Do You Need an Outsourced CFO?

Whether your firm is experiencing rapid growth or struggling financially, you can turn to expert advice without expanding head count. Click through for information on hiring a CFO for a set period to get yourself on track.

Your business is off and running, but you don’t feel you have a handle on the finances. What you know you need is financial direction by someone with the smarts of a chief financial officer. But you can’t afford a CFO.

If that sounds like your situation, you can hire a part-time experienced CFO in person or remotely. Even a CFO who comes in only one day a week can help transform your firm. A part-time CFO can:

• Help design or tweak your financial road map so you can reach your business goals.
• Identify areas in your current strategy that can be corrected.
• Implement reporting systems for financial functions that help you see more strategically.
• Oversee financial controls for compliance while avoiding errors and fraud.
• Help you see your product performance and customer demographics in a new light.

You need a clear understanding of your financials to make the right decisions to move your business forward. An outsourced CFO can help you, not only in setting up accounting and reporting systems but also by creating systems for audit tracking and financial oversight to reduce accounting data errors.

Beyond the Basics

Once you have greater confidence in your financials, a CFO can help you gather other relevant data from various operational components of your company in order to give you an understanding of cash management and whether borrowing or restructuring will help propel your firm’s growth.

You can scale up your outsourced CFO’s involvement as needed for budgeting, paying your bills and processing your payroll. A CFO can handle some aspects of the financial paperwork that nonspecialists don’t always consider, such as:

• Developing internal accounting controls.
• Providing regular financial reporting and guidance.
• Making sure there are proper checks and balances.
• Designing financial forecasting and projections about the next 12 months so you can allocate resources to meet your goals. By regularly evaluating your cash flow, you can develop cash improvement programs with cash flow statements that incorporate long-term assets.
• Aiding in the acquisition of more funds from investors and lenders, putting together presentations and attending business meetings.

When an outsourced CFO comes in to rework your company’s financials, you can expect help with increasing cash flow and profitability, reducing business overhead, reducing client churn, raising more capital, managing debt and repaying loans.

When you’re ready to scale your business, an outsourced CFO can help you make the right moves:

• Ensuring your financial infrastructure is in place.
• Determining the most cost-efficient tax structure.
• Applying for multistate registrations if needed.
• Helping obtain financing and applying for loans.
• Performing financial forecasts and risk assessments.

You can augment your internal staff by bringing in a CFO who has knowledge of your industry and who has provided value to businesses like yours. You may need help in installing annual budgeting and periodic forecasting processes or policies and procedures to put you in compliance with generally accepted accounting principles. An outsourced CFO can engage with your business part time or for the duration of a project.

With financial data and objective inputs, you can make more incisive decisions. Having key performance indicators can help grow or keep your business alive by procuring more funds from investors. An outsourced CFO can play a pivotal role in shaping the overall direction of your business.

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