Outsourced CFO Services: Benefits, Challenges, and Considerations
Our outsourced CFO team empowers your business by elevating financial strategy, maximizing profits & accelerating growth. Off-loading the financial work to someone else can free up your time to spend it where it counts the most. Hiring a financial consultant can also set you up for long-term success. A lot of business owners are spending way too much time at work and sacrificing other parts of their lives in the process. Often, these overtime hours are taken up with things like managing the books, because those aren’t responsibilities that you, as the business owner, are often most skilled at, or most interested in managing.
Sage is the global market leader for technology that helps businesses of all sizes manage everything from money to people, whether they’re a start-up, scale-up or enterprise. They do this through Sage Business Cloud – the one and only business management solution that customers will ever need, comprising Accounting, Financials, Enterprise Management, People & Payroll and Payments & Banking. We believe our approach not only drives value, generates efficiencies and reduces stress on the business management and owners who hire us, but also clearly differentiates us from other firms. Our CFOs are great at working with in-house teams to train, implement systems, and elevate strategies. Our CFOs have significant forecasting and budgeting experience and will develop/optimize short- or long-term forecasts and budgets to create a precise blueprint to help you get from where you are to where you want to go.
External CFO Solutions
This person is an experienced leader and trusted advisor who can perform all the same functions as a full-time CFO at a fraction of the cost. Paying for a certain number of hours with a fractional CFO allows you to get the benefits of working with an experienced finance leader, at a much lower cost than hiring a full-time CFO. For small companies like startups, this can mean having access to a resource you otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. Finances are imperative to the daily operations of an organization, and financial reports keep you apprised of your current (and future) standings. Many outsourced cfo services include financial report facilitation, interpretation, and drill-down. Let a CFO analyze your reports and give you the most important takeaways in a way that best supports your business needs.
And, consider whether you feel you would get added value if part of your rate went toward the overhead of an outsourced CFO team, versus an individual part-time CFO who is working solo. Outsourced CFOs can charge in the ballpark of $150 to $200 per hour, or more, depending on the region. For a small business owner or CEO, deciding whether to hire one is something like deciding whether that budget can handle making a call to their lawyer.
What Are Pro Forma Financial Statements?
But, once you encounter higher-level financial challenges, it might be time to add an https://www.bookstime.com/articles/construction-in-progress-accounting, especially if a full-time hire is either cost-prohibitive or unnecessary. For example, here are some signs that you are ready for financial leadership. Initially, however, they will manage your company’s accounting team and do much of the financial analysis themself to translate that data into meaningful insights. They will also be the primary point of contact for external financial partners, like your tax advisor, bankers, and investors. Headcount is the main HR function and also often the biggest expense of a startup (or any company, for that matter). An outsourced CFO can collaborate with the HR manager to monitor how changes to the team affect your ability to hit budgeted figures, and, if necessary, make recommendations about how to cut staffing costs.
Your organization may already be in place, but perhaps the books got a little out-of-control during growth or transition. An outsourced controller may come in on a project-basis to help clean up your books so your team can better manage them moving forward. This service may be used in conjunction with an outsourced CFO who may help put financial systems in place and train employees in more efficient accounting practices. Hiring an in-house team can be costly, especially considering that you have to pay them for time off and other benefits. Outsourced CFOs come with broad experience from different companies in your industry and are often more objective, offering an outside perspective and the ability to make decisions based on a wide array of experience and data.