Frequently Asked Questions

Basic Info

  • Our work is 100% remote, so members of our team live in different parts of the country. Technically, Green Owl is headquartered in what is now called Portland, Oregon, on stolen land and the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, bands of Chinook, Tualitin, Kalapuya, Mollala, and many other Tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River.

  • We are a people centric organization. In order to accommodate the varying schedules, life responsibilities, and energy levels of our teammates, we don’t have typical “business hours” and allow them to set their own schedules. We are closed for major holidays, but other than that, specific business hours don’t really exist here. (You can read more about this here.)

  • We never say never, but it’s extremely rare and unlikely for us to outsource any portion of our work. All work is typically performed by our internal staff. (During very busy times, we may bring on temporary employees to provide additional support.)

Our Process

  • Your best bet is to first take a look at our What to Expect page. There you’ll find more information about what takes place before any agreements are signed as well as after you’re fully onboarded. Essentially, we’re going to want to meet with you to get a better understanding of who you are and what you need.

  • The answer is: It depends.

    There are a lot of factors that can impact how long an engagement lasts, not least of which is based on the services we’re providing you.

    For example, if you’ve engaged us to handle your monthly accounting or process payroll for your team, the engagement won’t have an obvious end date - it will continue indefinitely.

    If, however, you’ve asked us to set up a new accounting system for you, that engagement will end once the set up is fully complete.

    The length of time for project work like this can be impacted by many things, including but not limited to the complexity of the project, your response time to our questions and requests, office closures for federal holidays, etc.

    Ultimately, our goal is to do our work as efficiently as possible, and we’ll be in regular communication with you along the way.

  • For custom services, we consider a variety of factors when determining our fees for monthly services. Many aspects of your organization and needs are weighed, including but not limited to:

    • The complexity of your organization and related accounting guidelines.

    • The average volume of transactions each month.

    • The portions of the work you and your team intend to retain.

    • Your team’s willingness (or not) to streamline any of your existing processes and/or systems when necessary.

    • The average volume of grants and/or restricted fund transactions.

Our Fees

  • Every organization is different. If your needs are relatively simple, you can sign up for our Standard Bookkeeping package. If you want more than what the standard package provides, we’ll need to gather information from you which will be used to develop a more customized package. Contact us when you’re ready to get started.

    All of our fees are offered on a sliding scale (depending on your organization's annual revenue) regardless of the type of package you select.

  • Absolutely! We understand that time can be a precious resource, and sometimes you just want to know whether something will cost $20 or $20,000. We’re happy to provide you with some pricing information ahead of time so you can assess whether this may even be an option for you.

    You have three options:

    1. We charge a flat fee for our Standard Bookkeeping package.

    2. For customized packages, we’ve created some imaginary organizations on our pricing page showing what fees we might charge in each situation. You can compare these to your own organization and needs to get a rough estimate of what our fees might look like for your situation.

    3. You can complete one of our Preliminary Quote Request Forms that acts as a sort of mini consultation for customized packages. In these request forms, we’ll ask you to provide information about your organization’s size, activity, needs, and current systems. Then we’ll use that information to put together a preliminary quote of our services.Note that a preliminary quote is just that – preliminary. We will not be able to provide you with a final quote until after we meet for the initial consultation.