Controller

Job Title

Controller

About Meltzer Hellrung

We strive to be the “new generation immigration solutions” provider with an innovative spirit to disrupt and constantly improve the immigration process for companies, employees and their families.  

Founded in 2014, Meltzer Hellrung leverages technology, a service-oriented mindset, and a compassionate approach to assist high-growth corporations in scaling their immigration programs, increasing their access to talent, and expanding operations into new markets.

Our values describe the essence of our firm

We Are Authentic: We express our ideas, concerns, and are accepted for who we are. We share our quirks, strengths, vulnerabilities, and our interests. We value honesty and openness to foster an environment where everyone feels valued and accepted.

We Take Ownership: We embrace our roles, responsibilities, and work with a sense of accountability and integrity. We take full responsibility for actions and outcomes. Owning our work honors our colleagues and those we seek help.

We Are Resilient: We bear the weight of our clients’ expectations as their advocates and persevere through setbacks. We pursue all the options to help achieve the best outcomes for our clients.

We Are Growth-Minded: We approach our service, our organization, and our careers with an innovative spirit. We look for ways to improve and progress as individuals and as a team. We continually look to evolve and add value.

About the Controller Role

The Controller is the hands-on accounting and finance operations leader for the law firm and its related management-services entity (MSO). This position owns the integrity of the general ledger, timely monthly close, reconciliations, financial statements, cash forecasting, and daily finance processes. The Controller manages staff and outside providers as applicable while remaining able to personally execute, review, troubleshoot, and correct accounting work. The role collaborates with the Managing Partners and fractional CFO on budgeting, financial analysis, and systems improvements; primary accountability is accurate and timely operational execution.

Duties

Design, document, execute, and test internal accounting controls, including approvals, segregation of duties, bank and credit-card controls, and close checklists.

Own the preparation and execution of the annual budget process, departmental input schedules, rolling forecasts, and budget-to-actual reporting, in coordination with the Managing Partners and fractional CFO.

Maintain compliance-ready accounting records and coordinate with payroll, tax, audit, and other advisers; escalate regulatory, trust-account, and remittance issues promptly to responsible leadership.

Perform and review monthly reconciliations of every material balance sheet account, including bank and credit-card accounts, accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll liabilities, accrued expenses, and retirement-plan liabilities; investigate and resolve reconciling items.

Prepare accurate monthly financial statements and partner-ready reporting, including explanations of material variances, key assumptions, unreconciled balances, and risks. Independently validate figures before distribution.

Prepare and maintain a 13-week cash forecast and longer-range liquidity projections using reconciled starting cash, verified AR collection assumptions, AP, payroll, taxes, distributions, and other committed cash flows; reconcile projected cash changes to underlying drivers.

Maintain separate entity-level accounting for the law firm and MSO and prepare accurate consolidated management reporting, including intercompany balances and allocations.

Account correctly for legal-service revenue, reimbursable costs, government filing fees, pass-through client charges, and trust/IOLTA balances, including appropriate segregation and reconciliation of client funds.

Maintain reliable AR aging and collections reporting, AP aging and payment controls, billing-to-cash reconciliations, and documented review of outstanding payments and uncleared transactions.

Manage the monthly close calendar, assign preparer/reviewer responsibilities, complete reconciliations and adjusting entries, and deliver financial statements by agreed deadlines; flag delays before deadlines are missed.

Guiding financial decisions by establishing, monitoring, and enforcing policies and procedures.

Providing support to management, particularly to attorneys and managing partners.

Creating reports that help senior leadership/attorneys understand company financials.

Maintain documented procedures and an up-to-date register of deliverables, owners, due dates, dependencies, and unresolved issues; escalate inaccurate or incomplete information rather than presenting estimates as validated actuals.

Own the accounting workstream of financial systems implementations, including workflow design, master-data validation, integrations, testing, reconciliation, training, issue logs, and post-go-live controls; coordinate with internal and external implementation leads.

Own the general ledger, journal entries, accruals, account classifications, period-end adjustments, and accuracy/completeness of the accounting records for each entity and consolidated reporting.

About you

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Business/Accounting/Finance or a related discipline

Experience

At least 7 years of progressive accounting experience, including at least 3 recent years in a hands-on Controller or Accounting Manager role with direct responsibility for close, GL, reconciliations, financial statements, and staff review; CFO-only oversight experience without recent hands-on execution is insufficient.

Advanced Excel proficiency, including multi-sheet financial models, linked schedules, lookup functions, pivot tables, formula auditing, and reconciling model outputs to source systems.

Demonstrated ownership of accounting-process improvement and accounting-s