Fractional CFO work: what the CFO Office shows
What a firm selling fractional CFO services can use in Achekam today, given that the CFO Office cockpit does not read the client's figures.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Many accounting firms now sell part-time finance leadership to growing businesses: a senior person for a few days a month who runs the numbers, sits in on board meetings, talks to the bank and tells the owner what the figures mean. Clients like it because they get experience they could not afford full-time. Firms like it because it is advisory work built on bookkeeping they often already do.
The risk for the firm is promising more than its tools deliver. A proposal that mentions a live finance dashboard sets an expectation the firm must then meet. This article is a plain account of what Achekam offers a fractional CFO today, where its CFO Office stops, and how to scope the service so the client gets what was sold.
What a fractional CFO delivers
The work varies, but most engagements include some of:
- monthly management accounts with commentary;
- a budget and regular reporting against it;
- a rolling cash forecast and advice on working capital;
- board or investor reporting;
- support with bank funding, covenants and lender reporting;
- pricing, margin and cost analysis;
- improving the client's finance processes and controls.
Cash is usually at the centre. ICAEW's nine principles for finance professionals on cash flow sets out principles for cash flow analysis and forecasting in uncertain times, from who owns cash management to building scenarios, and reads well as a checklist for what a CFO service should cover.
The CFO Office says 'not available' for figures
Achekam has a CFO Office cockpit. Today it does not read a managed organisation's ledger, bank or budget figures. Where a figure would appear, it says 'not available' instead.
A blank labelled 'not available' is better than a placeholder number, but it is still a limit to plan around. Do not demonstrate the CFO Office to a prospective client as a live view of their finances, and do not describe it as one in a proposal. Until it reads the client's figures, the CFO's analysis comes from the client's books and from the firm's own working files.
Management accounts and budgets from the client's books
Where the client keeps its books in Achekam, or the firm keeps them there, two features do most of the reporting work.
Management accounts. Achekam shows an income statement for a chosen period beside the period before, and a balance sheet at period end, both added up from the client's own journals and exportable as PDF or CSV. The year-to-date preset starts on 1 January rather than the client's own year start, so set year-to-date periods by hand for clients whose year differs.
Budgets. A business can set a budget per account and per period and compare it with actual figures from its ledger. For a CFO engagement, the budget is often the first deliverable: it turns the owner's intentions into numbers the monthly report can test. Building one is covered in setting a client's budget.
The CSV export is the bridge to everything else. Take the period's figures into the firm's own spreadsheet model for ratios, trends, segment analysis and the cash forecast.
Board reporting by hand
A board pack for a growing business usually needs more than the books produce: a cash flow view, key performance indicators, a forecast to year end, and a short narrative of risks and decisions needed. In Achekam today, the firm assembles that by hand from the exported figures.
| Board pack section | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Income statement and balance sheet | Achekam management accounts, exported |
| Budget comparison | Achekam budget against the ledger |
| Cash position and forecast | The firm's own model, built from bank balances and known commitments |
| KPIs such as margin, debtor days and headcount | The firm's spreadsheet, from exported figures and client data |
| Commentary and decisions needed | Written by the CFO |
Keep the template the same every month. A board that sees the same pages in the same order learns to read them, and the CFO's time goes on analysis rather than layout.
When the CFO also runs payments
Some clients want more than advice: they want the firm to run their payables and payroll payments. For that, Achekam has a separate structure. A firm and a business can agree an outsourcing mandate, and payments under it go through prepare, review, approve and release steps. A payment cannot be released unless it has been approved and the mandate is active. The cockpit shows the mandate's fee but does not measure what it costs the firm to serve. How mandates work, and what release does and does not do, is covered in running a client's finance office under mandate.
Keep the two roles distinct in the engagement letter. Advising the board on cash and operating the client's payments are different responsibilities, with different risks for the firm.
Agreeing the scope honestly
Write the proposal around deliverables, not software. For example:
- Monthly management accounts and a one-page commentary by a stated working day.
- An annual budget agreed with the owner, and monthly reporting against it.
- A rolling cash forecast updated monthly, prepared in the firm's model.
- A quarterly board pack in an agreed template.
- Attendance at a stated number of board or management meetings.
Then say how they are produced: from the client's books, with analysis in the firm's own files. A client who knows the forecast is a model the CFO maintains will treat it as judgement, which it is. A client who thinks it is a live system output will be surprised the first time it is wrong.
A worked example in words: a firm takes on a logistics company as a CFO client. It already keeps the books in Achekam. The CFO agrees a budget with the owner, exports management accounts monthly into a model that adds a cash forecast and fleet utilisation figures, and presents a board pack each quarter. The proposal promised those deliverables and nothing about a live cockpit, so when the owner asks to see a dashboard, the conversation is about adding a report, not explaining a missing feature.
Before your next proposal
Read your firm's CFO-service proposal against this article. Remove any sentence that implies Achekam shows the client's live figures in the CFO Office, and replace it with the deliverables the firm will actually produce.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
