Your company finished the month $150,000 below its revenue forecast. Gross profit was lower than expected, payroll was higher, and EBITDA missed the plan by $100,000. Management has explanations for each variance. A large customer delayed an order. Material costs increased. A new employee started earlier than expected. Individually, those explanations may be reasonable. But...Read More

Your business has reached the point where financial decisions are becoming too important to manage without experienced leadership. Revenue is growing, operations are more complicated, and questions about cash flow, profitability, hiring, and expansion are becoming increasingly difficult to answer. You recognize the need for CFO-level expertise. But does that mean hiring a full-time Chief...Read More

Your business finished the month close to its sales budget. Revenue met expectations, customer demand remained steady, and the sales team delivered what management anticipated. Yet when the financial statements arrived, operating profit was significantly below plan. For many business owners, this is one of the most frustrating financial situations to explain. If sales are...Read More

Most business owners have a revenue goal. It might be $1 million a month, $10 million a year, or simply 20% more than last year. What many businesses don’t have is a clear understanding of how much revenue they actually need to cover their costs and begin generating an acceptable profit. Those are two very...Read More

One of the most frustrating situations for a business owner is looking at a profitable income statement and then looking at a bank account that seems to be telling a completely different story. Revenue is growing. The company is profitable. Nothing unusual jumps out in expenses. Yet cash isn’t accumulating the way you expected—or worse,...Read More

A business can be growing and still becoming less profitable. Revenue may be increasing, the sales team may be producing record results, and the company may appear healthy from the outside. But if gross profit margin falls from 45% to 42%, that three-point decline can erase a significant portion of the benefit from all that...Read More

Most business owners know whether their company made a profit last month or last year. They can look at the bottom line of the income statement and see whether net income is positive. But that doesn’t necessarily answer a more important question: Is the business actually profitable? A company can report a profit while certain...Read More

Cash sitting in a business bank account can create two very different reactions. If the balance is too low, business owners worry about making payroll, paying vendors, or covering an unexpected slowdown. If the balance gets too high, they start wondering whether the money should be distributed, invested back into the business, used to pay...Read More

One of the most common questions business owners ask when considering financial leadership is: How big does my company need to be before hiring a fractional CFO? It is tempting to answer that question with a specific revenue number. But revenue alone rarely determines whether a business needs CFO-level financial leadership. A $5 million company...Read More

Hiring a fractional CFO sounds straightforward. You get CFO-level expertise without hiring a full-time CFO. But that explanation leaves an important question unanswered: What does the CFO actually do each month? For a growing company, fractional CFO services should be much more than reviewing financial statements or attending a monthly meeting. The CFO should create...Read More