Outsourced CFO Services for Companies Without a Finance Leader

A fractional CFO is a leader for a finance team. You have a controller or a strong bookkeeper, the close happens, and what is missing is the executive who turns closed books into decisions. Two to four days a month of judgment, layered on top of a function that already works.

An outsourced CFO is the function. You may have a bookkeeper, or a payroll service and an owner who signs checks. Nobody reviews the close because nobody is qualified to. The bank package is assembled the night before it is due. In that setting a CFO who only shows up for decisions has nothing reliable to decide from, so the engagement has to include the oversight of accounting, the design of the reporting, and the cadence that keeps both running.

The test is simple. If you removed the finance leader tomorrow and the close would still happen, you need fractional. If the close would stop, or you are not sure it happens now, you need outsourced. Many companies start with the second and, once the function is built, step down to the first.

The engagement runs on a fixed calendar that we publish in the first month. Weekly: a cash forecast update and a review of collections and disbursements. Monthly: a close that we supervise, whether your bookkeeper or ours does the entries, followed by a management package with financial statements, KPIs, and a narrative. Quarterly: a reforecast, a margin review, and a sponsor or lender presentation if one is due. Annually: the budget, the banking and insurance renewals, and the CPA handoff.

Underneath the calendar is the stack: a chart of accounts designed for management reporting rather than for the tax return, a close checklist with owners, a KPI set, a forecast model that lives outside anyone's laptop, and a reporting package that goes to every stakeholder in the same form. We build these in the first 90 days and then run them.

And the oversight: someone reads the bank reconciliation. Someone reviews payroll before it runs. Someone checks that the accruals are supported and the intercompany balances agree. In a lean back office these reviews are the difference between financial statements and a list of transactions with totals.

• CFO leadership: forecast, pricing, capital plan, lender and sponsor relationships
• Accounting oversight: close supervision, reconciliation review, payroll and disbursement review
• Reporting stack: chart of accounts, KPI definitions, management package, board deck
• Cadence: weekly cash, monthly close and review, quarterly reforecast, annual plan

Private equity sponsors buy companies with strong operations and thin finance functions, and then discover that the monthly package they expect by the fifteenth is being built by an office manager from memory. The platform needs a CFO-grade function immediately and cannot justify a full-time CFO, a controller, and an analyst at $12 million in revenue. An outsourced CFO fills the gap at the platform level and expands as add-ons arrive.

The same is true of founder-led companies that grew past the bookkeeper without ever hiring finance leadership. Revenue is $15 million, the team is 80 people, and the finance function is one person and a QuickBooks file. The owner reads the bank balance every morning because it is the only number that arrives on time. The function has to be built before it can be led, and building it is the first 90 days of the engagement.

A board package built from memory is a remarkable achievement. It is also the reason the board keeps asking the same questions.

Sponsors and lenders do not want more reports. They want the same report every month, on the same day, with numbers that agree with the ones they saw last month. An outsourced CFO gives them a package with a fixed structure: financial statements, a KPI page, a cash forecast summary, covenant calculations, and a narrative of no more than one page. The narrative says what happened, why, and what management is doing about it. That last sentence is where most packages fall apart, because the person writing them is not the person deciding.

Covenants are calculated before the bank calculates them, so a miss is a conversation in advance rather than a letter afterward. Borrowing-base certificates tie to an aging that ties to the ledger. Add-on acquisitions arrive with an integration checklist for the chart of accounts, the bank accounts, and the first consolidated close. When the sponsor's operating partner calls, the CFO who picks up has the numbers open.

Outsourced engagements start at the CFO Advisory tier, $5,000 a month, for a company whose accounting is reasonably sound and needs the CFO seat, the reporting stack, and a supervised close. The Operating tier, from $8,500, adds weekly cash management, direct oversight of the accounting staff, and stakeholder reporting on a fixed calendar. The Embedded tier, from $12,500, is for platforms in acquisition mode, refinancings, or situations where the CFO needs to be in the business several days a week for a defined period.

Every engagement opens with an assessment: two weeks in the numbers, the systems, and the meetings, ending in a written diagnosis and a scope. The scope names the deliverables, the calendar, and who does what between our team and yours. If your bookkeeper stays, we supervise. If you need one, our outsourced controller service supplies the close as well, and the two engagements run under one calendar.

The pricing is a starting point, not a quote. It moves with entity count, transaction volume, the condition of the books, and how many people expect a report each month. It does not include tax, audit, legal, software, or cleanup of prior periods, which we scope separately and say so before we start.