Services / Fractional CFO

    What a fractional CFO actually does

    Most owners can tell you their revenue to the dollar. Ask where the margin went and the answer gets vague.

    That is not carelessness. It is that the reporting was never built to answer the question. Revenue grows, profit does not follow, and nobody can point at the reason with any confidence.

    A fractional CFO is the person whose job is to answer that, and then do something about it.

    A CFO is not a more expensive accountant. It is the person who decides what the numbers mean and what you should do next.

    What you get every month

    Every engagement runs on the same rhythm.

    A monthly financial package. Statements, margin detail by job, location, or provider, and the handful of numbers that actually drive your decisions. Built to be read, not filed.

    A monthly strategy call. Statements get about ten minutes. The rest of the hour looks forward: forecasts, the decisions in front of you, and the highest leverage moves for the next thirty to ninety days.

    A monthly operations call. The tactical one. Open jobs, backlog, capacity, collections, and whatever has come up since the last strategy call. It keeps the strategy connected to what is actually happening on the ground.

    Access in between. Direct email and phone. No hour caps and no call limits. Decisions do not wait for the next scheduled call.

    The 13-week cash flow forecast

    Built in your first weeks, then updated every month.

    Thirteen weeks is a full quarter. Far enough ahead to see a problem while you can still do something about it, close enough that the numbers are real rather than a guess.

    Most owners have never seen their business laid out this way. It is usually the first time the question "can we afford this" has a specific answer instead of a feeling.

    It is also the fastest way we find trapped cash. Money sitting in receivables nobody chased, inventory that turned into storage, or a payment schedule nobody has renegotiated since it was signed.

    We come to you

    Every engagement includes an on-site visit.

    Most fractional CFO firms run entirely over video. You cannot understand a contracting business, a dental practice, or a farm from a screen. We walk the operation, sit with the people running it, and see how the work actually gets done.

    The numbers make more sense afterward. So do the recommendations.

    01

    Forecasting and cash planning

    The 13-week forecast, plus longer range projections for the decisions that need them. Hiring, equipment, expansion, debt.

    02

    Margin by job, location, or provider

    What each piece of the business actually contributes after real costs. Almost always the first place we find money.

    03

    Pricing and cost structure

    What your work actually costs to deliver, and what it should be priced at. Most owners price off what competitors charge, which works until the competitors are wrong.

    04

    Lender and reporting readiness

    Statements and projections a bank, a surety, or a buyer will accept without asking you to rebuild them.

    05

    Decision support

    Hiring, expanding, borrowing, buying out a partner, taking on a large contract. The financial side, worked through with someone who already knows your numbers.

    When it makes sense, and when it does not

    It usually makes sense when one of these is true. You are growing and cash feels tighter rather than easier. You cannot tell which parts of the business make money. You are making decisions that are large enough that being wrong is expensive. Or someone external, a lender or a buyer, is about to look closely at your numbers.

    It does not make sense if your books are not yet reliable. Fix that first, because a CFO working from numbers nobody trusts produces confident advice built on sand. We offer bookkeeping for exactly that reason, and we will tell you if that is the right starting point instead.

    It also does not make sense if you are large enough to hire a full-time CFO. If that is where you are, we will say so.

    Who this is for

    Owner-operators doing $1 million to $20 million in revenue, in home services, medical and dental, and agriculture.

    Common questions

    What is the difference between a fractional CFO and a controller?
    A controller owns the accuracy of the numbers. Closing the books, reconciling, keeping the reporting correct and on time. A CFO owns what happens because of the numbers. Forecasting, pricing, capital decisions, and strategy. Many growing businesses need the controller function before they need a CFO, and the two roles do not compete.
    Is this the same as an outsourced accounting firm?
    No. Outsourced accounting mostly means the bookkeeping and compliance work gets done somewhere else. That is useful, and we offer bookkeeping too. A CFO engagement is advisory. You are buying judgement about decisions, not the processing of transactions.
    How quickly do you get up to speed on our business?
    The on-site visit and the first cash flow forecast happen early for exactly this reason. Most of the useful understanding comes from walking the operation and rebuilding the numbers, not from reading last year's statements. You should expect specific and useful observations inside the first month.
    Do we work with you directly, or get handed to someone else?
    You work directly with our founder, Dylan Bastian. There is no handoff to a junior analyst after the agreement is signed. The engagement runs inside a documented system, so it is repeatable rather than dependent on any one person's memory.
    Do we have to sign a long contract?
    No. Month to month from the start, after the first ninety days of setup work. If we are not earning the retainer you should not keep paying it, and we would rather hear that early.
    How long before we see a difference?
    The visibility changes almost immediately, usually with the first cash flow forecast. The financial results take longer, because most of what moves margin, pricing, cost structure, and mix, takes a quarter or two to work through the business. Anyone promising faster than that is selling something.

    Thirty minutes, no pitch. Tell us what is going on in the business and we will tell you honestly whether we can help. See how our engagements work.

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