Assurance · Tax · Advisory — partner-led, coast to coast
Sumner & Hale is a national accounting and advisory firm for companies that treat their numbers as an asset. Partner-led, technology-assisted, and built for the decisions that outlast any one fiscal year.
The kind a company earns when its numbers are beyond argument, its filings are boring, and every big decision is made with the lights on. Sumner & Hale was built for organizations that treat clarity as an asset class — audited, compounding, and entirely theirs.
Audit, tax, and advisory under one standard, delivered by partners who stay in the room. No hand-offs, no surprises, no invoice you didn’t see coming.
9
Offices, coast to coast
NY · CHI · ATX · DEN · SF +
480+
Professionals, one standard
Partner-led, always
14
Dedicated industry practices
Depth over coverage
96%
Client retention
Earned annually
02 / What we do
Confidence, certified.
An audit should end with answers, not just an opinion. Our assurance work is partner-led, technology-assisted, and built to hold up — to your board, your lenders, your acquirers, and your own standards.
Strategy before April.
Compliance is table stakes. The real work is the planning that happens the other eleven months — structuring, credits, state exposure, and the quiet decisions that compound into real money.
The numbers behind every decision.
When the moment is bigger than the month — a transaction, a turnaround, a system that no longer fits — our advisory teams bring audit-grade rigor to the decisions that define the next decade.
03 / Where we work
Fourteen dedicated practices, twelve of them below. You should never have to explain your industry to your own accountants.
WIP schedules, cost certs, 1031s
Reimbursement, compliance, M&A
R&D credits, milestone accounting
ASC 606, cap tables, exits
Inventory, costing, tariffs
Funds, RIAs, broker-dealers
Fund audits, portfolio support
Single audits, Form 990, grants
Tip credits, multi-unit growth
Partner comp, succession
Project finance, credits
Uniform guidance, GASB
“A clean opinion is the floor. The ceiling is what you do with it.”
Jordan Sumner — Managing Partner
04 / Why Sumner & Hale
They switch when the answers slow down, the bench gets thin, and the advice stops feeling like advice. Four reasons the move tends to stick:
The partner who wins your work does your work. Questions get answered by the person who signs the opinion — not routed through three layers of staffing.
Fourteen dedicated practices, each run by people who speak your operating language. You should never have to explain how your industry works to your own accountants.
AI-assisted tie-outs, continuous evidence gathering, real-time dashboards — every automation is reviewed, documented, and signed by a human who stands behind it.
We tell you what we would do with our own capital, and we put it in writing. Independence is not a compliance checkbox here; it is the product.
05 / How engagements run
Sixty days of listening before a single recommendation. We map your close, your controls, your tax posture, and the questions your board keeps asking.
Clean opinions, filed on time, no surprises. We earn the right to advise by making the fundamentals boring again.
Structure, credits, working capital, close velocity. The quiet improvements that show up as basis points — then as percentage points.
A standing partnership measured in years. Each season starts from a stronger position than the last — that is the whole point.
06 / Technology
One encrypted home for every request, document, and deadline. No more attachments lost to inbox archaeology.
Machines reconcile the haystack; our people judge the needles. Every exception surfaced, every conclusion human-signed.
Audit support gathered all year through read-only connections — so year-end is a review, not an excavation.
See status, open items, and fees in real time. If you have to ask where things stand, we have already failed.
Sumner & Hale client portal
07 / Client outcomes
A few engagements, anonymized at our clients' request. Different industries, one throughline: the result that made the relationship.
Multi-state logistics
-4.2 pts
Effective tax rate
Forty-one state filings, zero coordinated strategy, and a nexus footprint nobody had mapped since 2019.
A full SALT restructure with entity rationalization — then a standing quarterly planning cadence.
Series C software
5 days
Monthly close, from 19
A finance team of four drowning in spreadsheets while the board asked for SaaS metrics weekly.
Outsourced CFO engagement: re-architected the close, automated rev-rec under ASC 606, built the board pack.
Family-held manufacturer
11×
EBITDA exit multiple
A third-generation transition with sell-side diligence due in 18 months and audit-ready financials in none.
Two years of quality-of-earnings preparation, clean audits, and a tax structure built for the sale.
Regional health system
$8.4M
Recovered reimbursements
A reimbursement model so tangled that margin by service line was effectively unknowable.
Forensic cost mapping, a corrected cost report history, and dashboards the operators actually use.
08 / Leadership
The partner who wins your work does your work. These are the people whose names go on the opinion — and who answer when you call.
Managing Partner
“A clean opinion is the floor. The ceiling is what you do with it.”
Vice Chair, Advisory
“Every deal has a number that decides it. Find it early.”
National Tax Leader
“The tax code rewards the prepared. We read it so you don’t have to.”
Assurance Practice Leader
“Rigor is a kindness. Surprises are not.”
09 / Insights
New thinking from our partners every month — written for the people who have to act on it.
10 / Held to a higher standard
Independent peer review of our audit practice, every cycle, results available on request.
Registered and inspected for public-company work, with the same rigor applied to private clients.
Your data handled under audited controls — encryption in transit and at rest, access logged and reviewed.
Independent member of an international network spanning 80+ countries for cross-border work.
11 / Ways of working
Certainty, priced like it
Audit, review, and tax compliance scoped once and priced flat. No meter running, no surprise true-ups in May.
A standing seat at your table
CFO-level counsel on a monthly cadence — planning, board prep, and a partner who already knows your numbers when the phone rings.
For the defining moments
Transactions, disputes, system migrations, restructurings. Defined scope, dedicated team, milestone pricing.
12 / Common questions
The questions every prospective client asks — answered the way we answer everything.
Ninety days after your fiscal year-end is the sweet spot — your prior firm finishes the year cleanly, and we onboard with a full runway. That said, we have rescued engagements in February. If something feels off, the right time is now; the conversation costs nothing.
It depends on complexity, not just size — but you will know before we start. Every engagement is scoped and priced flat, in writing, before kickoff. If the scope changes, we discuss it before the work happens, never after.
That is our favorite configuration. We are at our best as the outside bench for a strong internal team — independent where we must be, collaborative everywhere else.
Discovery calls within the week. For most engagements, onboarding takes three to four weeks: access, walkthroughs, and a transition memo to your prior firm that keeps everything cordial and complete.
Yes — through our membership in an independent global network covering 80+ countries, coordinated by your U.S. engagement team. One relationship, one standard, every jurisdiction.
13 / Careers
We hire people who want their name on the work — then we train them, staff them sanely, and promote them on merit they can see. Four working rules we actually keep:
Introduce yourselfBad news ages terribly. We deliver it fresh, with a plan attached.
Every deliverable should leave your team a little smarter than it found them.
Deadlines are promises. We keep promises.
In every sense. Work papers, processes, people.
14 / Next step
Thirty minutes with a partner — not a salesperson. Bring the question that keeps resurfacing at board meetings; leave with a straight answer and a plan to get the rest.
