Fractional CFO Services for Greater Boston Companies

You have been doing the strategic finance work yourself since day one because you had to be. Your bookkeeper or controller is keeping up with the past but cannot tell you about the future. You are making hiring, pricing, and capital decisions on instinct because the numbers do not exist in a form you can use. You need a function, not another individual.

The books are accurate enough. The monthly close happens. But there is no financial model, no rolling cash forecast, no real KPI reporting, and nobody senior enough to sit across from your bank, your auditor, or your board and answer the hard questions. You need strategic finance on top of the operating finance you already have.

Bank covenant reporting. Audit prep. A line of credit renewal that requires a real forecast. A refinancing that requires three years of clean financials. The current setup cannot produce what is being asked for, and the deadline is real.

You have built the business yourself, often over many years. Now you are facing a transition that will put the financial infrastructure under serious scrutiny: a sale, a generational handoff, an employee transition, or another major moment that brings sophisticated outside eyes onto your numbers. The setup that got you here will not survive the diligence the new situation requires, and the gap needs to close before that moment arrives.

You are buying a competitor or a complementary business. You need senior finance judgment for the diligence process, the deal structure review, and the post-close integration of accounting systems and reporting cadences.

Your CFO or controller left under difficult circumstances. You discovered something in the books. A covenant is at risk. You need senior judgment in the room within days, not weeks.

The terminology varies across firms and across industries. In practice, a fractional CFO is a senior finance leader engaged for a portion of full-time hours on an ongoing basis. An outsourced CFO function is the same work delivered by a firm rather than an individual, often with a tiered team behind the senior partner. An interim CFO is engaged for a defined transition period, typically during a search for a permanent CFO, after a departure, or during a specific event. A part-time CFO is the colloquial version of fractional. Ignition delivers all four, structured to match the moment.

A controller manages the recurring close, reconciliations, and reporting accuracy. A CPA firm handles taxes, attestation, and (sometimes) audit work. A fractional CFO does strategic finance: model building, cash forecasting, board and lender reporting, capital strategy, M&A and capital event support, and on-call judgment for hiring, pricing, and capital decisions. Most growing companies eventually need all three. We work alongside your existing CPA and controller, not against them.

Headquartered at 200 Boston Providence Highway in Dedham, Massachusetts. We serve clients across Greater Boston in person and clients across the broader Northeast and nationally on a hybrid basis.

We serve the Greater Boston metro in person, including Downtown Boston, Cambridge, the Seaport, Back Bay, the MetroWest corridor, the North Shore, the South Shore, and the 128/495 corridor. If you are within 45 minutes of our Dedham office, we can be on site in person within hours when needed.

Yes. Boston-area board meetings, owner advisory sessions, lender presentations, and audit kickoffs are attended live by default. Remote is the exception, not the rule.

Yes. We serve Greater Boston broadly (Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, Waltham, Dedham, Needham, Westwood, MetroWest, North Shore, South Shore, 128/495 corridor) and have clients across the Northeast and nationally.

Yes. A meaningful share of our client base is bootstrapped, family-owned, or owner-operated. The translation from owner-operated bookkeeping to audit-grade or successor-ready reporting is a specific kind of work, and we have done it many times.

Yes. Bank covenant reporting, line of credit renewals, refinancings, audit prep, and audit fieldwork support are core parts of our practice. We have standing relationships with most of the major Boston-area banks and regional lenders.

Yes. Sell-side preparation, generational transition planning, and pre-sale financial cleanup are among the moments we are most often called for. The "Owner-Operated to Audit-Grade and Sale-Ready" service block above is specifically built for this.

Yes. Diligence support, deal structure review, and post-close integration of accounting systems and reporting cadences are common engagements for Boston-area companies executing strategic acquisitions.

Diagnostic call to signed scope: typically within one week. Signed scope to engagement start: within two weeks. First clean monthly close: by week 6. Full embedded function operating: by week 8 to 12. Most companies see materially different board, advisory, or lender meetings by week 8.

Yes. Many of our engagements continue past the closing of a sale, refinancing, or other major transaction. Post-close integration, ongoing board and lender reporting, and the next cycle of strategic finance work are all things we routinely continue.

See the "Industries We Serve in Boston" section above. Our deepest industry concentrations include construction and real estate, professional services and multi-site service operators, manufacturing and distribution, family businesses and owner-operated companies, technology and SaaS, and biotech and life sciences.