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Fractional CFO

These are the core service areas a Fractional CFO will deliver on when working with a client as part of the executive team. Smaller scope engagements may be more limited in the areas covered

Finance Team Oversight and Scaling

The financial control aspects of finance are often underappreciated. When working well, no noise is heard from or about the team. A CFO will ensure the transactional finance team is on track, connect them with the leadership team, and develop them beyond processors and gatekeepers into business partners who will scale with the business as it grows in size and complexity.

Cash Management and Control

Knowing how much money you have, where it’s being spent, and if/when it might run out is critically important for a business. Even if you are profitable, that doesn’t mean you won’t run out of cash. A CFO will bring transparency to this cash flow, avoiding nasty surprises.

Fundraising

When meeting potential investors, CEOs are typically great at sharing why they founded the company and their vision for what it can be. Talking about how that business will come together over time, the unit economics, cash flow, and returns are often not their areas of strength. Having a CFO who can support you in those conversations and helping investors believe that what you describe can become reality is a significant step towards getting money in the bank. We can also help identify the best structure for fundraising.

Financial Forecasts and Modelling

Businesses need to know where they are, where they are going, what it will take to get there, and how things will evolve along the way. The first step is a basic financial forecast with accurate fixed and variable cost split that uses simple mechanisms to forecast revenues and costs. Once a deeper understanding of the business is developed, the forecast can evolve into a true model which reflects the dynamics of the business and reacts in realistic ways to different scenarios. This becomes an important decision-making tool for many choices including resource allocation and product focus. A capable CFO can translate business understanding into a robust financial model.

Strategy

Having a clear understanding of the problem(s) the company is faced with, what the ideal solution looks like, and how all the parts of the company contribute towards getting there is critically important to businesses. Having a thought partner who can think through opportunities, threats, profitability, and prioritisation across the gamut of business issues is invaluable. Even if this has been done, there is often no written document (instead existing in the CEO’s head) to describe the strategy, with each senior leader in the company having a different understanding of what that is. This leads to misalignment, rework, and a lack of pace towards objectives. We help you to clarify what needs to be done, and communicate that understanding across the team.

Business Partnering

Having established a robust core finance function, attention is focused outward to support business decision-making, particularly opportunities to capitalise on, and risks to mitigate. In business partnering, finance becomes an enabling function that identifies and finds solutions to business problems. Finance is one of the few functions with company-wide visibility, and as such can bring a holistic view to challenges.

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Frequently Asked Questions

The ideal client is a CEO with a growing business who has a transaction finance team or outsourced services in place to manage day-to-day work (month end close, AP/AR, tax filings), but lacks a senior finance executive to support them. Their business may not yet be large enough to justify a full-time CFO. Typically these businesses will be in the A to C stages of VC funding.

Full-time CFOs are often hired at series B, but in many cases, there is not enough CFO-level work to occupy them, yet there might be considerably more junior work that falls to them because there’s no one else to do it. It is more efficient to hire a Fractional CFO and a mid-senior finance FTE, who in combination, can tackle the work more effectively at a lower aggregate cost (total compensation). This also gives CEOs a clearer understanding of what a CFO can bring to the table, and a reference point for hiring a full-time CFO in the future.

Pricing is at a fixed hourly rate, using either a retainer or an ad-hoc basis. The retainer approach is best when you want guaranteed access and hours on a weekly basis. Ad-hoc is best when you don’t want to commit in advance, and don’t need guaranteed access to your Fractional CFO.

Where the role is part of the day to day executive team, clients typically require 5-15 hours per week. For narrower scope roles, targeting a few key areas, which can be a good starting point, 5-15 hours per month is common.

All work is undertaken on a remote basis.

Absolutely. You can find an article describing our approach to new clients here.