If you are shopping for outsourced accounting in San Diego and your HR is in the same shape as your books, the strongest single option we found is Optima Office, because it staffs accounting, controller, CFO, HR and recruiting roles from one local team. If you only need the finance side, CFO Hub is the better fit when you also want taxes handled, and Weekly Accounting is the one to call if you want the books closed every week instead of every month.
We ranked these firms on a simple question: how much of a growing company’s back office can one provider take off the owner’s desk? Bookkeeping quality is the baseline. What separates them is whether they can also supply a controller, a CFO for planning, and someone who knows California employment law.
Why more San Diego companies outsource the back office
The talent math has changed. Experienced accountants are harder to hire than they were five years ago, and a mid-size company competing with biotech and defense employers for the same controller often loses. Outsourcing lets a 30- or 80-person company buy a slice of a senior person’s time instead of a full salary. Review platforms have caught up with the trend: Clutch’s San Diego bookkeeping rankings, for example, put average local accounting projects in the $10,000 to $49,000 range, which gives you a sense of what companies are spending.
HR is the other half of the story. California employers carry obligations that a part-time office manager can miss, from handbook updates to the workplace violence prevention plans the state began requiring in 2024. That is why the firms below are sorted partly by how much HR they can cover.
1. Optima Office: best for accounting and HR from one team
Optima Office is a woman-owned San Diego firm that builds teams of fractional bookkeepers, accountants, controllers, CFOs and HR staff for each client. Its HR bench is what puts it first here. Clients can bring in an HR director, an HR manager, an employee relations manager, a generalist, a benefits specialist or a recruiting manager on a part-time basis, and Optima Office also runs recruiting for finance, accounting, HR and executive roles. Its staff work a hybrid schedule that includes on-site days with clients in San Diego County, which matters if you want your controller in the building at month-end.
It also goes deeper into industry accounting than most local outsourcers. For manufacturers, it lists job costing, standard and weighted-average cost methods, WIP tracking and factory labor capacity among its services.
Trade-off: Optima does not publish pricing, and tax preparation is not among its listed services, so plan on a separate CPA for returns.
2. CFO Hub: best if you want tax under the same roof
CFO Hub is a San Diego firm built around fractional CFO work, with bookkeeping, advisory and tax preparation alongside it. Its Clutch profile lists a $150 to $199 average hourly rate and a team of 50 to 249 people, which makes budgeting easier than with firms that only quote after a discovery call.
Trade-off: HR is a small slice of what it does. Clutch shows HR consulting and HR outsourcing at about 5% each of its work, so it is not the pick if people problems are your main pain point.
3. Weekly Accounting: best for fast, frequent reporting
Weekly Accounting is based in Carlsbad and, as its name suggests, closes clients’ books every week and delivers a fresh financial picture on Monday mornings. San Diego Magazine’s profile of the firm says it serves founder-run companies with up to 150 employees, focuses on DTC brands, agencies, e-commerce and SaaS, and starts outsourced packages at $1,500 a month.
Trade-off: No HR services, and its industry focus leans digital. A machine shop or construction firm will get less out of its specialization.
4. BOSS: a smaller-company option that also covers HR
Business Outsourcing Solutions, usually called BOSS, is one of the few other local firms that pairs accounting with HR. Directory listings such as Elioplus’s roundup of San Diego accounting providers describe it as offering outsourced accounting, bookkeeping and human resource services in San Diego.
Trade-off: Less public detail about its controller and CFO bench, so ask early who would handle month-end and forecasting.
5. NOW CFO: best for flexible, hourly engagements
NOW CFO is a national firm with a San Diego office. It offers outsourced, fractional and temporary CFO and controller help, billed hourly with no long-term requirement, which suits a company covering a leave or cleaning up books before a sale.
Trade-off: Finance only. Any HR or recruiting help comes from someone else.
6. Simplexity Services: best for startups
Simplexity offers fractional CFO, outsourced accounting and back-office support aimed at startups and fast-growing companies. It is a sensible first call for a venture-backed team that needs investor-ready books.
Trade-off: Its focus on early-stage companies makes it a weaker fit for established family businesses with inventory or job costing.
How they compare
| Firm | Accounting roles | HR services | Pricing published | Best for |
| Optima Office | Bookkeeper to CFO | Full HR bench plus recruiting | No | Growing companies with HR gaps |
| CFO Hub | Bookkeeping to CFO, plus tax | Limited | Hourly range on Clutch | CFO strategy plus tax |
| Weekly Accounting | Accounting and fractional CFO | No | From $1,500/month | Digital businesses |
| BOSS | Accounting and bookkeeping | Yes | No | Smaller firms |
| NOW CFO | Controller and CFO | No | Hourly model | Short-term needs |
| Simplexity | Accounting and fractional CFO | No | No | Startups |
Before you choose
Ask every firm the same four questions. Who exactly will be assigned to us, and what happens if that person leaves? Will anyone work on-site, and how often? Which tasks still stay with our staff? And who files our taxes, if not you? The firm whose answers leave the fewest gaps on your side is usually the right one, regardless of who ranks first on a list.
