A Fractional CFO is an experienced, senior financial executive, who works for you on a permanent, part-time or "fraction" of full-time basis.  They are embedded members of your executive leadership team, working the amount of time that best fits your needs and budget.  A Fractional CFO provides the same critical financial leadership to your business as a full-time CFO, but at a much lower cost.

A CFO, or Chief Financial Officer, is a senior executive who is responsible for the financial wellness of the business.  The CFO’s key responsibilities include cash flow management, financial planning and forecasting, building a highly functioning finance and accounting team, ensuring revenues and expenses stay in balance, managing relationships with outside lenders and investors, advising on exit planning and transitions, and working with owners and senior leadership on business strategy.

By contrast, a Controller is a senior accounting professional who is responsible for the business’ accounting function.   The Controller’s key responsibilities include managing a highly functioning accounting team, ensuring smooth month-end accounting closing, issuing timely and accurate financial statements, maintaining effective internal controls, ensuring compliance with relevant tax and other regulations, and managing relationships with outside tax and assurance accountants.

The key difference between a CFO and a Controller is that, while a Controller is primarily focused on accurately reporting on the historical operations of the business, a CFO is primarily focused on forecasting and planning on the future operations of the business.

Although critical to building a firm financial foundation for your business, bookkeepers and CPAs do not provide actionable information for forward-looking strategy.  A typical bookkeeper records all transactions and may assist with sending out invoices and/or collecting receivables.  A good bookkeeper accurately records historical transactions but does not provide the kind of forecasting and analysis you need in order to have actionable, forward-looking information. 

Similarly, businesses typically start out with an outside CPA who is primarily in charge of capturing historical data for tax filings.  A CPA focuses on the most recent year, which is generally too late for timely decision-making.  The CPA has IRS compliance first and foremost in mind and typically assigns expenses to categories and at a level of detail that are appropriate for your tax return but not for providing information that is most useful for running your business.

In general, a business is ready for a Fractional CFO when it reaches a critical inflection point and needs a seasoned financial executive to help guide it for the future.   This inflection point could be any of the following situations:

• You have financial statements prepared every month but they aren’t useful for making decisions for our business
• You don’t have a regular, recurring process to create and update Budgets, Forecasts, or Strategy
• You are having cash flow issues that are hindering growth
• You are spending all your time working in your business, leaving no time to work on your business
• Growth is limited because all of your cash is tied up in working capital
• You are considering expanding into a new geographic or product/service market
• You need to expand your existing credit lines or raise debt from a new lender
• You are considering bringing on a new equity investor • You are thinking about acquiring another business
• You are concerned that if you were not integrally involved in day-to-day operations – even for a short period – your business would be at risk • You do not have a detailed succession or transition plan for your business

Our Fractional CFO services include the following:
• Monthly financial review and analysis
• Cash flow forecasting
• Annual budgeting
• Comprehensive financial modeling
• Profitability analysis by department, product/service and customer
• Risk management and managing commercial insurance coverage
• Relationship management with bankers, lenders and investors
• Support for the leadership team on financial aspects of strategic planning
• Due diligence and financial modeling for potential acquisitions
• Transition and exit planning

Please see Fractional CFO Services and Special Situations for additional information.

Yes!  Our services are designed to meet the needs of newly established, small to midsize, and growing businesses requiring CFO-level services that are scaled to their needs and budget.  Your business benefits from a Fractional CFO’s extensive experience, at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CFO.  Our engagements are customized to meet your business needs and budget, and typically run from as little as one full day per month to one full day per week or more.

Absolutely!  As with a full-time CFO, a Fractional CFO is an addition to, not a replacement for, your existing accounting and finance team.  A Fractional CFO will provide support and leadership for both internal resources, such as your bookkeeper, accountant and/or controller, and external resources, such as your CPA firm, bankers and insurance brokers.  A Fractional CFO will take some of the load off of you and your existing team and give you a valuable second perspective as well as critical forecasting, planning and analysis to improve business decisions.