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CFO services for startups: what you actually get, and when you need it
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Book a callCFO services for a startup mean a part-time finance leader who owns the numbers the founders and investors decide on: a weekly cash forecast, runway and the hiring plan, the budget against actuals with a written explanation, the model behind the next raise, and a straight answer with figures when a decision is on the table. It is not bookkeeping; it sits on top of clean books. Most startups need it from the moment payroll is real money or a raise is six months away, and a fractional CFO for a few days a month covers that stage without a full-time salary.
- A CFO sits on top of clean books. Get the close right first, or the forecast is confidently wrong.
- The test is simple: can someone say, in a minute, which week of the next eight cash is lowest?
- Judge a CFO service by what arrives each month and by who sits in the investor meeting, not by the title.
What a CFO does that a bookkeeper does not
Founders often ask for "a CFO" when what they need first is clean books, and ask for "a bookkeeper" when what they need is someone to tell them whether they can afford the next three hires. The table is the honest split. The bookkeeping and the close come first; a CFO on top of wrong numbers is an expensive way to be confidently wrong.
| The job | Bookkeeper or controller | CFO |
|---|---|---|
| Record what happened | Posts, reconciles, closes the month by a fixed day | Reads the close and asks why |
| Cash | Reports the balance | Owns the forecast: what comes in, what goes out, week by week, and what to do about the dip in week 10 |
| Investors and lenders | Sends the statements | Builds the model, sets the story the numbers tell, sits in the meeting |
| Decisions | Out of scope | Two options, each with numbers. The founder decides |
| Plan | Budget entered into the system | Budget owned: hiring plan, pricing, unit economics, what changes if growth is half the plan |
The signs a startup needs one
- Payroll is real money and nobody can say, in a minute, which week of the next eight cash is lowest.
- A raise is six months away and the model lives in a spreadsheet only one person understands.
- Investors ask questions after each board meeting that take a week to answer.
- Revenue is growing and the founders cannot say whether the company makes money on each customer.
- A bank, a grant body or a big customer wants numbers signed by someone with a finance title.
- The founders are doing finance on Sunday evenings.
Two of those and it is time. All six and it was time a while ago.
If an investor asked today for your cash forecast for the next quarter and your runway, would the answer come from a live file or from memory? If from memory, that is the gap a CFO service closes first.
What you should receive every month
Ask any CFO service for this list before you sign. Ours looks like this.
- A rolling cash forecast, updated every week. We keep ours 16 weeks long so a founder always sees a full quarter ahead. It is built from real invoices, bills and payroll dates, not from percentages, and here is how to build one.
- Runway and the hiring plan on one page. Cash divided by net burn, with every planned hire and its start date in the forecast, so "can we afford this person" has a date-specific answer.
- Budget against actual, with words. The numbers, plus the three sentences that explain what moved and what we are doing about it. A board pack nobody has to decode.
- The model behind the raise. Revenue drivers, unit economics, scenarios, the valuation logic, and a data room that is already reconciled to the books when the first investor asks for it.
- A decision, when you need one, with numbers. Should we take the loan or raise? Extend the runway by cutting or by pricing? We bring option A and option B, each with the cash effect, and the founder decides.
- Someone in the room. Investor calls, bank meetings, the auditor, the tax adviser. A CFO who takes ownership is there, not on a slide.
A fractional CFO gives you a few days a month for the stage where the questions are big but not daily. An interim CFO fills a seat for a set period, full-time. A full-time hire makes sense when finance needs a leader every day: usually a team of several, multiple entities, or a public-company path. Most seed to Series B companies we work with need the first, and it costs a fraction of a senior salary.
What it costs, and how to compare
CFO services are usually priced as a monthly retainer scoped by days or deliverables, sometimes hourly for a one-off project such as a valuation or a business plan. We do not publish rates because the scope differs so much between a two-founder company and a forty-person one. What we do promise is a written scope and quote within two days of a first call, so you can compare it with a hire on the same page: the salary, the equity, the recruiter, and the six months it takes to find the right person.
Where AI helps, and where it does not
AI made the mechanics of this work fast. Our forecast workbooks check themselves, the actuals flow in without re-keying, variance notes are drafted before a person reads the numbers, and a scenario that used to take an afternoon takes minutes. That is why a fractional CFO can serve a startup well on a few days a month.
What AI does not do is judgment. Whether the pipeline number is real, whether a customer will actually pay in week four, whether the raise should happen now or after two more months of proof: those are calls a person makes with the founder, and signs. That is the part you are paying for.
How we do it
The CFO work at Hundred MS is led by the founders, Narek Abgaryan and David Tarkhanyan, who both hold the CFA and FRM, with 17 advisory projects behind them: business plans, valuations, restructurings and raises. It sits on top of books closed by business day 10, guaranteed from your third month, so the forecast and the pack are built on numbers that tie. The fractional CFO service page has the details, and the discovery call is with Narek, no slides.
Where this goes wrong
| The problem | What it costs you | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| A CFO is hired to fix messy books | Senior hours spent on bookkeeping, and the forecast still built on wrong numbers | Clean up and close monthly first; then the CFO work is worth paying for |
| The forecast is a percentage of last month | It looks fine until the week payroll and a big supplier bill land together | Build it from real invoices, bills and payroll dates, and update it every week |
| The model exists only for the raise | Investors see one set of numbers and the board sees another | One model, reconciled to the books, used every month and shown to investors as is |
Based on our own client work. The founders lead our CFO engagements and see the same questions from seed to Series B companies every month. The weekly, item-by-item forecast we describe is the direct method that treasury bodies and banks describe too.
Sources we opened and checked for this guide:
First published 2025. Rewritten and checked in September 2026. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
David Tarkhanyan
Nare Khachatryan
