Fractional CFO Services for Privately Held Businesses

The week starts with cash. Not the bank balance, which is history, but the 13-week forecast: what comes in, what goes out, and where the line gets thin. Every receivable over 30 days has a name next to it and a plan. Every large disbursement has a date. If a week in October looks tight, you know it in August, when you can still do something about it.

The month ends with a close that is finished by the tenth, reviewed by someone who knows what the numbers should look like, and delivered with a one-page narrative that says what happened and why. Gross margin by job or by division. Overhead against plan. Working capital trend. The three things that need a decision and a recommendation for each.

In between, the CFO does the work that never gets done when no one owns it: the pricing model that reflects real labor burden, the covenant calculation before the bank runs it, the equipment lease versus purchase analysis, the conversation with the controller about why the balance sheet still has a suspense account from 2023.

A forecast is not a budget with a new date on it. It is a weekly argument with reality, and reality usually wins the first few rounds.

Most companies that hire a fractional CFO are not missing a person. They are missing an operating rhythm. We install one. A close calendar with owners and due dates. A weekly cash meeting with an agenda that fits on an index card. A monthly operating review where the numbers and the people who made them sit in the same room. A quarterly reforecast that replaces the annual budget nobody believes by March.

Underneath the rhythm sits the reporting: a chart of accounts that maps to how you actually run the business, a KPI set of no more than 10 numbers that predict next month rather than describe last month, and a management package that a lender, a bonding agent, or a buyer would accept without a second set of books.

The team stays yours. The bookkeeper, the controller, the office manager who has quietly run accounts payable for nine years: they keep their jobs and get a leader. We coach, we document, and we make the function run without us in the room. That last part is the point.

• Weekly: 13-week cash forecast, collections review, disbursement approval
• Monthly: close review, management package, KPI dashboard, variance narrative
• Quarterly: rolling forecast, pricing and margin review, capital plan, lender package
• Annually: budget, insurance and banking renewals, compensation and bonus design

The leaks are rarely dramatic. They are structural. Labor burden priced at 25 percent when it costs 38. Change orders performed and never billed. A service division carrying overhead that belongs to construction. Inventory that turns twice a year and a line of credit that funds it. A bonus plan that pays on revenue while margin quietly falls. None of these appear on a tax return, which is why the CPA did not mention them.

A fractional CFO finds them the boring way: by rebuilding gross margin from the transaction level up, comparing estimate to actual on every job or engagement, and asking the operations team the questions finance usually skips. Then the fix goes into the pricing model, the bid template, the commission plan, or the credit policy, where it stays fixed.

The measurable result is usually two or three points of margin and a working-capital cycle that is 10 to 20 days shorter. On a $15 million company that is a different business, and it funds the engagement several times over. We do not promise those numbers. We show you where yours are.

The people who finance your company want three things: numbers that reconcile, a forecast that has been right before, and a person on the other end of the phone who can explain a variance without calling you first. A fractional CFO gives them all three. The covenant calculation is done before the bank does it. The WIP schedule ties to the general ledger. The borrowing-base certificate goes out on time, every time.

That reliability has a price, and it is usually visible in the terms. Banks extend more credit to companies that report well. Sureties raise programs for contractors whose work-in-progress schedules they trust. Buyers pay more, and close faster, for a business whose books do not need a quality-of-earnings cleanup. Good reporting is not overhead. It is the cheapest capital you will ever raise.

It begins with an assessment, not a proposal. We spend the first two weeks in your numbers and your meetings: the last 24 months of financials, the aging reports, the bank and loan agreements, the job-cost or project reports, and a conversation with everyone who touches money. At the end you get a written diagnosis with the five things that matter most and what each one is costing you.

From there we agree on a scope and a cadence. Most engagements settle into two to four days a month of CFO time plus the weekly cash rhythm. Heavier situations, such as a refinancing, a restructuring, or an acquisition, run at an operating or embedded level for a defined period and then step down. The scope is written, the deliverables are named, and either side can end the engagement with 30 days' notice.

When your company outgrows the fractional model, we help you hire the full-time CFO, document everything we built, and hand it off clean. Several clients keep us on afterward for board-level advisory. That is the best kind of ending: the function runs without us, and you still call.