Fractional Accounting and CFO Services

Mostly time and commitment. A full time CFO is a permanent executive on payroll, with salary, benefits and equity expectations to match. A fractional CFO does much of the same strategic work, like forecasting, cash planning, board and lender reporting, and pricing decisions, but for a set number of hours or a defined project. You get senior judgment when you need it and don't carry the cost when you don't.

The short version: turns the accounting into decisions. That usually means cleaning up monthly reporting, building a budget and a rolling forecast, watching cash, checking which customers or contracts actually make money, tightening controls and helping plan for financing or growth. For government contractors it also means setting up indirect rate pools, getting the books ready for a DCAA review and making sure billing matches what the contract allows.

It's driven by scope. A one time forecasting model is a smaller engagement than monthly oversight of three entities with federal contracts in two of them. Before we quote, we work out what reports you need, which decisions are coming up, what compliance deadlines apply, and how often you want to meet. That keeps the fee tied to useful work instead of billable hours for their own sake.

A few signs show up again and again: you find out how last month went in the middle of this month, cash feels tight even though sales are up, a bank or investor is asking for reports you can't produce, or a big hire or contract bid feels like a guess. If you need that level of thinking but can't justify a six figure executive salary, fractional is usually the right fit. Contractors often call us when their first cost type contract or DCAA audit is on the horizon.

It depends on what you already have in place. Typical pieces are oversight of the monthly close, account reconciliations, financial statement review, budgets and forecasts, cash flow analysis and internal controls. Some clients need us to set up or clean up QuickBooks Online, Deltek Costpoint or Unanet first. The goal is numbers you trust, delivered on a schedule, with processes that don't depend on one person remembering how things work.

Yes, and that's a common setup. Your bookkeeper or controller keeps handling transactions and the close. We set the reporting standards, review the results, fix process gaps and turn the numbers into recommendations for leadership. Writing down who owns what at the start avoids duplicate work and keeps everyone's role clear.

Most clients settle into a monthly results review plus a planning session every quarter. During a financing round, a fast growth stretch, an incurred cost submission or a year end crunch, we meet more often. Each meeting covers what happened, how it compares to forecast, what risks are building and who is doing what next.

Contractors have two scorecards: whether the business is profitable and whether the accounting holds up to government scrutiny. We help with both. That includes setting up indirect rate structures, budgeting by contract, reviewing timekeeping and controls, preparing for DCAA audits and incurred cost submissions, and keeping an eye on FAR, CAS and DFARS requirements. Our NCMA membership and years in federal contracting finance mean we already speak the language.