Interim CFO Services: Executive Continuity When the CFO Leaves

The first ten days are about not dropping anything. We identify every commitment the finance function has made in the next 90 days: covenant reports, borrowing-base certificates, tax deadlines, audit requests, board packages, payroll funding, bonding renewals, insurance audits. Each gets an owner and a date. Then we call the bank, the CPA, the insurance broker, and the surety, introduce ourselves, and tell them what to expect. Silence from a company that just lost its CFO makes lenders nervous. A phone call from the new one does not.

At the same time we take control of cash: a 13-week forecast built from the actual bank activity and the actual payables, reviewed with the owner in the first week. If the forecast reveals something the departed CFO did not mention, better to know in week one.

By day ten the owner has a written list of what is at risk, what is under control, and what the interim CFO will do about each. Most of the time, the list is shorter than feared. Occasionally it is longer. Either way, it is known.

• Commitment calendar: every external deadline for 90 days, with owners
• Stakeholder calls: lender, CPA, surety, insurance, key vendors, investors
• 13-week cash forecast and disbursement control
• Inventory of models, reports, and passwords the prior CFO controlled
• Written risk assessment delivered to ownership

An interim CFO who only keeps the lights on leaves the permanent hire with the same problems the last CFO left. We run the full role: the close review, the monthly management package, the forecast, the pricing and margin work, the capital decisions, the team leadership. If a refinancing is in progress, we lead it. If the board wants a three-year plan, we build it. If the controller needs to be replaced, we say so and help.

The scope is deliberately full because the alternative is expensive in ways that do not show up on an invoice. Decisions deferred for six months compound. Lenders remember who returned their calls. Good controllers leave companies where no one is leading finance. The interim period is a chance to fix what the last CFO tolerated, and we treat it that way.

The seat is not empty just because the chair is. Someone is making CFO decisions every day. It should be a CFO.

Resignation or termination with little notice. Medical leave or family emergency of uncertain length. A CFO who was really a controller and has hit the ceiling as the company approaches a financing, sale, or restructuring. A private-equity acquisition where the seller's CFO is leaving at close. A merger where two finance functions need to become one under someone who has done it. A company entering a formal restructuring that needs a CFO the lenders and counsel will trust.

Each of these has a different first week, and we have run each of them. The common thread is that the company needs someone who can absorb complexity fast, make decisions with incomplete information, and communicate with people who are worried. That is the job.

Interim engagements typically run three to nine months. We help define the role before the search starts, because the right job description depends on what the interim period revealed. A company that needed a treasury-minded CFO may discover it needs an operational one. We participate in interviews, assess candidates' technical depth, and give the owner an honest read on each.

When the hire is made, the handoff is documented: the forecast model with its assumptions, the reporting package with its sources, the lender history, the open items list, the team assessment. The new CFO begins with a finance function that runs and a written record of why it runs that way. We stay available for 30 to 60 days afterward and then get out of the way.

Some companies conclude during the interim period that they do not need a full-time CFO after all. In that case, the interim engagement steps down into a fractional one at a lower monthly cost, and the continuity is preserved.

Interim engagements are priced as a monthly retainer sized to the scope, the duration, and the condition of the company. Full-role coverage of a $20 million multi-entity company in a refinancing is a different engagement from three days a week at a stable $6 million business. We quote after the assessment, in writing, with the deliverables named and a defined step-down as the situation stabilizes or the permanent hire arrives.

The comparison is not with a consultant's hourly rate. It is with the cost of an empty seat: the covenant that gets missed, the forecast that is wrong, the audit that runs long, the controller who leaves, and the permanent hire made in a hurry because the pressure became intolerable. Against that, an interim CFO is inexpensive.