Let's get Strategic!

“Fractional” is a finance industry term for “part-time” or using a fraction of a resource’s time.  Fractional Chief Financial Officer (CFO) services are an excellent fit for businesses or organizations that are too small to afford a full-time Controller or CFO (often $1-10M in sales), are growing or want to be, and are stuck being financially reactive rather than strategic.

A Chief Financial Officer is a role that is responsible for the production of accurate and timely financial reports, monitoring and maintaining the financial health of the organization,  educating executives on financial matters, and being a strategic executive partner in planning, decision-making, and accountability.  It’s their job to tell executives what they need to hear, celebrate wins, and advise on necessary course corrections.  We seek to make our clients increasingly independent in understanding financial reporting and making decisions so we can engage more and more strategically in driving profit, profitability, and mission impact.

This service follows up on the Discovery service to work side by side with the owners and their executives to execute the Transformation Strategy.  The baseline service is the goal, but it sometimes requires the CFO to work with the Client team for a few months to establish an accounting operation supporting this baseline service.

The baseline service includes:

1. Regular CFO financial review and update of the customer-accessible Financial Dashboard
2. Regular CFO Meetings with Client
   1. Discuss any concerns or questions
   2. Review the Financial Dashboard and Financial Executive Summary
   3. Review progress toward goals
   4. Assign action items for the next period
3. Regular Check-in calls between CFO Meetings
4. Annual planning and budgeting meeting
5. Risk management oversight (i.e. internal controls, compliance, etc.)
6. Liaison with other professional services
7. Service packages are quarterly or monthly
8. *Currently, we only work with customers using QuickBooks Online, Freshbooks, Xero, or Sage

Accounting is the action or profession of recording and reporting the financial activities of a business or organization.  Bookkeeping is the task of recording these activities and is the foundation of Financial Situational Awareness (i.e., financially knowing where you’ve been, are at, want to go, and are heading)

Our Controller oversees all accounting operations to ensure accurate, audit-ready, and timely financial reporting for the executive leadership.

We do not prepare tax returns because we want to have a year-round focus on your day-to-day accounting. We are a strategic partner with your tax accountant in implementing their recommendations and facilitating a smooth tax season.  We recommend a team meeting once or twice a year with your tax preparation CPA to do tax planning.

Service Includes:

1. Controller Accounting Quality Assurance reviews
2. Electronic Transaction Documentation: We use commercial software to collect documentation electronically via your mobile phone, email, or web browser so we don’t have to bother you for information to record transactions.
3. Proactive audit defense: We work closely with your CPA to ensure we are recording transactions per their direction and all documentation is attached to each transaction in the accounting software.
4. Accounting system setup and maintenance: We have proven and affordable tech stack of commercial software we integrate and automate to the extent possible, to reduce friction in your business.
5. Accounting clean up: We can clean up current fiscal year accounting to make your financial reporting accurate.
6. *Currently, we only provide this service using QuickBooks Online

A financial dashboard answers in 15 seconds or less, whether you are winning or losing.  Are you heading toward your goals or away?  Once we have accurate and timely financial reporting from your accounting software, we can visualize, report, analyze, and forecast using state of the art software and Artificial Intelligence.   An implementation of a Financial Intelligence system allows for performing scenario analysis on forecasts to see how strategic decisions and economic forces will affect the financial future of the organization.  This is Financial Situtional Awareness; financially knowing where you’ve been, where you’re at, where you want to go, and where you’re actually heading.

This service is less structured, more flexible, open or close-ended, and more conversational, focusing on addressing a Client’s current issues or strategic goal setting and execution related to the business’s operational, organizational, or financial aspects for the purpose of INCREASING ENTERPRISE VALUE and prepare the business for transition, whether planned or unplanned.  The engagement can be temporary with a defined near-term objective (e.g., special projects, financial dashboard development and implementation, custom financial pro formas, standard operation procedure development, etc.) or open-ended with a broader or longer-term strategic objective.  Regular meetings are held with the Client to identify, discuss, and solve issues and progress the scope of work and strategic goals.  The Firm and Client agree on a monthly budget based on the nature and objectives of the engagement.

This service always accompanies the other services to project manage and ensure all activities are increasing the enterprise value of the Client and that any concerns the Client has gets flowed down to the team executing the work.