Fractional CFOs can be excellent resources, providing part-time financial leadership to companies when needed. They can help businesses improve their financial operations, streamline processes, and make informed strategic decisions based on their expertise. Yet, those same fractional hires cost a fraction compared to their full-time counterparts.
If you are looking for a fractional CFO firm to help your business scale and grow, we’d like to introduce you to some of the best.
There are several fractional CFO companies in the United States, so whittling the list down to 10 is no easy task.
Nevertheless, we selected the 10 firms that we felt were most likely to meet your needs and tried to provide you with as much information as we could about each one.
McCracken is a partnership of CFOs, Controllers, and other finance talent. The CFO partners are all proven leaders in the office of the CFO, with years of experience supporting a wide array of industries and company sizes.
Part of what makes McCracken stand out is that they provide leadership development programs, where they train and educate finance professionals and teams on how best to lead the office of the CFO.
They developed the curriculum for the development programs alongside CFOs, leadership specialists, subject matter experts, and well-recognized universities and institutions, including Georgia State University, Rollins College, and Northwestern University.
So far, they have served more than 1,500 businesses across the United States and some internationally.
The company also prides itself on its responsiveness. If you call them today with an urgent matter and need a fractional CFO, one of their CFOs can be on a plane, heading to your offices tomorrow. Before the week is over, they will be helping you put your financial house back in order.
Mike, the founder and CEO of McCracken, is a former partner with EY, where he ultimately reported directly to the CEO and Chairman. Afterward, he founded Tatum, the first national and largest professional CFO firm with 37 practice offices nationwide.
After selling Tatum, Mike leveraged his close relationships with talented CFOs and other business leaders and founded McCracken.
McCracken has two primary services: Executive services and leadership development.
Fractional CFO services are part of their executive services, and they offer a wide range of services depending on the needs of their clients.
These services include:
To learn more about their services, you can check out their 10 pillars of finance, which break down the different responsibilities shouldered by a CFO.
The cost of a fractional CFO ranges between $5,000 - $12,000 every month, with the average being $8,000. Even these costs can drop significantly if the CFO is only needed for ad hoc advisory and oversight.
Some of the clients they have worked with are:
Specializing in advanced financial strategy and CFO consulting, Preferred CFO is a strategic consulting firm that offers companies fractional and interim CFOs. Additionally, they provide HR, systems, controller, and advisory solutions.
Preferred CFO was founded by Jerry Vance in 2013. Jerry has worked as an outsourced CFO and consultant for more than 15 years, serving over 300 companies. He has worked in the financial space for more than three decades.
Before offering CFO consulting services, Jerry was the CFO and controller for several public and private companies.
Even though Preferred CFO works with businesses of all sizes, they highlight on their website the types of companies they work with:
According to their blog, their costs are within industry norms. They estimate that the monthly cost of a fractional CFO will be somewhere between $3,000 and $10,000. That said, their averages are usually closer to $5,000 - $7,000/ month.
According to their website, here are some of their most notable clients:
Their services include:
On their site, CFO Share highlights the different industries they serve:
According to a blog post on their site, a fractional CFO could cost a company between $150 and $500 per hour, assuming the CFO is paid hourly. Alternatively, if your company agrees to pay a monthly retainer, then the range is between $3,000 and $15,000 a month.
Founded in 2015, Paro is an AI platform that helps connect businesses with freelance finance professionals, including fractional CFOs. While working with a freelance fractional CFO differs from working with one from an agency or partnership (more on this below), each model has its advantages. Part of what makes Paro effective is how they vet the finance talent on their platform.
Here are the main business solutions on the site:
Since they are a platform for freelance fractional CFOs, the CFOs themselves are the ones who determine the price.
Here are some of the more prominent names on their website:
Pilot is an accounting firm dedicated to serving small businesses and startups. Even its services are packaged in monthly subscriptions.
Pilot helps these small companies scale by offering them talented financial experts, from accountants to CFOs. They also provide their clients with a portal that makes it easy to track their finances.
Here are the primary services they are advertising on their site:
According to their site, here are the primary industries they work with:
Pilot offers packaged plans for each of its services, including its CFO services:
All the plans above come with a budget and forecast model that includes a fully customized financial model, budget vs. actuals, headcount and compensation plan, scenario planning, and industry-specific KPI dashboard.
According to their site, here are some of the more prominent names they have worked with:
TechCXO provides executives across the c-suite rather than specializing in the finance function. TechCXO provides CTOs, CPOs, CMOs, CROs, CFOs, and more.
Simply, the company believes that its clients can save money by having access to top-tier executive talent without owning it.
TechCXO offers executives in the following areas:
Some of the clients that they have worked with include:
As one of the older companies on this list, B2B CFO was founded in 1987. The company is a cooperative of more than 100 consultants who work together. The company prides itself on the tools, talent, and processes they have built over the past four decades. They have written a couple of acclaimed books and have patented their dashboard software.
