Fractional CFO & Finance Support

The honest answer is that these three roles solve different problems, and the wrong one is expensive in both directions.

A bookkeeper records what happened. Sales invoices in, supplier bills out, payroll posted, bank reconciled. A bookkeeper does not give you the analysis you need to make decisions. If your bookkeeper is writing the board pack, your board pack is wrong.

A finance manager runs the close, manages cash, and produces management accounts. A finance manager owns the monthly numbers and the working-capital position. If the business is between five and twenty million in revenue and the founder is still the only one looking at the bank balance, a finance manager is usually the first hire.

A fractional CFO sits above all of that. The fractional CFO sets the financial strategy, owns the relationship with the bank and the investors, drives the forecast and the scenario work, and prepares the company for an audit, a financing round, or a sale. A fractional CFO is the person who looks at next year, not last month.

You probably need a fractional CFO if any of the following are true. You are planning a financing round in the next twelve months. You are preparing for a sale or a succession. You have outgrown your finance manager but cannot justify a full-time CFO salary. Your auditor keeps asking questions that nobody on your team can answer in real time. Your monthly management accounts arrive three weeks late and you can no longer make decisions on them.

You probably do not need a fractional CFO if your business is under two million in revenue and your bookkeeper plus your accountant cover the work between them, or if you already have a strong CFO and what you actually need is more capacity below the CFO line.

If you are not sure where you sit, the fifteen-minute call below will tell us both. We do not pitch to you on that call. We tell you which of the three you need, and if it is not us, we say so.