06 · Virtual CFO & Advisory
Senior financial thinking, without building a full executive finance team.
A senior finance voice in the decisions that shape the business—pricing, margin, spending, planning—on a regular cadence, without hiring an executive team.
- Closed numbers
- Recommendation
- Options
- Noted decision
Advice you can disagree with.
Every brief ends in a recommendation with its assumptions on the table—specific enough to be wrong, documented enough to be revisited. The decision stays with the business; the discipline is that both the option taken and the reasons are written down, so next quarter's conversation starts from evidence.
Recognition
Signs this is the gap.
- Pricing was set once, long ago, and nobody owns revisiting it.
- Margin is a year-end discovery rather than a monthly conversation.
- Big commitments are made before their cash consequences are modelled.
- The numbers exist, but nobody in the room speaks them fluently.
Scope
What is included—and what deliberately is not.
Included in the engagement
- A regular advisory cadence with a written agenda and noted decisions
- Decision briefs on pricing, margin, spending, and planning questions
- Board- and investor-ready reporting support where that audience exists
- Unit-economics and margin analysis grounded in the actuals
- Funding-readiness preparation: numbers organized, story consistent with the actuals
Out of scope
- Regulated investment, fundraising, legal, and tax advice
- Decision ownership—the advice frames options; the business decides
- A full-time executive presence; this is a defined cadence with defined scope
Advice frames the options and consequences; ownership of the decision stays with the business. Regulated investment and fundraising advice are out of scope. Requires an accurate accounting foundation.
The working cycle
How the work runs.
- GroundThe conversation starts from closed numbers and the current forward view—never from anecdotes.
- FrameEach question becomes a short brief: the options, their consequences, and what would have to be true for each.
- DecideDecisions are made by the business, in the meeting, with the trade-offs on the table.
- NoteDecisions and actions are written down with owners, so advice turns into motion.
- RevisitPast decisions are revisited against what actually happened—the fastest way to get better at deciding.
Outputs
Deliverables, and what each is for.
- Decision brief
- One page per question: the options, the consequences, the assumptions, and a recommendation.
- Advisory agenda and notes
- What was discussed, what was decided, and who owns what—kept, not remembered.
- Unit-economics view
- What a unit, client, or project really earns after the costs that follow it.
- Board pack support
- Reporting shaped for the audience that reads it, built on the management pack.
Ownership
Who owns what.
Figures & Finance
- Prepare the agenda, the briefs, and the analysis behind them
- Give a clear recommendation with its assumptions visible
- Note the decisions and follow the actions to their owners
The client
- Make the decisions—ownership never transfers
- Bring the commercial context only the business has
- Hold the cadence: the value compounds with consistency
Registered advisers
- Regulated fundraising, legal, and tax questions, briefed cleanly to the professionals who own them
Fit
What the service needs, and who it suits.
Required information and access
- An accurate accounting foundation and, ideally, an established management pack
- A defined cadence and a named decision-maker in the room
- Openness about plans and constraints—the advice is only as good as the context
Suited to
- Founders making executive-level financial decisions alone
- Businesses between a bookkeeper and their first senior finance hire
- Leadership teams that want a challenge function, not an echo
Questions
Asked before most engagements.
Is this a part-time CFO?
It is a defined advisory cadence with defined scope—senior financial thinking applied to your actual numbers. What it deliberately is not: an implied full-time executive, or a title without accountability.
Do we need the other services first?
You need a dependable accounting foundation, wherever it comes from. Advice built on unreconciled numbers is guesswork with confidence; where the foundation needs work, that comes first.
Can you help us prepare for investors or a bank?
The service organizes the numbers and reporting those conversations rely on and keeps the story consistent with the actuals. Regulated fundraising advice and deal-making remain with the professionals licensed for them.
What does a typical session look like?
A written agenda, the closed numbers, one or two decision briefs, and noted outcomes with owners. The format is deliberately repetitive; the questions change, the discipline does not.
Connected work
Works closely with.
Bring this service to a clarity call.
The first conversation maps virtual cfo & advisory against your current setup: the highest-priority gap and the clearest next step.