Contract Controller and Accounting Manager Bill Rates 2026: What Employers Pay

Last updated: October 27, 2026

By Jennifer Burdick, Recruiting Manager, KORE1

As of October 16, 2026, a mid-level contract controller or accounting manager bills $112 to $148 an hour nationally, median $127, about $66,100 for three months. Senior controllers bill $145 to $178, median $165. Both figures are W2 bill rates through a staffing firm, from the KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, modeled from BLS OEWS May 2025 wages.

A plastics distributor outside Topeka called us in August with a controller out on short-term disability and a bank covenant review three weeks away. The CFO’s first question was not about resumes. It was “what does this actually cost me.” Fair question. Most finance leaders who call a staffing desk have never bought a contract controller before, and the invoice looks nothing like a salary number.

I manage recruiting at KORE1, and controller and accounting manager searches cross my desk often enough that I can usually tell within a minute whether a client is pricing the role or pricing the title. Those are not the same exercise. One looks at scope. The other looks at a word on a business card.

I should say this plainly before the numbers start. KORE1 earns its fee when a client hires a controller or accounting manager we sent, contract or direct. Read everything below with that in mind. We fill these roles through our accounting and finance consulting practice and quote contract staffing engagements most weeks, so I have a stake in the outcome. I also have the numbers, and I’d rather hand you a labeled estimate than a clean table nobody can check.

Robert Ardell, on our team, asked for “some kind of salary guide, but for contractors,” during a call on October 16, and this post, along with the index behind it that pulls from both federal wage data and our own placement records across every metro we staff, is what came out of that request. Every rate below comes from the KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, effective October 16, 2026, built from BLS OEWS May 2025 wages, a 24% employer burden, and the bill bands we see on our own placements. See how the index is built if you want the full methodology before you trust a single cell.

How Much Does a Contract Controller or Accounting Manager Cost per Hour in 2026?

A bill rate is the whole invoice. Wages, employer payroll taxes, workers’ comp, insurance, sick pay, the firm’s margin, all of it, in one hourly number. Multiply by hours worked. Nothing gets tacked on afterward. Here’s the national answer, at 40 hours a week, 13 weeks for three months and 26 for six.

What Do Controllers and Accounting Managers Bill at Each Level?

One note before the table. The index prices controller and accounting manager together, as a single band. We did not split them, because at the mid and senior end the two titles do the same work at most companies that size. A controller carries the title. An accounting manager often carries the job.

No KORE1 observed cell for this role meets our minimum sample size of five placements across 2023 to 2026. We will not publish an estimate dressed up as data. Every number here is modeled, and we say so every time.

Junior sits at the 25th wage percentile, mid at the median, and senior at the 75th, and because each band’s low and high end stretches toward its neighbor to cover ordinary differences in skill and track record, a strong mid-level controller and a thin senior one can quietly land on the same line of an invoice without anyone noticing until the renewal conversation. That overlap is real, not a rounding error.

How Much Do Bill Rates Change by Metro?

Less than people expect, until a coast shows up.

Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth both sit almost right on top of the national median, close enough that a budget built on the national figure will not be meaningfully wrong for either city. Orange County and Los Angeles run about $7 above it, same MSA, identical cells, because the index treats the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro as one labor market. Milwaukee runs below national. New York does not. A mid-level controller in New York bills a $166 median against $127 nationally, and the range itself gets wider, $59 wide against $36 nationally, because New York wage data has more spread at every percentile.

Senior rates keep the same shape, but the dollars stretch further apart. A senior controller in Orange County bills $166 to $211, median $195. In Milwaukee, $136 to $166, median $153. That is a $42 median gap between two metros for the identical seniority band, and it is bigger than the $14 gap between those same two metros at mid level. Price gaps between cities widen as the role gets more senior. They do not hold steady.

If your search is anywhere near one of these metros, run your own numbers through the contract staffing cost calculator rather than eyeballing a table.

What Does a 3-Month or 6-Month Engagement Cost?

Take the national mid-level median. Three months at 40 hours a week is 520 hours, priced at $66,100. Six months doubles the hours and lands at $132,300. Senior runs $85,900 and $171,900 on the same math. Plain multiplication.

Real engagements rarely stop at exactly 13 weeks, though. Across every role KORE1 staffs, the median ended assignment ran 116 days, from 1,887 ended assignments in our records. That is roughly 17 weeks, not 13. We have not broken that figure out by role, so treat it as a signal about contract engagements in general, not a promise about your specific search. A bank covenant review and a system conversion do not run on the same clock.

What Is Inside a Contract Bill Rate?

Devin Hornick, a Partner at KORE1, explains it with a round number on purpose. “$100 an hour pay plus a 24% burden is $124 loaded; the bill rate on that pay would likely be around $150 to $160.”

Three numbers, one worker. What the person earns. What the employer owes on top of that. What the invoice says. That 24% is not a fee tacked on for show. It is the actual cost of carrying a W2 worker on payroll. In 2026 the employer pays 6.2% Social Security on wages up to $184,500 and 1.45% Medicare on every dollar, per IRS Publication 15. Add unemployment tax, workers’ comp, and liability coverage. Add paid sick leave, which in California runs at least 40 hours or 5 days a year under the state’s rules, and that cost rides inside the hourly number too, not as a separate line.