As a result of their tenure and expertise, they have won several awards, including Forbes Magazine's Small Giants - Best Small Businesses in America and Inc. Magazine's Inc. 5000 award (four times).
B2B CFO breaks down its services into tiers.
FocusCFO was founded in 2001 by Brad Martyn. Before starting the company, Brad had almost 20 years of experience in the finance profession, starting in the tax and audit departments.
Seeing as FocusCFO caters its services to the level of maturity of the company, the service is broken down into four steps, each one building on the last:
While they work with different types of clients, some of their main categories include:
Here are some of the clients they have worked with:
Now CFO offers companies the services of various finance professionals, ranging from staff accountants to CFOs. The company provides its services on a fractional basis or based on the project for which the financial expertise is needed.
Since Now CFO provides a wide range of finance professionals to aid companies, their services are just as broad. But when it comes to fractional CFO services, they include:
According to their website, here are some of the clients they have served:
CFO Hub prides itself on providing Finance as a Service for every finance role within a company. If you need outsourced CFO services (i.e., a fractional CFO), they have that. If you need controller services and financial management, CFO Hub can help. They also help with accounting and back-office support.
With regards to fractional CFO services, here are the broad strokes:
Their costs according to a blog post on their site, they estimate that the cost of a fractional CFO can range from $1,000 to $12,000. The range is that wide because they want to account for the amount of required work as well as the caliber of the client. Some of their most notable clients include:
How to choose a fractional CFO firmFor any business owner, it is a difficult task to pick one company from the 10 above, and this is not taking into consideration the countless other deserving firms that we didn’t include in our list. So, to help your decision process, we would like to go over:
The different types of fractional CFO companiesBroadly speaking, there are two main types of fractional CFOs that you can tap into:
Each option has its pros and cons.We believe getting a fractional CFO from a company is always better than going with a freelancer. Our rationale goes as follows:
What are the criteria you should use when choosing a fractional CFO firm?While there are several criteria we could highlight, here are the main ones that we think matter the most:Their experienceWhether you decide to go with a freelancer or a company, experience matters. Now, while you don’t necessarily need your fractional CFO to be experienced in your particular industry, you do need them to have other types of experience:
Just as you would in a job interview, it is always a good idea to ask for references.
You want to understand what working with a prospective fractional CFO will be like. Are they a good communicator? Are they easy to work with? Do they deliver on what they promise?
And if you are in talks with a fractional CFO company, you want to know how responsive the company is. How big of a network does the company have to support your business’s needs?
You can ask about these things during the interview process, but you will get a better sense if you reach out to previous clients.
Even if they have the experience and their previous clients sing their praises, there are a few things you need to judge yourself when interviewing a fractional CFO:
1. Are they forward-looking or backward-looking?
At the end of the day, a CFO is your strategic partner, and you want one who is always trying to think ten steps ahead.
As Gary Brooks, former CFO for the Houston Astros, says:
“A CFO’s job is to figure out what is going to happen next and deal with the problem you encounter tomorrow. So, when recording an accounting transaction, you want to ask yourself what impact this transaction will have on your bank accounts three years from now as well as whatever is happening today. CFOs need to have this kind of a mindset.”
2. Are they asking you the right questions? While the interview process lets you know more about your potential fractional hire, it also allows them to learn more about your company and its problems. A good fractional CFO will use the interview process for discovery.
3. Do you feel easy around them? A fractional CFO is someone you will be working closely with for an extended period of time. So, you want to bring in someone you would be glad to spend that time with.
4. Are they a vendor or a strategic partner? A vendor is a fractional CFO who is just selling you a service, but a strategic partner is invested in your success and willing to go the extra mile for you. You always want to opt for the latter over the former. And you can figure out whether the prospect you are interviewing is a vendor or a partner by how they talk about their previous clients and how they celebrate their earlier wins.
It is always better to try to figure these things out early in the relationship rather than uncovering them as you are evaluating their work after a 3-month period.
Hiring a fractional CFO is an investment, one that can pay your company back many times over. And while we would argue that startups of all sizes could benefit from a fractional executive, we realize that larger companies will always have a more pressing need.
To help, we shared 10 fractional CFO companies that can offer your company immense value. We also reviewed some of the criteria you should use, including the company’s experience and track record. And we finished by looking at some of the things you should search for in the CFO themselves.
Nevertheless, picking the right fractional CFO for your company is not always easy. For instance, we have seen many cases where a business owner has a financial problem, but they can’t exactly put their finger on where that problem is emanating from, in which case finding a CFO can be difficult.
So, if you need any help, please do not hesitate to reach out for a free consultation. We would love to help you find the right fit for you and your company.
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