How much does a fractional CFO cost?

The short answer

Our fractional CFO engagements are $1,850 a month for Light, $2,500 for Standard and $3,200 for Intensive. Those are flat monthly fees, agreed in writing before the engagement starts, and they sit alongside your accounting plan rather than replacing it.

The bands differ by cadence and scope of work, not by seniority of the person. You get the same CFO either way; what changes is how much of the month is committed to your business and how much of the finance function we take over.

What each band is actually for

Light ($1,850/month) suits a business that has clean books and needs a financial brain on a monthly rhythm: a rolling forecast maintained, monthly review of results against plan, cash-flow visibility a quarter ahead, and someone to call before a significant decision. Most owner-operated businesses adding their first CFO support start here.

Standard ($2,500/month) adds the work that has deadlines attached: budgeting cycles, scenario modelling, KPI reporting built for the business rather than generic, lender and investor reporting packs, pricing and margin analysis, and an active role in hiring and capital decisions.

Intensive ($3,200/month) is for a business in an event: raising, borrowing, acquiring, being acquired, restructuring, or expanding into new states or lines. The cadence is weekly or closer, the modelling is continuous, and we are in the room for the negotiations that depend on the numbers.

What moves you between bands

Decision frequency, more than company size. A stable business making a handful of significant decisions a year needs less CFO time than a smaller one changing pricing, opening a location and negotiating a facility in the same quarter.

Entity and revenue-line complexity. Multiple entities, multiple states, mixed revenue models or a payer-driven revenue line all increase the modelling and reporting work regardless of headline revenue.

Stakeholder load. A lender covenant, an investor board, a franchisor or a partnership agreement each create reporting obligations with dates on them, and those dates set the minimum cadence.

Where the finance function currently sits. If the books are clean and the reporting exists, CFO work starts on day one. If not, catch-up or a reporting rebuild comes first and is quoted separately — paying CFO rates for bookkeeping remediation is the most common way owners overspend on this.

Fractional versus a full-time hire

A full-time CFO is a salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, bonus, equity in some cases, recruitment cost and the risk of a bad hire in a role where a bad hire is expensive and slow to unwind. Most businesses considering their first CFO do not have twelve months of CFO-level work to give that person, which means paying full-time for part-time output.

The fractional trade-off is real and worth stating: you get less availability, and the person is not sitting in your office absorbing context by osmosis. What you get in exchange is senior judgement at a defined monthly cost, starting in weeks rather than months, and the ability to change the level as the business changes without a redundancy conversation.

What a fractional CFO does not do

It is not bookkeeping, and it is not a substitute for it. The CFO works from the books your accounting plan produces; if those are late or unreliable, the CFO's output inherits the problem. That is why the engagements sit alongside a plan rather than replacing one.

It is also not a guarantee of a particular financial outcome. A CFO improves the quality and timing of decisions and the credibility of your numbers with third parties. Anyone quoting you a return figure on that is guessing.

When it is too early

If your books are not current, fix that first — it is cheaper and everything else depends on it. If you are pre-revenue with a simple cost base and no financing event in sight, a model and a quarterly session will usually do more for you than a monthly engagement.

The signals that it is time are fairly consistent: you are making decisions you cannot model, a lender or investor is asking for reporting you cannot produce, cash timing has become a recurring surprise, or you are about to do something structural — a raise, an acquisition, a new state, a new line — where getting the numbers wrong is expensive.

How to estimate your own fee

Start with cadence: monthly, fortnightly or weekly. Add your entity count, states, and whether a financing or transaction event is live in the next two quarters. That combination places you in one of the three bands more reliably than revenue does.

The estimator uses the same published figures as this article and will give you a number to work with alongside your accounting plan and any other services in scope, including the bundle discount where it applies.

Figures in this article are estimates until confirmed in writing

The $1,850, $2,500 and $3,200 bands are our published rates and they are current. Your band is confirmed in writing after a consultation, based on the cadence and scope actually agreed — and it can be changed as the business changes.

Engagements are cancellable with 30 days' notice, and your files and models are returned within 5 business days.