Guide
What a fractional CFO does.
Senior financial leadership, part of the time. Here is what the work actually involves, when it makes sense, and how an engagement is structured.
The short version.
A fractional CFO is a chief financial officer who works for your company part of the time instead of full time. You get the same senior financial judgment a large company has on staff — forecasting, cash oversight, board-ready reporting — without the cost of a full-time executive hire.
For many growing businesses and nonprofits, it is the single highest-leverage addition to the leadership team. The numbers get organized, the close gets clean, and the questions leadership asks stop being guesses.
The work itself.
Forecasting
A cash forecast you can act on, a working annual operating model, and the confidence to say what next quarter looks like before it arrives.
Controls
A clean, repeatable monthly close. Clear separation of duties. Numbers that hold up under the scrutiny of a board, a lender, or an auditor.
Reporting
A monthly financial package leadership actually reads, plus reporting tailored for boards, investors, grantors, and regulators.
Decisions
Pricing, hiring, expansion, and capital choices — made with the numbers in front of the people making them, not after.
When it makes sense.
The timing is usually one of these:
- The books are done each month, but nobody can say what the next quarter looks like.
- Revenue is growing faster than the finance function can keep up with.
- A board, lender, grantor, or regulator is asking for reporting the team cannot yet produce.
- An audit or compliance review is coming, and the records need to be ready.
- Leadership is making pricing, hiring, or expansion decisions without the numbers in the room.
Engagements are embedded, not advisory from a distance. The work happens inside your team and your systems, on a rhythm that fits the business — and it scales up or down as the months change.
Common questions.
How is a fractional CFO different from a controller?
A controller runs the accounting engine: the close, the ledgers, the month-end package. A CFO looks forward. A fractional CFO does that forward-looking work — forecasting, cash planning, and decision support — while keeping a close eye on the quality of the numbers underneath.
How much time does a fractional CFO work each month?
It scales with the business. Some engagements run a few days a month; others run several days a week during a growth push, a compliance cycle, or a board reporting season. The work is scoped to what the organization actually needs, and it flexes as those needs change.
Is W.A. Anderson CPA a tax practice?
No. The firm is an accounting and compliance solutions practice. The focus is forecasting, bookkeeping, controller oversight, and audit readiness — the financial backbone — not tax preparation.
Next step
See what the work would look like here.
A short discovery call is enough to tell whether the timing is right — and what the first ninety days would cover.