Some of our best customers are also the slowest payers. We want to protect the relationship but the AR aging is starting to become a real cash flow issue. How do you have that conversation without damaging something you've spent years building? And at what point does a good relationship stop justifying the collections headache?
One thing I've been thinking about with fractional CFO work is where the line actually sits between advising a company and taking genuine ownership of its financial function from what I know, it's relatively straightforward to come in, review the numbers, point out that cash forecasting needs work, recommend a better reporting structure, or tell the founder which KPIs they should be watching.
But things change once you're responsible for making those things happen.
You're building the forecasting system, establishing the reporting cadence, deciding which numbers the leadership team reviews, working with the accounting team, and eventually having to ask why a KPI moved and what someone is going to do about it, at that point, it feels less like traditional consulting and much more like actually being the CFO even if you're only there part-time.
I genuinely will like to where other fractional CFOs draw that line like, how much of the financial function do you truly own and has that boundary changed as you've taken on larger or longer-term fractional engagements?
The management P&L and the board P&L should probably look different - different levels of detail, different formatting, maybe different line items. But in practice a lot of companies just send the same report to everyone. How do you think about what each audience actually needs and how much customization is worth the effort?