Insight
Full-Time CFO vs Fractional CFO: Which Is Right for You?
At some point, most growing businesses ask the same question: do we hire a CFO outright, or bring in fractional support? Both are legitimate paths - the right one just depends on where your business actually sits, not which sounds more impressive.
What a Full-Time CFO Offers
A full-time CFO is embedded in your business every day - available for anything that comes up, able to build and lead a finance team underneath them, and fully immersed in the operational detail of the business. For businesses with genuinely complex, high-volume finance needs, that constant presence earns its keep.
What a Fractional CFO Offers
A fractional CFO brings the same calibre of experience and judgement, scaled to what your business actually needs - a few hours a month, up to a full day a week, rather than five days every week. You get CFO-level thinking on your numbers, without carrying the cost of a role your business may not yet need full-time.
The Real Cost of Going Full-Time
The salary line alone is significant - often $200,000-$300,000+ once you include super. On top of that, there's recruitment time and cost, and the months it typically takes to find and onboard the right person.
When a Full-Time CFO Makes More Sense
Being honest about it - fractional isn't always the right answer. A few signs it might genuinely be time to hire outright:
- You need someone in the building every day, managing a finance team of 3 or more people, that need direction and/or closer oversight
- You're running enough complexity - multiple entities, high transaction volume - that daily oversight, not periodic check-ins, is what's actually needed
- You're heading into something that needs constant, dedicated attention - a major raise, a sale process, a significant restructure
When Fractional Makes More Sense
For most small-medium businesses, this is where things actually sit:
- You want CFO-level thinking on your numbers, without the $200,000+ commitment
- The savings and improvements a fractional CFO delivers can easily justify the cost - even before your business is at the size where a $200,000+ full-time hire makes sense
- You don't need to build a finance team just to get that level of thinking on your numbers
- You've already got a small team of one or two doing a great job - they just need occasional guidance, not full-time oversight
- Your business doesn't yet have the volume or complexity to justify someone's full working week
- You want the flexibility to scale support up or down as things change, without the cost and complexity of hiring or letting someone go
- You want to see what real financial leadership does for your business, before committing to a permanent senior hire
Where CFO Actions Fits
Most businesses we work with aren't at full-time-CFO scale yet - and for a lot of them, they may never need to be. Fractional support gives you that same level of judgement now, scaled to what you actually need. And if your business does eventually outgrow it, that's a genuinely good problem to have - one we'll be honest with you about, when the time comes.