The kind of camp firm you never knew existed.
The best part of camp is tradition...except in the back office. Accounting, automation, integration, and real data, run by people who know your camp.
Your ideal camp back office is here.
Your camp type
Tell us what kind of camp you run.
For-profit and nonprofit camps carry different pressures, different reporting, and different boards. Pick yours and the rest of this page adapts - the problems we lead with, the numbers, the case studies, and the advisory work.
Showing the pain points we hear most from for-profit camps.
Daily operations
Payroll and people costs
Seasonal hiring swings, multi-state withholding, housing and meals, minors and international staff.
- Payroll runs
- Seasonal onboarding
- Benefits and stipends
- Labor cost by program
Cash in, cash out
Bills, deposits, and collections
Accounts payable and receivable handled on a schedule, with approvals that leave a clean trail.
- Vendor bills
- Family balances
- Deposit timing
- Approval workflow
Monthly
Month-end close and reporting
A monthly close that lands on time and a report set you can read without a translator.
- Month-end close
- Program-level reporting
- Budget vs actual
- Year-end packet
Reporting
Numbers spread across systems
Enrollment sits in one system and the money sits in another, and someone rebuilds the report that joins them by hand.
- Enrollment reporting
- Season dashboards
- Scheduled reports
- Staffing and ratios
Payroll
A season's worth of hiring, all at once
Onboarding paperwork stacks up every spring, staff live in four states, and payroll is the thing that cannot slip in July.
- Seasonal ramp
- Paperless onboarding
- Multi-state filings
- Mid-season support
Systems
Workflow design and automation
Spreadsheet automation, connected systems, and tech-powered integrations that remove the manual re-keying.
- Spreadsheet automation
- Back-office workflow design
- System integrations
- Document and approval flow
Compliance
Tax and entity structure
Filings, owner distributions, 1099s, business license renewals, and a structure that holds up when a lender or a buyer looks at it.
- Tax filings
- Annual 1099s
- License renewals
- Lender-ready statements
Build
Capital projects and growth
Cap ex planning and tracking, feasibility on the next build, and a growth plan with numbers behind it.
- Cap ex planning
- Project tracking
- Financing support
- Growth strategy
Built on the systems you already run
We also build connections between them, so enrollment and staffing numbers land next to revenue and cost. See how Camp Intelligence works
What changes is the problem set
See what we solve for for-profit campsSound familiar?
Your camp has outgrown its back office.
Camps at this size carry the complexity of a mid-market business with none of the mid-market infrastructure. Too often the same person running programming is also running payroll. These are the sentences we hear most.
None of that is a bookkeeping problem. It is a structure problem, and structure is what we build.
“We had a great year. I think. I will know in March.”
“Rentals are probably covering something, but I could not tell you what.”
“My bookkeeper is lovely and has never staffed a June.”
“The bank wants three years of clean statements by Friday.”
“Payroll goes from 14 people to 90 and my system does not care.”
“Someone offered to buy the property and I have no idea what it is worth.”
The camps we have already done this for.
50+
Camps served
16
States represented
$100M+
Combined annual camp revenue
Every type
Overnight, day, specialty, and conference centers
Two-minute check
What level are your financials?
Five yes-or-no questions place your statements on the five-level quality scale our client directors use. Your level shows up on screen. The full write-up, including the work between you and every level above you, comes as a PDF you can hand to your board.
What we do
One team. One engagement. All of it.
Monthly accounting runs underneath every engagement. Three areas build on it, and two of them are not what most camps expect from an accounting firm.
Bookkeeping, controller work, reporting, and advisory are the same engagement. Some seasons lean on the close, others lean on a sale or a capital project. What stays constant is that one team holds all of it - senior-level support without splitting your focus or adding a full-time hire.
Every part of the season
Feature-complete, camp-shaped.
Separate
Profit by revenue line
Sessions, rentals, day camp, and land each stand on their own, so you can see exactly which lines make money and which lose it.
Time
The deposit curve
Cash lands in January for costs you pay in July. We model the gap before it becomes a line of credit.
Staff
Payroll that triples
Seasonal onboarding, multi-state withholding, housing and meals, minors, and international staff.
Build
Capital decisions
New cabins, a dining hall, a waterfront rebuild - priced with a payback period before the shovel goes in.
Your year, as it actually runs
We built the calendar around your season, not a fiscal quarter.
Deposits land, decisions get made
Enrollment pacing and cash timing against next summer's payroll and capital plans.
Hiring and buying season
Staff onboarding, vendor contracts, and pre-season spend tracked against the budget you set.
You run camp, we run the ledger
Bills paid, payroll clean, and weekly numbers you can read in minutes, even mid-season.
Rentals, land, and the real margin
Retreat groups, timber, and leases closed out line by line so the full picture shows up.
Where it usually hurts
Two kinds of camps. Two sets of problems.
Most camps at this size are still running a multi-million dollar operation through a general-practice bookkeeper who has never priced a session, staffed a June, or seen a deposit curve. The camp is remarkable. The operation underneath it deserves to be too. Pick your side and see what we actually solve for.
Owner-operated camps with more than one way of making money.
Summer tuition, offseason rentals, a year-round day program, timber sales, pastureland leases. Each one earns differently, and most books treat them like one blurry pile.
Revenue lines that hide each other
Rentals can quietly subsidize a losing session, or the reverse, and nobody sees it until the year is over. We build the books so every line stands on its own.
Cash that arrives in January and leaves in July
Deposits land months before the costs they cover. We model the curve so payroll, capital projects, and owner distributions are timed against real cash, not gut feel.
A staff count that triples in June
Seasonal onboarding, multi-state withholding, housing and meals, minors, international staff. Payroll is the fastest place a camp gets quietly expensive.
Capital decisions with no model behind them
New cabins, a dining hall, a waterfront rebuild. We put the financing structure and payback period on paper before the shovel goes in the ground.
AR and AP still run on paper and memory
Family balances chased by email, vendor bills approved in a shoebox. Connected workflows close both loops and give you an aging report you trust.
An eventual exit nobody has priced
Whether it is a sale, a family transition, or acquiring the property next door, clean multi-year books are the difference between a number and a negotiation.
“Bowline has come in and professionalized our processes and our overall financial picture. They have given us invaluable insights that have increased our efficiencies and saved us tens of thousands of dollars.”
Austin Ashcraft, Director · Camp Rockmont, NC
Let's talk about the next twenty summers.
A conversation, not a pitch. We will tell you what we see in the structure of your books, what it would take to fix it, and what that frees you to do for the kids who show up next June.