Here is where a budget gets burned. A firm that quotes a markup percentage instead of an hourly bill rate will often leave burden out of that percentage entirely. The same markup, applied to pay alone instead of to loaded cost, produces two very different invoices from what looked like the same quote. So ask every firm you talk to, including us, a plain question. Does your percentage sit on pay, or on the loaded cost? Better yet, ask for pay, burden, and bill as three separate lines on the same seat, and compare only the last one.

Contract, Interim or Fractional Controller: Which Model Fits?

These three get used interchangeably on job boards and they should not be. A contract controller is a W2 placement through a staffing firm, billed hourly, usually full-time, covering a vacancy or a defined project with an end date. An interim controller is the same arrangement under a different label, often leaning toward the senior end, brought in specifically to hold the seat during a transition. A fractional controller is a different animal entirely, typically an independent practitioner or small firm covering several clients part-time on a retainer, a good fit for a company that needs senior-level oversight a few hours a week rather than a full-time seat.

We do not compete with fractional arrangements. A company that needs ten hours a week of controller-level judgment, not a full desk, is usually better served by a fractional engagement than by a contract placement priced for 40 hours. Where contract wins is scope. If the seat is specifically a transition, see our interim controller services page for how that engagement is typically scoped.

• A full close cycle that someone has to run start to finish, not just review.
• An audit, where the auditors expect to see the same person at the desk every day they’re on site.
• A system conversion or ERP cutover that eats someone’s full attention for months, not an afternoon.
• A medical, family, or disability leave backfill where the seat has to stay filled on a normal schedule.

Anything on that list needs someone physically working the ledger five days a week, not reviewing it once from the outside on a retainer call that squeezes in between three other clients.

How Long Do Controller and Accounting Manager Engagements Run?

Longer than the first purchase order usually assumes. KORE1’s median ended assignment sits at 116 days across all roles, from 1,887 assignments, and a close cycle or an audit window often fills the early stretch before something else turns up that needs a hand.

If a contractor turns out to be someone you want on permanent payroll, a KORE1 placement can convert at no additional fee after 1,040 hours, which works out to roughly six months at full time, and our controller staffing and accounting contract staffing teams see this play out often enough that more than one finance leader has quietly used the first 1,040 hours as the real interview, long before anyone types up an offer letter.

Where KORE1’s Own Numbers Fit Against the Modeled Rates

I’d want this section if I were the one signing off on the invoice. Here it is.

Five. That’s the floor. A role only gets its own observed cell once KORE1 has placed at least five people into it over the window the index covers, and controller and accounting manager searches, as a combined family, have not cleared that floor yet. So every rate in this post, every single one, comes from BLS wage data run through a 24% burden and the bill bands we see across our wider book of placements. Not one of them is a direct pull from our own controller invoices.

Call that a gap and I won’t argue. I’d rather own the gap than paste a thin handful of invoices into a table and call it a data set. Once controller and accounting manager searches clear five placements, a refresh of this post gets its own observed row. Until then, modeled is what you get, and modeled is what we’ll keep calling it.

What Finance Leaders Ask Before They Commit to a Rate

So what does a contract controller actually run per hour?

$112 to $148 an hour nationally for a mid-level controller, median $127. A three-month, 40-hour-a-week contract at the median runs about $66,100, and six months about $132,300 (KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4). Modeled from BLS OEWS May 2025 wages and a 24% employer burden.

What about a senior controller?

Meaningfully more. Nationally, $145 to $178 an hour, median $165, with three months at the median running about $85,900 and six months about $171,900 (KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4). The senior band sits at the 75th wage percentile, so a strong mid-level seat can occasionally price near the low end of this range.

Does Orange County cost more than the national rate?

Yes, by about $7 a median hour. A mid-level controller in Orange County, which the index prices on the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro, bills $119 to $163, median $134, against $127 nationally. Three months at the median runs about $69,600 and six months about $139,200.

Is Milwaukee really cheaper than most other metros?

For this role, yes, noticeably so once you get to senior. A mid-level controller bills $104 to $137 an hour there, median $120, which is about $7 under national. Three months runs roughly $62,400, six months $124,900. Orange County and New York both sit well above it at the same level.

If a firm quotes me a markup percentage, how do I know what it actually covers?

You ask, and you don’t accept a vague answer the first time. Devin Hornick’s round example holds up here. $100 an hour of pay plus a 24% burden comes to $124 loaded, and the bill rate on that pay lands around $150 to $160. Get pay, burden, and bill as three separate lines on the same seat before you sign anything.

Budget the Rate, Not the Title

I’ll leave you with the same thing I tell finance leaders on the phone. Pick the level the work actually requires, not the one that sounds better on the requisition. A controller search dressed up as senior to justify a higher budget line usually just means a longer search, because the pool of people who can genuinely do senior-level work is smaller than the pool of people willing to call themselves senior.

From there it’s arithmetic. Take your metro’s median, multiply by the hours you honestly expect to need, and leave room for whatever the audit or the system conversion surfaces once someone actually opens the books, because something usually does. I’ve spent this entire post asking you to check our numbers, so here’s ours. A year out from the start date, 92 percent of the people we place are still working for that client.

The contract staffing cost calculator does this math for any role, level, or metro in the index if you’d rather not do it by hand, and the 2026 Contract Rate Card puts every cell into one file for whoever on your team signs off on the budget. Have an actual seat, a start date, and a city in mind? Talk to a recruiter on our team and we’ll tell you where we’d push back on the number before you commit to it. I’m on LinkedIn as well. This index gets rebuilt every quarter, next in January 2027, so treat today’s rates as good through then and not a day longer.