Insights Leadership 5 min read
Five signs you have outgrown your bookkeeper, not your budget
A full-time CFO costs $250,000 or more. Most companies under $50M need one for a few days a month. Here is how to tell when that moment has arrived.
By the Sightline partners ·
Most owner-managed companies hire their first full-time CFO too late, at the moment a bank, a buyer or a crisis forces it. The gap before that is where a fractional CFO earns their fee. These are the signs we see most often in the first call.
The month-end takes three weeks
If management accounts arrive after the 20th of the following month, they describe history. Decisions are being made on instinct and last year’s numbers.
You learn about cash from the bank
A covenant test, a declined payment or an overdraft call is the first warning. That means nobody in the business is forecasting cash week by week.
Margin is a single number
You know gross margin for the company but not by product, customer or site. Somewhere in the business you are selling at a loss, and you cannot see where.
A lender, investor or buyer is asking questions
They want a three-statement model, monthly EBITDA for three years, or a quality-of-earnings report. Your accountant can produce the accounts but not the story.
You are the finance department
Every pricing decision, every supplier negotiation and every hire comes back to you because no one else can see the full picture. That is the most expensive sign, because it caps how far the company can grow.
If two or more of these sound familiar, a fractional CFO retainer usually costs less than a year of the problem.