Fractional CFO

Price the finance seat like a seat, not like a stack of spreadsheets.

A fractional CFO is hired by an owner who can sell and deliver, and cannot tell whether the company can make payroll in ten weeks. The proposal should say which decisions you will sit in, and which reports will exist so the company can survive a week when you are not there.

The decision that needs a finance seat

Owners buy this when a decision is stuck: hire two people or wait, open the new contract or decline it, raise prices or absorb the supplier increase. Name the decision if they have told you what it is. If they have not, the first week of the timeline is to name it, and the proposal should say that plainly rather than promising a strategy offsite.

Separate the seat from the production of historical accounts. If a bookkeeper is still catching up the ledger, say your work starts from a date the numbers can be trusted, or say you will not forecast on a ledger you have not seen reconciled. Forecasting on fiction is how fractional CFOs get blamed for a cash surprise.

Reports that survive your week off

The deliverable is a rhythm: a cash view the owner reads on the same weekday, a margin view that matches how the work is actually sold, and a short list of numbers that would make you call them. Thirteen tabs is not a rhythm. Describe the one page they will use.

Price the pattern, not a vague retainer. Two days a month for a named quarter is a product. 'Ongoing CFO support' is an argument waiting for the first quiet month, when they wonder what they paid for.