Accounting & Bookkeeping
The prerequisite. A forecast is only as reliable as the close underneath it, and most CFO engagements start by fixing that first.
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Service 06: Advisory
Outsourced CFO & advisory
Senior financial leadership at the cadence you actually need, usually two days a month, not five days a week. For businesses making seven-figure decisions from a bank balance and an instinct.
At a glance
- Cadence: 1 to 3 days per month typical
- Sweet spot: $5M to $30M revenue
- Prerequisite: a close you can trust
- Fee: fixed monthly retainer
- Exit: we help you hire your first full-time CFO
Fit
Who this is for
- You are profitable but cash is unpredictable. The classic signal that growth is being funded from working capital nobody is modeling.
- Your lender has covenants. And you find out whether you passed them after the quarter closes rather than before.
- You are planning a transaction. A sale, an acquisition, a buyout or a raise, where preparation started early is worth real money.
- You cannot price with confidence. Because nobody can tell you the true margin by product, contract, site or customer.
- You need CFO judgment, not a CFO salary. The decisions justify the expertise; the volume does not yet justify the headcount.
Clarifying
Controller, CFO, or both?
The most expensive mistake in this category is hiring a CFO when the actual gap is a controller. A CFO with unreliable numbers produces confident wrong answers, which costs more than having no answer at all.
| Controller | CFO | |
|---|---|---|
| Owns | Accuracy | The decision |
| Core question | Are the numbers right? | What do the numbers mean, and what do we do? |
| Typical work | Close, reconciliations, reporting, controls, compliance calendar | Forecasting, pricing, capital structure, capital allocation, lender and investor relationships |
| Time horizon | Last month | Next eighteen months |
| Needed from | Roughly $2M revenue, or earlier if complex | Roughly $5M, or earlier if capital-intensive |
| Full-time at | Usually the first finance hire | Roughly $25M–$40M revenue |
The full decision framework is in When to Hire an Outsourced CFO (and When a Controller Is Enough).
Scope
What's included
Eight areas, weighted to what your business actually needs this year. A business preparing for sale and a business fixing its cash cycle should not receive the same retainer.
01
Budgeting & rolling forecasts
An annual budget built bottom-up from operational drivers rather than last year plus a percentage, maintained as a rolling twelve-month forecast updated monthly against actuals, so the plan stays a live instrument rather than a January artefact.
02
13-week cash flow
A weekly cash forecast covering the next thirteen weeks, driven by the receivables ledger, payables aging, payroll dates and debt service. The single most useful instrument in a growing or stressed business, and the one most often absent.
03
KPI & board reporting
A management pack built around the eight to twelve measures that actually drive your business, with commentary written for the reader rather than the preparer, and a format your board or lender can absorb in ten minutes.
04
Pricing & margin analysis
True margin by product, service line, contract, site or customer, including the overhead allocation most businesses skip. It is common for this analysis to identify a significant revenue segment that is loss-making at the contribution level.
05
Lender & covenant management
Covenant compliance forecast forward rather than reported backward, so a projected breach is a conversation with your lender eight weeks early rather than a default notice. Plus reporting pack preparation and refinancing support.
06
Capital & investment analysis
Modeling for significant decisions (equipment purchases, a new location, a hiring plan, a product line) with the financing options, cash impact, payback and the downside case set out explicitly rather than assumed away.
07
Transaction support
Sell side: quality of earnings preparation, normalizing adjustments, data room organization and buyer diligence response, ideally starting twelve to eighteen months out. Buy side: financial diligence, working capital analysis and integration planning.
08
Finance team development
Building the internal capability to eventually not need us: coaching your controller or finance manager, designing the team structure, and helping you specify and hire your first full-time CFO when the scale justifies it.
What this does not include
Investment advice or securities recommendations, broker or investment banking services in a sale process (we prepare you and support the process; a banker runs it), day-to-day bookkeeping and transaction processing (see Accounting & Bookkeeping), and an audit opinion on statements we helped produce.
