Most businesses that think they need a CFO actually need CFO-grade output a few times a quarter. Those are different purchases, and the cost difference is substantial.
What a full-time CFO gives you
Continuous presence. Someone in every commercial conversation, owning the team, the systems and the relationships with lenders and investors. If your business is making finance-critical decisions weekly, negotiating facilities, integrating acquisitions or preparing for an exit, that presence is worth its cost.
The true cost is not the salary alone: add employer contributions, recruitment, software, and the management time to hire and retain the person.
What a fractional function gives you
Defined capability, delivered on a schedule. Monthly management accounts and reporting, a maintained forecast, board pack preparation, and modelling or diligence support when a specific event requires it, at a fraction of the fully loaded cost of a hire.
What it does not give you is someone in the room every day. If your business genuinely needs that, no retainer substitutes for it.
How to decide
Ask three questions honestly.
- How often does a finance decision actually need senior judgement? Weekly points to a hire. Monthly or quarterly points to fractional.
- Is the work you need mostly production or mostly negotiation? Reporting, modelling and forecasting are deliverables. Lender negotiation and team leadership are presence.
- What stage are you at? Pre-Series A and owner-managed businesses under a certain scale rarely sustain the workload a full-time CFO expects, and under-used senior hires leave.
A sensible sequence for most growing businesses is fractional first, hire later, with the fractional team building the systems the eventual hire inherits.
The handover test
Whichever you choose, insist that the work leaves behind documented, maintainable files that your business owns. If the arrangement ends and your reporting stops working, you bought dependency rather than capability.
If you want a view on which side of this line you sit, [book a scoping call](/contact) and we'll tell you if you're better served by a hire.