orlando, the total non-income tax burden can be substantial.
For business owners evaluating entity structure, compensation strategy, and reinvestment planning, the absence of state income tax creates opportunities that require active financial planning to capture fully. A well-structured ownership and compensation arrangement can minimize overall tax burden by leveraging Florida's favorable treatment of pass-through income, optimizing between salary and distributions, and timing capital investments to take advantage of depreciation and expense deductions at the federal level. The business owner who simply assumes that "no state income tax" means tax planning is unnecessary is leaving significant money on the table. Strategic financial leadership ensures that the structural advantages of doing business in Florida translate into real after-tax savings.
What Growing Orlando Businesses Need from a Finance Partner
Orlando's economy rewards businesses that can manage complexity across multiple dimensions simultaneously. A tourism supplier must forecast seasonal revenue while managing year-round fixed costs and large-customer concentration risk. A defense contractor must maintain dual accounting capabilities—DCAA-compliant systems for government contracts and standard GAAP for commercial operations. A healthcare practice must optimize revenue cycles across a fragmented payer landscape while executing multi-location expansion plans. A construction company must deliver project-level profitability in a market where insurance costs are escalating, weather is unpredictable, and building codes are among the strictest in the nation. No basic bookkeeping operation can manage all of this.
A finance partner serving Orlando businesses needs industry-specific expertise that goes well beyond tax return preparation and monthly financial statements. That means understanding how tourism seasonality affects working capital needs and credit facility sizing. It means knowing how to build and maintain DCAA-compliant cost accounting systems for defense contractors. It means having the healthcare revenue cycle experience to reduce claim denials and accelerate collections across a complex payer mix. And it means the construction finance knowledge to produce WIP schedules, manage bonding relationships, and model the cash flow implications of weather delays and insurance cost inflation.
An outsourced finance team brings this multi-industry expertise to Orlando businesses at a cost structure that is dramatically more efficient than hiring in-house. For a $15M tourism supplier, that might mean a controller who manages the seasonal cash flow forecasting and a CFO who models the customer diversification strategy—both for less than the cost of one senior hire. For a defense contractor, it means DCAA compliance infrastructure on day one rather than an 18-month learning curve that risks audit findings. For a healthcare practice opening its third location, it means financial modeling that accurately predicts the investment required and the timeline to profitability. The result is financial leadership that matches the sophistication Orlando's economy demands without the overhead that erodes the growth these businesses are pursuing.
Scale Your Orlando Business with Confidence
Get finance leadership that understands tourism seasonality, defense simulation compliance, healthcare revenue cycles, and hurricane-zone construction economics. We work with Orlando businesses from $5M to $50M in revenue.