Fractional CFO

A fractional CFO engagement centers on a recurring monthly review: cash position, gross and net margin trend, and the two or three variances that actually moved the month, walked through on a call rather than left in an email. Around that core sit the deliverables the business needs at its stage. A company approaching a raise gets investor-ready reporting and a fundraising model; a company carrying a bank loan gets covenant calculations tied to the loan agreement's exact definitions; a company scaling headcount gets a hiring plan tested against the cash forecast before an offer goes out. The scope is written down before work starts, listing exactly which of these are active in a given month, so nothing is assumed and nothing quietly expands the engagement without a conversation first.

The month begins once the books close, ideally by the fifth business day, since a CFO review built on stale numbers loses most of its value. From there the pattern is consistent: pull the current financials, compare against budget and against the prior month, isolate what actually changed and why, and prepare a short set of talking points ahead of the review call rather than a long report nobody reads end to end. Between calls, a fractional CFO stays reachable for the decision that cannot wait a month, such as a large new contract that will strain cash before it pays off or a vendor price increase that changes the margin on a core product line. Every model and note goes through a senior review before it reaches you, so a first-pass number never lands in your inbox unchecked.

This fits a business that has outgrown gut-feel decisions but has not reached the size where a full-time finance executive is justified on the payroll. In practice that is often a company somewhere past $1 million in annual revenue that is either growing fast enough that last quarter's assumptions no longer hold, carrying debt with a lender that expects regular reporting, or heading toward a fundraise, a refinancing or a sale where the numbers need to survive outside questioning. It is a poor fit for a business that has no bookkeeping in place yet; a fractional CFO needs closed, reconciled books to work from, and if that is not the case today we scope a bookkeeping catch-up first so the analysis sits on a real foundation instead of an estimate.

The most frequent starting point is an owner who can see the bank balance but cannot say with confidence why it moved, or a board asking for a variance explanation that takes days to assemble by hand each month. Close behind that is a business that discovers a covenant or a cash crunch only when it is already happening, because nobody was watching thirteen weeks out. A third common pattern is a company mixing personal and related-party transactions into the operating numbers so badly that a lender or investor cannot read the real trend underneath. In each case the fix is the same shape: build the recurring view once, tie it to source data that updates automatically where the software allows it, and put a standing review on the calendar so the next surprise gets caught while there is still time to act on it.

Work runs inside whatever accounting platform you already use, most often QuickBooks Online or Xero, with NetSuite for businesses that have outgrown a small-business ledger. Reporting and planning layers sit on top: Fathom or Google Sheets for a management dashboard, a dedicated model in Excel or Google Sheets for anything forward-looking such as a budget or a fundraising case. Nothing is built on a proprietary platform you cannot take with you; the file lives under your own subscription or shared drive, so if the engagement ever ends, the models and dashboards stay yours, not locked behind a tool only we can open.

Fractional CFO time is priced separately from bookkeeping and billed on the scope agreed before work starts, not an hourly guess. The published starting point sits on the pricing page as an add-on to a bookkeeping plan, since a CFO review is only as good as the books underneath it. The exact fee depends on how many recurring deliverables are active in a given month (a monthly review alone costs less than a monthly review plus lender reporting plus board prep) and whether the books need a catch-up first. Your fee is confirmed in writing before the first month begins, and it changes only when the scope changes, with that change agreed in advance rather than discovered on an invoice.

A US fractional CFO engagement runs against a fixed annual calendar whether anyone mentions it out loud or not: quarterly estimated tax payments, a state's franchise tax deadline, a lender's quarterly covenant test, an annual budget cycle that needs to be built before the fiscal year it covers begins. Part of the value of a standing engagement is that these dates get planned for months ahead rather than discovered a week before they are due, since a quarterly estimated payment that was not planned for in the cash forecast is one of the more common causes of a month that suddenly feels tight for no obvious reason. We keep that calendar visible inside the monthly review rather than treating it as a separate compliance task, so the same person watching your cash is also watching the dates that could disrupt it.