Virtual CFO
The numbers a CFO would give you
Monthly management accounts, cash-flow forecasts, and lender-ready reporting — without a full-time hire, scoped to your precise needs.
Growing firms usually know their revenue and rarely know their position. Most will not need — and cannot yet justify — a full-time CFO. But the decisions in front of them need CFO-level insight all the same, whether or not anyone has put it that way. That is what a virtual CFO engagement is: a fraction of a finance head, paid for as you use it, scoped to your precise needs — management accounts each month, a cash-flow forecast you can plan against, a reporting pack a bank or board will accept, and the reading of all three. We do not merely report. We tell you what the numbers are saying, and what we would look at next. Your management decides; a growing business run on insight compounds differently from one run on instinct.
- The same pack, the same day
- A rhythm your management can argue about rather than wait for.
- A forecast you can plan against
- Rolling cash flow, updated monthly, built from your own numbers.
- A partner each quarter
- A review meeting with someone who has read the pack before the meeting.
What’s included
The accounts, the forecast, and the pack your lender asks for.
- Monthly management accounts with commentary
- Budgeting, forecasting and variance analysis, with the KPIs that matter to your business
- Rolling cash-flow forecast, updated each month
- Annual budget and monthly variance analysis
- Receivables ageing and collection discipline
- Working-capital review: stock, debtors, creditors
- MIS design for what your business actually needs to track
- Board and lender reporting packs
- Quarterly review meeting with a partner
Who this is for
Owner-managed businesses that have outgrown bank-balance decision-making but cannot yet justify a full-time CFO — typically firms raising bank finance, adding locations, or planning a first outside investment.
A rhythm, not a report
The value is in the same pack arriving on the same day every month, so the numbers become something your management argues about rather than waits for.
Where we stop
We advise and we report; your management decides. And because we prepare the numbers, we never sign off on them — an opinion on our own work would be worth exactly what you’d expect.
We give no investment advice. And we take no mark-up and no success commission on any loan, deal or investment the numbers lead you to — the fee quoted is the whole of what we earn.
Send us your latest financials.
Not sure the moment has come? The long read makes the case: CFO-level thinking, before you can afford a CFO.
We will show you what your first monthly pack would contain, built from your own numbers, before you engage us.
Related
Questions asked on this page
Four asked on this page.
What do “fractional” and “pay-as-you-use” mean in practice?
You buy the finance thinking your business needs this quarter, not a salary. The scope is agreed in advance — monthly management accounts and a rolling cash-flow forecast at the core; budgeting, MIS design, lender or board packs added when the situation calls for them — and it widens or narrows as the business changes. You pay for what is used. Nothing obliges you to grow into a retainer.
What is in the monthly pack, and what happens at the quarterly review?
The monthly pack: management accounts, the cash-flow forecast rolled forward, and variances against budget with a short written note on what moved and why. The quarterly review is a sitting with the partner: the year to date, the forecast ahead, and the two or three decisions the numbers are pointing at. Insight is offered plainly and in writing. The decisions remain yours.
Our bank has asked for projections and monthly numbers. Can you prepare the pack?
Yes. Lenders want the same few things: figures that tie to the underlying books, a forecast whose assumptions are stated on the page, and evidence that management watches both. We build the pack to that standard — accounts, forecast, assumptions named, movements explained — and refresh it on whatever cycle the lender sets. The same discipline serves a board or an incoming investor.
Our books are not in shape for any of this. Where do we start?
With the books. A forecast built on unreconciled ledgers is guesswork with formatting. Most engagements that begin in this position start with two or three months of accounting work — records caught up, balances reconciled, a clean monthly close established — before the CFO layer goes on top. The Accounting & Book-keeping page describes that foundation.
We bring the insight. Your management decides.
Insights and perspectives on the table, decisions where they belong. Send us your latest financials and we’ll show you what the first monthly pack would contain — with the fee agreed in writing before any work begins.
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