What Does a Fractional CFO Actually Do? UK Scope, Deliverables and Reality Check

The core fractional CFO scope — what they actually do

For a typical UK fractional CFO engagement (operating tier, 2-5 days/month, £2-5k retainer), the core monthly scope is:

1. Monthly close oversight — review the close output produced by the bookkeeper or FC, ensure accruals are right, sign off the management accounts. ~0.5 days.
2. Board pack / founder pack — write the commentary, KPI summary, risks and opportunities. ~1 day.
3. Rolling 12-18 month forecast — update assumptions, rebase against actuals, reforecast cash. ~0.5-1 day.
4. Founder/CEO monthly call — 60-90 min strategic conversation about the numbers and the decisions they imply. ~0.25 days.
5. Ongoing ad hoc — Slack/email questions, contract review, hiring plan input, vendor decisions. ~0.5-1 day spread across the month.
6. Quarterly board meeting attendance if relevant — 2-3 hours in the meeting plus 2-3 hours prep. Folded into the cadence.

Total: 2.5-4 days a month. Anything below 2 days isn't really CFO work; anything above 5 days is usually FC work that's drifted upward.

In-scope vs out-of-scope — be specific in the contract

The cleanest contracts list these explicitly. Disputes nearly always come from work that the founder assumed was included and the CFO assumed was extra — both reasonable interpretations until you write it down.

Month 1 — the diagnostic

A good fractional CFO spends the first month doing diagnostic work rather than operating cadence work. Expect:

1. Week 1: Read-in. Get access to Xero/QuickBooks/NetSuite, the bank, the cap table, the most recent board pack (if any), the last 12 months of management accounts, the operating dashboard if there is one. Talk to the founder, the bookkeeper, the lead investor if relevant.
2. Week 2: Build a 13-week cash forecast from scratch, validate against the actual bank balance. Build a P&L by month for the trailing 12 months, segmented in a way that reflects how decisions actually get made (by product line, by channel, by customer cohort — depending on the business shape).
3. Week 3: Run a top-10 customers / suppliers / cost lines analysis. Identify the 3-5 most material risks or opportunities visible from the numbers.
4. Week 4: Diagnostic memo — 5-8 pages, plain English, what's working, what's broken, recommended 90-day priorities, recommended 12-month direction.

If month 1 doesn't produce a diagnostic memo, the engagement has started badly. Push for one in writing.

Month 3 — the rhythm is established

By month 3, a healthy engagement has settled into:

• Monthly close by working day 7-10 (was probably day 15-20 before)
• Monthly board pack going to founder (and investors if relevant) by working day 12
• Monthly call between CFO and founder/CEO in the diary, 60-90 min
• 13-week cash forecast updated weekly or fortnightly
• Hiring plan model live, decisions about new hires being made against it
• 1-2 specific operational initiatives in flight — usually a working capital improvement, a contract renegotiation, or a system fix

If month 3 still feels chaotic and there's no rhythm, that's a warning sign. Either the CFO isn't delivering, the founder isn't engaging, or the underlying data is too broken to operate on. Worth a frank conversation.

Month 12 — what should have changed by then

After 12 months of operating-tier fractional CFO support, expect:

• Monthly accounts close reliably by working day 5-7
• 3-statement rolling forecast that's trusted by the founder, by the board, and by external investors / lenders
• Working capital tightened — typically 10-30 days off DSO/DIO depending on starting position
• 1-3 strategic decisions made that wouldn't have been made without the CFO: a price increase, an unprofitable customer fired, a major contract renegotiated, a wrong-shape hire avoided
• If a fundraise happened, it ran through a structured process with clean numbers
• Founder spending materially less time on finance and materially more time on product/sales/strategy

If 12 months in nothing material has changed, the engagement isn't earning its fee. That's the time to either restructure (different scope, different person) or end.

Four signals your fractional CFO is delivering

1. You're sleeping better. The founder anxiety about cash, headcount cost, customer concentration drops. If the CFO is good, you have a clearer picture of risks and a clearer plan for the ones that matter.
2. You're making different decisions. Specific decisions you would have made differently or later without the CFO's input. If you can't name 2-3 of these per quarter, the CFO isn't moving the needle.
3. External stakeholders trust the numbers more. Investors, lenders, auditors, customer procurement teams all interact with finance output. If they push back less and trust the data more, that's value.
4. The founder is spending less time on finance. A good fractional CFO buys back founder time. If the founder is still doing payment runs, chasing invoices and rebuilding the forecast in Sheets every month, the CFO isn't earning out.

Reality-check checklist — is your fractional CFO earning the retainer?

Run this against your current engagement:

• Is the monthly board / founder pack delivered by working day 12?
• Is the 13-week cash forecast updated at least fortnightly and within ±10% of actual cash 4 weeks out?
• Is there a 12-18 month rolling forecast that hasn't fallen apart since month 3?
• Has at least one strategic decision been changed by CFO input in the last quarter?
• Has at least one cost-saving or revenue-improving operational change been implemented (not just discussed)?
• If a hire was made in the last 6 months, did the CFO model affordability and were the model assumptions reasonably right?
• Is the founder spending less than 1 day a month on finance operations vs ≥3 days previously?

If you're answering "no" to half of these and you're 6+ months in, the engagement isn't working. Either restructure scope, change CFO, or unwind.