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What Does a Part-Time CFO Do?

A part-time CFO offers all the financial services expertise that an in-house CFO does, but without the huge overheads that a full-time employee usually comes with. It means that smaller businesses, such as startups, can benefit from the specialised advice of a CFO while still finding something that works within their budget. Make sure you do proper employee background checks on candidates for the position, with a company with experience in DBS checks such as uCheck

There may be some confusion about the terminology around a CFO. A part-time CFO is also known as a fractional CFO, and companies may wonder what a fractional CFO does for your business, in reality, they can bring a lot of benefits. As a fractional CFO works with several clients on a part-time basis, they have a lot of experience working with different size companies, in different industries, so they can bring that knowledge to your business too. 


What Can a Part Time CFO do for Your Business

The role a part time CFO can play for your business will depend heavily on where you are in your development, and exactly what you need in order to best grow. I always suggest using an agency, such as CFOshare fractional CFO to find a good fit for your business. But if you’re trying to think about how a CFO could help you, here are some general tasks they can help with:


Setting up systems to help analyse financial information such as forecasting, which will help with making decisions for the future of the business.

Guidance for managing key relationships such as lawyers, banks, suppliers etc.

They can review, revise and optimise management reporting.

They can act as an extension of your management team and help with certain meetings and tough decisions.



What are the benefits of having a part time CFO instead of on boarding a full time CFO

Are you trying to decide whether you’d like to hire a CFO on a part time or full time basis? If you have a smaller sized business, or a smaller budget for CFO services, then it may make a lot more sense to work with a part time CFO. Having a full time employee comes with a lot of extra expenses, depending on where you live. For example you may have pay for extras like insurance, holiday leave, bonuses and so forth. When working on a part time or contractual basis, it’s much easier to set the number of hours or monthly budget you have, and to ask your CFO to work within those limits.

Another advantage of working with a CFO on a part time basis is that you can afford to hire someone who at their full time rate may be well outside of your total budget.

A part time CFO will also be juggling a few different clients at the same time, and their portfolio of previous clients will be much larger than someone working in a more traditional CFO role for a single company. All that extra experience with a variety of clients is knowledge and experience they can then bring into your company.