Rhythm
What a month looks like
A fractional CFO only works if the cadence is predictable. This is the standing rhythm; the annual set-pieces sit on top of it.
Week 01
Close review
Results reviewed against forecast and budget as soon as the close lands, with variances explained and anything genuinely surprising escalated the same week.
Week 02
Forecast & cash
The rolling forecast updated for actuals and any change in outlook; the 13-week cash forecast refreshed and any pinch point flagged with time to act on it.
Week 03
Management meeting
The reporting pack presented to you, your leadership team or the board, with decisions framed and recommendations made rather than data merely reported.
Week 04
Project work
Whatever this quarter's priority is: pricing analysis, a capital decision, covenant planning, diligence preparation, plus availability for anything that arises.
Engagement
How the engagement runs
First ninety days are heavier than steady state, deliberately. You cannot forecast a business you have not understood.
Stage 01
Assess
Review of the last twelve months, the close process, the reporting currently produced, the debt and covenant position, and where decisions are actually being made without information.
Stage 02
Design
The forecasting model, the KPI set, the reporting pack format and the meeting cadence, agreed with you before they are built, so the pack answers your questions rather than ours.
Stage 03
Execute
Model built, first forecast produced, 13-week cash live, and the first two reporting cycles run, with the model refined against reality rather than left as designed.
Stage 04
Monitor
The standing monthly rhythm, plus the annual set-pieces: budget season, tax planning input, covenant renewal and the strategic review.
Sectors
Where cash gets complicated
Working capital behaves very differently across sectors. Retention on construction contracts, payer lag in healthcare, inventory cycles in distribution and deferred revenue in SaaS each demand a different forecasting model.
Questions
Outsourced CFO FAQ
A controller owns accuracy: the close, the reconciliations, the reporting, the controls. Their question is whether the numbers are right. A CFO owns the decision: pricing, capital structure, capital allocation, forecasting, lender and investor relationships. Their question is what the numbers mean and what to do about them.
Most growing businesses need a full-time controller and a part-time CFO. Many get it exactly backward: they hire an expensive CFO while nobody is closing the books, which produces confident answers built on unreliable inputs.
The usual triggers are revenue above roughly $5 million where decisions carry six-figure consequences; a lender relationship with covenants that need managing rather than merely reported; a planned transaction; a business model change such as a new location, product line or move to recurring revenue; or cash flow that has become unpredictable despite the business being profitable.
A full-time CFO usually becomes justified somewhere between $25 million and $40 million in revenue, depending on complexity, and part of our job is telling you when you have reached that point.
Typically one to three days per month for a business between $5 million and $30 million in revenue, covering a monthly results review and forecast update, a management or board meeting, and standing availability for decisions in between.
Intensity rises temporarily around budget season, a financing process or a transaction. That is agreed in advance rather than arriving as a surprise invoice.
Yes, or at least a credible plan to get there. Forecasting on an unreliable close produces confident wrong answers, which is worse than no forecast at all.
Where the accounting foundation is weak we sequence the work: stabilise the close first, then build the forecasting and reporting layer on top of it. Attempting both at once usually means neither is done properly, and the forecast quietly gets blamed for the bookkeeping.
Yes. On the sell side: quality of earnings preparation, normalizing adjustments, data room organization and buyer diligence response, ideally starting twelve to eighteen months before going to market, because that is when value-affecting issues can still be fixed rather than merely disclosed.
On the buy side: financial due diligence, working capital analysis, quality of earnings review and integration planning. We do not act as a broker or investment bank, and we will tell you plainly when you need one.
Related services
Often engaged together
Tax Planning & Compliance
The Q3 tax projection is far sharper when a real financial model sits underneath it. Planning and forecasting are the same exercise viewed twice.
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Regulatory Compliance & Internal Controls
Diligence and lender scrutiny examine controls as closely as numbers. A weak control environment reduces valuation and slows every transaction.
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Next step
What decision are you putting off?
Usually there is one: a price change, a hire, a location, a piece of equipment, a lender conversation. Bring it to a thirty-minute call and we will show you what modeling it properly would actually involve.