SERVICES / FRACTIONAL CFO
Fractional CFOSenior financial thinking,
without the salary
There is a stage where the decisions get expensive. Hiring three people. Opening a second location. Taking on equipment finance. Dropping a service line that is busy but unprofitable. Those decisions are worth getting right, and a bookkeeper is not the person to help you make them.
The gap between
bookkeeper and CFO
A bookkeeper records what happened. An accountant reports and files it. A CFO uses it to decide what to do next. Most growing businesses have the first two and nothing resembling the third, which means every significant financial decision is made on instinct by the owner.
That works for a while. Instinct built on years in an industry is genuinely valuable, and plenty of businesses grow a long way on it. The problem arrives when the decisions get large enough that being wrong is expensive, and when there are too many of them to hold in your head at once.
A full-time CFO costs well north of $150,000 a year plus benefits, which puts one out of reach for most businesses under about $10 million. The result is a long stretch of company life where the decisions are hardest and the support is thinnest.
Cash flow forecasting is usually where the value shows up first. Knowing what your bank balance looks like in thirteen weeks changes what you commit to today. Most owners run this in their head and are surprised more often than they would like.
Budgeting comes next, and not the annual-document kind that gets filed and forgotten. A budget you actually track against turns into a monthly conversation about variance, which is where the useful information lives.
Financial planning and profitability analysis complete it — modelling decisions before you make them, and understanding which parts of the business genuinely earn.
When you're ready for this
- Revenue past roughly $1m and growing
- Decisions you cannot afford to get wrong
- Cash that feels unpredictable despite profitability
- Considering a second location, a big hire or debt
- No idea which service line earns the most
- A bank or investor asking for projections
- Planning to sell within a few years
Essentials $750 · Growth $1,500 · Executive $2,500+
What a fractional
CFO actually does
A few hours a month of senior thinking, applied to the decisions that matter most.
Cash flow forecasting
A rolling thirteen-week and twelve-month view, so you know what is coming rather than reacting to it.
Budgeting
A budget you track against monthly, with variance explained while there is still time to respond.
Financial planning
Hiring, expansion, equipment and debt modelled before you commit, with the downside case included.
Profitability analysis
Margin by service line, product, location or customer, so you can see what to grow and what to stop.
Pricing review
Whether your prices reflect your actual costs, which they frequently do not once overhead is properly allocated.
Monthly strategy call
A standing conversation with someone who knows your numbers as well as you know your operations.
How it works
in practice
Deep dive
We spend the first month understanding the business properly — the numbers, the model and the decisions ahead.
Build the base
Forecast, budget and profitability analysis built from your actual data rather than from a template.
Monthly rhythm
A standing call each month reviewing performance against plan and working through whatever is next.
Decisions supported
When something significant comes up, it gets modelled properly before you commit to it.
What changes
with support
Decisions get made faster and with less anxiety. Having modelled a hire or an expansion properly, you can commit without the background worry that you have missed something obvious.
Cash stops being a surprise. A rolling forecast means the tight months are visible months ahead, which is when they are still solvable.
You find out what actually earns. Profitability by line of business almost always contains a surprise, and acting on it is usually the single most valuable thing that comes out of the first year.
And you get a second opinion from someone who has no stake in the outcome except being right. Owners spend a lot of time making significant decisions alone, and having someone to think alongside is worth more than most of the analysis.
BOOK A FREE CALLEvery client gets
- Replies within 48 hours, guaranteed
- Books closed by the 15th, every month
- Flat monthly pricing, no hourly billing
- A plain-English summary with every report
- The same team every single month
- Cancel any time, files handed over cleanly
Fractional CFO questions
An accountant reports what happened and files it. A CFO uses that information to decide what to do next. Different work, different conversation, different point in the calendar.
Essentials is a monthly strategy call plus the reporting behind it. Growth adds deeper analysis and more availability. Executive is closer to a part-time CFO with involvement in significant decisions as they arise.
Not necessarily, but the analysis is only as good as the underlying data. If your books are unreliable we will say so, and fixing them usually has to come first.
Below about $1m in revenue it is usually hard to justify, and we will tell you that rather than sell it to you. Monthly reporting and tax planning often deliver more value at that stage.
Yes, and starting two to three years out makes a substantial difference. Clean books, clear profitability by line, and consistent reporting all affect valuation and how smoothly diligence goes.
Then say so on the call. A one-off modelling exercise is sometimes the right answer, and we would rather do that than sign you to a retainer you do not need.
Think through the next
decision properly
Thirty minutes, no pitch. Tell us what decision is in front of you and we will tell you honestly whether this level of support would help.
BOOK YOUR FREE CALL