I’m Buzz Rose, CPA, and I work with Pittsburgh service-business owners who’re tired of operating in financial fog. The job is straightforward: get your tax planning, cash flow, and reporting talking to each other so you can stop guessing and start deciding.
Most owners I work with run service businesses in greater Pittsburgh and see themselves in one of the three pictures below. The first conversation looks roughly the same regardless.
Revenue is climbing and the team is getting busier, but the financial habits that worked at half the size are starting to crack. You need forecasting, tax planning, and a real rhythm before something important slips.
Learn more →Money’s coming in, but you can’t point to which jobs, services, or clients are actually carrying the profit. Clear reporting and tax-aware numbers turn that guesswork into a basis for real decisions.
Learn more →A sale, a buy-in, a succession plan, or bringing in a new partner is coming up. You need clean books, a financial story that holds up to scrutiny, and someone in your corner who’s helped owners through these moments before.
Learn more →Your tax preparer does the return in March. Your bookkeeper closes the month and moves on. Maybe an insurance person or a payroll vendor pops in once a year. Every one of them does their piece well, and none of them is sitting with you when the real money decisions get made.
So tax-saving moves get missed because nobody connected them to your year. Cash gets tight and surprises you. Money you earned ends up in the IRS’s pocket instead of yours, which is exactly what a coordinated financial strategy is built to prevent.
See the Solution
I take ownership of the integrated picture: proactive tax planning, cash flow you can actually see, and reporting that points forward instead of backward. The aim is fewer surprises at year-end and more money staying in your pocket where it belongs.
I’ve spent over 30 years as a CPA helping small-business owners who put everything on the line to build something real. Earlier in my career, at an international accounting firm, I noticed it was the owners taking the actual risk while everyone else collected fees. That’s the work I wanted, so that’s the work I built my practice around.
I also wrote Napkin Math, on how a pen and calculator can help you make more and work less in a service business. I’m a Duquesne grad with a master’s from Robert Morris University, based in Pittsburgh.
Onboarding is light. After a first call I take a quick look at your books, your last return, and whatever’s pressing right now. Most engagements move into real work within a couple of weeks, and a tax deadline or a cash crunch can pull that timeline in fast.
Most of the owners I work with run service businesses doing roughly one to ten million in revenue. That’s the range where you’re past scrappy and into needing real financial structure, and where my engagement levels are designed to fit. Smaller or bigger isn’t a deal-breaker; the work just looks a little different.
Not unless you want me to. Most of the time I sit alongside your bookkeeper and your existing accountant, not on top of them. My job is the forward-looking work, tax planning, cash forecasting, and the monthly read on what the numbers are telling you. If you don’t have those people in place, I can help you find them.
A consultant writes a report and leaves. I stay in the rhythm of your year, through tax season, growth decisions, and every awkward question that comes up in between. Most of the value of the role lives in being reachable when you actually have to make a call, not in a slide deck that sits on a shelf.
Engagements flex with what your business needs. There’s no long lock-in, and either of us can dial the scope up or down as the year unfolds. Before you book anything, you can walk through how the engagement actually runs so you know what you’re signing up for.
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