When it is time to bring in a fractional CFO

Bookkeeping tells you what happened. Somewhere on the way up, most owners start needing something different: someone to tell them what should happen next. That is CFO work, and you do not need a full time hire to get it.

The signals we watch for

• You make pricing, hiring, or borrowing decisions without a forecast you trust.
• Cash surprises you, in either direction, more than once a quarter.
• Your bank or your investors are asking for reporting you cannot produce quickly.
• You are weighing a large purchase, a new location, or an acquisition.
• Margins are drifting and nobody owns the explanation.

What a fractional engagement looks like

A fractional CFO works a set rhythm rather than a set desk: a monthly close review, a rolling forecast kept current, quarterly planning sessions, and a standing seat at any decision with money attached. You get the judgment of a senior finance leader for the handful of hours a month a business your size actually needs.

What it costs

Most engagements run a small fraction of a full time CFO salary, scaled to how often you need the work. The honest comparison is not against the salary, though. It is against the cost of one bad quarter of decisions made on stale numbers.

If two or more of the signals above sound familiar, it is worth a conversation. We will tell you plainly if you are not ready; putting advisory hours into a business that only needs clean books serves nobody.

General guidance, not personalized advice. Whitmore & Vale provides fractional CFO and advisory work as part of our standing engagements.