Fractional CFO
Fractional CFO Services
Strategic financial leadership on your schedule. You get the judgment of someone who has sat in the CFO chair through a full company lifecycle, without carrying the salary of one.
What you actually get
Most companies come to me at the same moment. Revenue is growing, someone outside the business is asking harder questions, and the spreadsheets that worked last year have quietly stopped telling the truth.
A fractional CFO is not a bookkeeper with a better title. Your accountant lives in today. Your controller lives in the past and makes sure it is accurate. The CFO lives in the future and is constantly asking what is about to break.
A close you can trust
A monthly close that lands on a predictable date, with numbers that survive someone opening the formula bar.
Forecasting and cash visibility
Budget and variance modeling, forecast roll-forwards, and cash flow models that hold up past month three.
Margin you can actually see
Job costing and profitability by product, client or consultant. Most companies discover they need a CFO the moment they cannot answer this.
Board and investor reporting
Reporting your board reads rather than endures, and investor communication that never surprises anyone.
When it makes sense to bring someone in
You do not need a full-time CFO to need CFO thinking. The trigger is rarely revenue on its own. It is usually one of these.
The person who holds all the finance knowledge is leaving. You are changing business model, for example moving from perpetual license to subscription. You are raising, selling, or buying. Your compensation plans have stalled and your team is anxious. Or you simply cannot see which work makes money.
If none of that is happening yet, you may genuinely be better served by a good bookkeeper and a quarterly conversation. I will tell you that rather than sell you something you do not need.
How engagements work
Monthly engagement, real-time guidance, no full-time overhead. Strategic direction first, then the reporting and forecasting rhythm that keeps a pulse on the business.
I work by teaching, not by creating dependency. The goal is that you understand your own numbers well enough to make better calls between our conversations. That is the whole point.
What it costs
I do not publish rates, because a number without context is useless to you and dishonest of me. I also never bill hourly. Hourly billing rewards slowness and punishes you for asking questions.
What actually drives the number: transaction volume, how many entities you run, the condition of the books today, how often you need reporting, whether payroll and inventory are in scope, and how much of the work is standing up something new versus running something that exists.
Cleanup, when it is needed, is always a separate fixed-fee project. No monthly engagement should start on messy books.
Common questions
What is the difference between a fractional CFO and a controller?
A controller owns accuracy of what already happened: the close, the reconciliations, the reporting. A CFO owns what happens next: forecasting, capital, pricing, margin and risk. Plenty of companies need a controller first and a CFO later, and some need both.
How is this different from an outsourced accounting firm?
An outsourced accounting firm produces statements. I use them to make decisions with you. The common complaint about outsourced CFO services is that buyers get a bookkeeper with a title. Ask anyone you are evaluating what they have personally owned: a raise, a close, an audit, a sale.
How much time do you spend with a client each month?
It varies by scope, but the useful question is not hours, it is what gets owned. A recurring monthly rhythm plus availability when something real comes up beats a fixed block of hours nobody tracks.
Do you only work with SaaS companies?
SaaS and technology first, because that is where most of my career was. But the work has also covered technology resale, manufacturing, chemicals, real estate, trades, investment and professional services. The finance questions rhyme more than people expect.
Can you help us raise money?
Yes. Pitch preparation, data room readiness, board and investor reporting, and the process through to close. Across my career I have supported more than $100M in fundraising and worked on 15 or more transactions.
What if our books are a mess?
That is common and it is fixable. It starts with a diagnostic review so we both know the real condition, then a fixed-fee cleanup, then the monthly rhythm. Starting a monthly engagement on top of bad data just produces confident wrong answers.
Where are you based, and do you work remotely?
I am in Yorba Linda in Orange County, California, and work with companies across Southern California and nationally. In person matters for some relationships and not at all for others.
Let's have a conversation
No pitch, no pressure. Just a 30-minute call to see if we're a good fit.
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