Chief Financial Officer
A finance leader who owns cash and the forecast.
For owner-led companies where the accountant reports what happened and nobody owns what is about to.
The result it owns
Cash and runway, margin, and the accuracy of the forecast.
Agreed before the work starts, reviewed regularly.
You probably need this seat if
The numbers arrive after the decisions.
- Cash surprises you, and you learn about it from the bank balance.
- You do not know which customers or products really make money.
- Investors or the bank ask for numbers that someone assembles by hand each time.
- Growth is eating cash faster than the plan says.
What the seat decides
Decision rights, written down before day one.
- Payment priorities and cash limits, inside an agreed framework.
- The monthly reporting pack that you, the board and investors see.
- The forecast, and how its accuracy is measured.
- Margin floors for pricing, together with whoever owns sales.
- The finance tools, and the work of the accountant.
What stays with you is written on the first page, before day one. A seat that decides nothing is advice with a bigger invoice.
The first 90 days (Example)
What happens in the first quarter.
| When | What happens | What you can show |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1 to 2: Listen | Conversations with you, the accountant, the sales lead and, where there is one, the bank or the investor. We agree what we will not change in the first month. | A one-page cash view: where the money is today and what is due in the next 13 weeks |
| Weeks 3 to 4: Map | Margin by customer and product, where cash leaks, which numbers you use and which numbers the books show. | A margin map, and the first three decisions that move from you to the seat |
| Weeks 5 to 8: First result | A weekly cash forecast you can read in five minutes, and the reporting pack delivered on a fixed day. One visible result by week six. | The forecast in use, and the first pack on time |
| Weeks 9 to 13: Hand to rhythm | The monthly close and the forecast run with the leader out of the room. Forecast accuracy is tracked. | The first quarterly review: the result against the plan |
The exact goals are agreed with you before the seat starts.
AI in this seat
In finance, the data is the first thing the seat protects.
The leader in this seat usually uses AI for research, preparation and reporting, and checks everything before it reaches a board or a bank. Payments, people decisions and anything the leader answers for personally stay with a person. Company data, bank details and convincing fake payment requests are the first things a leader in this seat protects.
Questions companies ask
Before the first conversation.
- Why not a bookkeeper or a tax adviser?
- Both are good at what happened and what the law requires. This seat owns what happens next: the cash, the margin and the forecast.
- Why not a full-time Chief Financial Officer?
- Sometimes that is the right answer, and we will tell you. A full-time leader makes sense when the seat needs five days a week and the company can carry the cost. Many seats need one experienced leader for one or two days a week, especially when the need is tied to one task, such as a new market, a turnaround or a funding round. Often it is also the step before a full-time hire: the fractional leader builds the function, and when it needs five days, helps you hire the person who takes it over.
- What if the result does not move?
- We look at it together regularly and help to change what needs changing, including the seat itself.
- What do we decide first?
- Which decisions move from you to the seat, in writing, before day one.
Talk to us
Tell us what is not moving, and what result the seat should own.
One of us replies within two working days.