Fractional CFO support for growing businesses

The board pack takes a week to pull together. The cash forecast lives in a spreadsheet only one person understands. Investors ask a question and nobody is sure which number is right. I take on the CFO role part-time or as an interim, fix the reporting and systems underneath, and leave a finance function that keeps working after I’ve gone.

Get in touch How I can help

I work with VC-backed scale-ups, PE portfolio companies and founder-led businesses, usually from Series A or the first institutional investment onwards.

Senior finance leadership, delivered hands-on

Most businesses come to me in one of three situations. In each, I do the work alongside your team rather than handing over a report.

You’ve raised, or you’re about to

Investors now expect monthly reporting, a credible forecast and quick answers. The founder is spending evenings in spreadsheets instead of running the business.

What you get

  • A monthly board and investor pack built from the accounting system, not rebuilt by hand
  • A rolling 13-week cash forecast showing runway and covenant headroom
  • An integrated three-statement model to support the next raise
  • Due diligence prepared before investors ask for it

What it helps you decide

How long your cash lasts, when to raise and what the plan can afford.

You have significant capital to deploy

After a large raise or a PE investment, there is money to spend across hiring, product, marketing or acquisitions, but no shared way to decide where it goes or to tell whether it’s working.

What you get

  • A capital allocation process: who can approve what, and the stage gates each investment passes
  • Investment cases compared on the same basis: return, payback and risk
  • Monthly tracking of each investment against its case, so funding can be moved when one isn’t delivering

What it helps you decide

Which investments go ahead, in what order, and when to stop funding one.

Finance hasn’t kept up with the business

Revenue has grown but the finance function hasn’t changed. Month-end takes weeks, key numbers live in spreadsheets, and when figures disagree nobody knows who should fix them.

What you get

  • Accounting, billing, CRM, payroll and bank connected through APIs and MCP connectors, so data is entered once
  • A shorter month-end, with reconciliations automated
  • A named owner for every key number, and controls built into the workflow
  • Your team trained to run and extend the automations

What it helps you decide

Every decision, made on numbers you can trust and available days after month-end rather than weeks.

What good looks like

Most of the problems I see come from the same place: important numbers kept outside the systems that should hold them. A finance function that scales captures data once, at source, and connects the systems so reporting builds itself.

What to avoid

  • Excel as the source of truth, rebuilt by hand every month
  • Numbers nobody clearly owns, and figures that don’t reconcile
  • A slow close, so the board sees last month’s position weeks late
  • Growth that depends on adding back-office headcount

What it should be

  • Every number captured once, in a system, with a named owner
  • Reconciliations and reporting that run automatically, with an audit trail
  • A close measured in days, and live figures between closes
  • A lean team spending its time on analysis and decisions

An example: automating the bank reconciliation

Reconciling the bank was one of the most manual jobs in the finance team at Woodhurst Consulting. This is how it runs after automation, and where a person stays in control.

99%of reconciliation work removed
1Automated

Collects

Bank transactions arrive in the accounting system through the bank feed.

2Automated

Matches

Rules match each line to its invoice, bill, payroll run or transfer. An AI step suggests matches for the rest, with its reasoning.

3Automated

Flags

Anything uncertain, unusual or above a set value goes to a review queue instead of being posted.

4Person

Reviews

Works through the review queue, approving or correcting each item, and spot-checks a sample of automatic matches.

5Person

Signs off

Approves the reconciliation before the month is closed. Every change is logged.

Tell me what you need from your finance function

A short email is enough: where the business is, what’s getting in the way, and what your board or investors are asking for. I’ll reply with whether I can help and how I’d approach it.

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