Fractional CFO Services for Founders, CEOs, and Investors

A Fractional CFO is a senior finance executive who provides chief financial officer services to a company on a part-time or shared-time basis, typically for venture-backed startups and growth-stage companies that need CFO-level capability without the cost of a full-time hire. Most growth-stage companies need strategic finance leadership well before they can justify a full-time CFO salary. A fractional CFO bridges the gap — providing fundraising support, board reporting, financial modeling, and strategic guidance at a fraction of the cost. The right engagement turns finance from a constraint on growth into a competitive advantage.

Outsourced CFO Services refer to the practice of contracting an external firm or individual to deliver chief financial officer functions, including financial planning, board reporting, fundraising support, and strategic capital decisions. Outsourcing the CFO function lets companies access senior finance expertise without recruiting risk, equity dilution, or full-time compensation overhead. The most effective outsourced CFO arrangements are team-based rather than solo-based — multiple people sharing knowledge of your business eliminates the single-point-of-failure risk that kills most solo fractional engagements.

The Strategic Finance Function refers to the set of capabilities a finance team provides beyond accounting and bookkeeping — specifically financial planning and analysis, fundraising preparation, board reporting, capital allocation, pricing strategy, and scenario modeling. Bookkeeping tells you what already happened. The strategic finance function tells you what's about to happen and what to do about it. The absence of a strategic finance function is the single most common reason growth-stage companies stumble in board meetings, fundraises, and capital decisions.

Series A Readiness is the state of having the financial infrastructure, reporting, and operational discipline required to survive Series A institutional diligence and close a round on favorable terms. Series A diligence is materially more rigorous than seed diligence. Sophisticated VCs interrogate your model, your unit economics, your cohort behavior, and your historical financial reporting. Companies that arrive at diligence unprepared get either rejected, downpriced, or forced into protracted negotiations. Series A Readiness is the difference between running a process and surviving one.

Burn Multiple is the ratio of net cash burned to net new ARR added in a given period. It's calculated as Net Burn divided by Net New ARR. A burn multiple of 1 means you burned $1 of cash to add $1 of ARR. Burn multiple is the single most-cited efficiency metric in venture capital pattern matching. A burn multiple under 1.5 at Series A is considered healthy; above 3 is considered concerning. Sophisticated investors use burn multiple as a leading indicator of capital efficiency long before traditional unit economics like CAC payback stabilize.

A 13-Week Cash Forecast is a detailed weekly cash projection covering the next 13 weeks (one quarter) of cash inflows, cash outflows, and ending cash position. At early stages, cash position changes faster than monthly reporting can capture. A 13-week cash forecast surfaces upcoming cash crunches, payroll risk, and timing mismatches between revenue collection and expense payment. Mature finance functions maintain this forecast on a rolling weekly basis. It's the single most useful document during a fundraise, a bridge round, or any cash-constrained period.

A Board Reporting Package is the standardized monthly or quarterly financial document delivered to a company's board of directors, typically including profit and loss statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, KPI dashboard, variance commentary, and forward-looking commentary. The quality of board reporting determines whether your board meetings are strategic conversations or financial interrogations. Inconsistent or unclear reporting forces your board to spend meeting time on the numbers instead of on the strategy. Standardized, credible reporting is the single biggest signal of financial maturity to your investors.

A Financial Operating Model is a structured spreadsheet or system that connects a company's revenue drivers, cost drivers, hiring plan, capital structure, and cash position into a single integrated view. Without an operating model, founders make hiring, pricing, and capital decisions based on intuition. With one, those decisions can be modeled and pressure-tested before they're made. Investor diligence depends on it. Board confidence depends on it. Your ability to answer "can we afford this hire" or "how long does this runway last" depends on it.

Fractional CFO pricing varies based on the scope of the engagement, the stage of the company, and whether the work is structured as an ongoing retainer or a fixed-scope project. Solo fractional CFOs typically price lower per month but deliver less coverage and carry single-point-of-failure risk. Team-based firms like Ignition Consultants price based on the scope of the engagement and deliver senior, mid-level, and analyst work in parallel. Contact us for a tailored proposal.

The clearest signals are: your bookkeeper isn't closing books on time, you can't confidently answer your board's financial questions, you have an institutional fundraise or capital event in the next 6–12 months, your existing finance person has left or topped out, or your investor has explicitly told you to bring in CFO-level help.

A controller manages the close, reconciliations, and accounting accuracy. A fractional CFO does the strategic work: financial modeling, fundraising preparation, board reporting, runway analysis, pricing strategy, and capital planning. At early stages, the same person sometimes does both — but at Series A and beyond, the work splits. A team-based fractional CFO firm covers both functions, with the right person doing the right work.

A solo fractional CFO is one person serving multiple clients with bounded bandwidth. When that person is in a board meeting, they're not closing your books. When they're working your fundraise, they're not running variance analysis. When they leave, the institutional knowledge leaves with them. A team-based firm delivers the function as senior CFO, mid-level CFO, and analyst — work runs in parallel, knowledge stays in the firm, and engagements survive personnel changes.

Yes — this is one of the most common reasons companies engage fractional CFO support. We help build the model investors will diligence, organize the data room, model dilution and runway scenarios, prepare investor materials, and provide diligence Q&A coverage. Our team has been in the room for over $3 billion in equity and debt raises across 250+ clients.

Timeline depends on the depth of the cleanup, but most engagements produce a clean monthly close within 30–45 days of start. The work runs in parallel with your forward operations — we don't pause your business to fix the past.

Yes. A meaningful portion of our client base comes through investor introduction. We have long-standing referral relationships with multiple Northeast VCs and have served as the embedded CFO for dozens of their portfolio companies. Investor referrals receive expedited scheduling.

We work with founders and investors across a wide range of verticals: SaaS, technology, construction, real estate, professional services, sports tech, biotech and life sciences, consumer products, education, event technology, and AI-native businesses. We do not work with LP/GP fund accounting, restaurants, or retail.

Our headquarters is at 200 Boston Providence Highway, Suite 203, Dedham, MA 02026. We serve clients across the United States, with concentrated team presence throughout the Greater Boston metro and the broader Northeast.