Chief Financial Officer
Fractional CFO
The most established of the fractional roles, and the one most companies buy first. A part-time CFO is not a senior bookkeeper. The bookkeeping and statutory filing usually stay where they are; what changes is that someone with board-level judgment now owns the forecast, the capital structure and the conversation with lenders and investors.
Engagements are typically one to three days a week for six to eighteen months, and the trigger is almost always a specific event — a raise, a bank facility, an audit, a buyer asking questions the current numbers cannot answer.
In Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Indonesia, finance mandates go to our sister practice SmeCFO, which has run them since 2015. Everywhere else, and for every other function, we introduce you to an independent specialist. How we are paid.
What they deliver
- Thirteen-week cash flow and a forecast the board can actually rely on
- Investor and lender-ready reporting, and the data room behind it
- Pricing, margin and unit economics analysis
- Financial controls, approval limits and segregation of duties
- Tax structure and cross-border compliance coordination
- Building and mentoring the internal finance team
Signals you need one
- You are raising, refinancing or preparing for a transaction
- Revenue is growing faster than your reporting can keep up with
- You cannot answer a lender or investor question without a week of work
- Your financial controller is capable but has never operated at board level
- An audit or regulatory deadline is approaching and nobody owns it
Most often bought for
Raising capital
Getting the numbers, the story and the data room to a standard an investor will not pick apart.
Entering a new market
Structure, entity, licensing and the local obligations that are cheap to get right and expensive to retrofit.
Turnaround and restructuring
Stabilising cash, renegotiating the balance sheet and rebuilding the reporting the board lost confidence in.
Scaling past the founder
Building the structure that lets a business grow without everything routing through one person.
Family business and succession
Professionalising governance without displacing the family that built the business.
Sustainability and CBAM reporting
The reporting burden that arrives from a customer in Europe or a regulator at home, long before you chose to take it on.
Preparing for an exit
Making the business legible to a buyer, eighteen months before you need to.