We speak to a lot of businesses looking for better financial support. Some are building a finance function for the first time while others have been through several providers, or have an internal team but still aren’t getting the information they need to run the business.
The problems are usually familiar: overdue financial statements, a lack of high-quality management reports, manual processes and technology that hasn’t kept up.
We can help with those things. But good finance also depends on how the finance team and the business work together so we’re comfortable saying when a fractional finance team may not be the right fit.
Here are five signs that the timing, model or circumstances might not be quite right.
1. You Aren’t Willing To Change Your Finance Processes
It usually shows up in fairly ordinary ways. The bank feed never gets automated. The payment process remains half-built. Supporting documents arrive intermittently. Finance is left out of meetings it should be in. The weekly check-in gets moved at the last minute for the third time.
Those meetings matter. They are often where priorities are agreed upon and work gets unblocked.
2. Technology Is Something You’ll Get to Later
One of our principles is not to waste professional time.
If software can do a task more quickly and reliably, we would rather use it than charge for someone to keep doing the work manually. Delaying that decision means paying a qualified person to do something a tool could handle, usually with fewer errors.
That is not a good use of your money or our team.
3. There Is Nobody Who Can Be Our Point Person
A fractional finance team still needs someone on your side who can keep things moving.
That doesn’t mean hiring a finance manager. It might be the founder, an operations lead, or someone who knows the business well and can make decisions when needed.
What doesn’t work is when that person is already stretched too thin. Questions sit unanswered. Information arrives late. Decisions get pushed back. Small things become bottlenecks. The result is that you’re paying for an experienced finance team, but they’re spending their time waiting for the business to catch up.
Fractional finance works best when there is someone with the time and authority to keep the relationship moving.
4. You Are Actually Looking for a Single Hire
Many businesses use us as their outsourced finance team. That is the right way to think about the model.
What does not work is expecting one person to do everything and occupy the same place an employee would. A fractional finance team may include a bookkeeper, an accountant, a financial manager, and a Chief Financial Officer (CFO), with the mix varying depending on the business’s needs.
If you want one person sitting at one desk, you probably need to hire one, and we will usually say so on our discovery call.
5. You Are Avoiding a Hard Conversation About Capability
Sometimes the existing finance capability is not where it needs to be, and nobody wants to say it.
We are happy to work alongside an internal team, help people develop, and build the function together. That can be a really good part of the work. It becomes difficult when the person involved does not want the change.
It might be a CFO who is out of their depth, a bookkeeper who resists every new process, or an accountant who cannot explain what sits behind the trial balance.
That person still needs to hand over the processes, explain the reconciliations and work with the new team. If there is a capability problem, have the conversation before we arrive. We cannot have it for you.
One Other Point Nearly Made the List: The Fee
Fees always come up, as they should. We came close to including businesses that push hard on price, but decided that would be unfair.
The best-fit clients still ask about our fees and consider them carefully. The difference is that they also understand the potential impact of having the right finance function in place and are comfortable making the investment when the numbers make sense.
What matters is whether, once you’ve understood the cost and what we’re trying to achieve, the investment feels worthwhile.
The Right Fit Works Both Ways
The point of this list isn’t to find reasons to say no.
It’s to make sure we’re starting with the right conditions for the relationship to work. A fractional finance team can have a significant impact on a business, but it works best when there is a willingness to change, commitment from someone on your side, and a shared understanding of what you’re trying to achieve.
If that sounds like your business, the next question is probably how to choose the right team. We’ve put together questions to ask an outsourced finance team before you hire them to help you have that conversation.
And if you think Creative CFO could be the right fit, get in touch with us.
