Your Virtual & Fractional CFO Partner for Clear Numbers
Virtual and fractional CFO services built for US businesses — tighten the month-end close, forecast cash 13 weeks ahead, and keep books reconciled and IRS-ready for boards, lenders and your tax preparer. CPA-led, on a flat monthly retainer, working inside your live QuickBooks, Odoo, Oracle, Sage or whichever ERP you run.
What our fractional CFO services cover
Four workstreams make up the retainer, each scoped in writing before the engagement starts, so both sides know what a month includes.
Month-end close oversight
- Close calendar owned and enforced
- Reconciliations reviewed, not assumed
- Accruals and cutoffs checked
- A flux review after every close
Cash-flow forecasting
- 13-week forecast, kept current
- Fed by live AR, AP, and sales data
- Scenario views before big commitments
- Runway and covenant watch
Board and lender reporting
- A monthly pack, delivered on a date
- KPIs agreed with you, then tracked
- Every number reconciles to the ledger
- Ready for banks, boards, and diligence
Margin and budget discipline
- Pricing and margin reviews by product and customer
- An annual budget built with your managers
- Budget vs. actual, every month
- Variances explained, with owners
When to hire a fractional CFO
Cash surprises you
A squeeze shows up the week it lands, not the quarter before. A maintained 13-week forecast exists precisely so this stops happening.
Decisions run on gut feel
Pricing and hiring calls get made on instinct because the numbers show up too late to argue with anyone.
Fundraising or a sale is ahead
Investors and buyers ask questions annual statements cannot answer. Diligence-ready reporting takes months to build, so it has to start before the process does.
The close never quite closes
Month-end drags on for weeks, and the P&L keeps changing after it is called final, so nobody fully trusts it.
The bank wants real reporting
A loan, a line of credit, or a covenant now comes with a reporting schedule your current setup cannot meet without heroics.
You have outgrown owner-run finance
As general market guidance rather than a client statistic: this pressure tends to start past roughly $500K in revenue and compounds from $2M up, when the owner’s evenings stop covering it.
Fractional CFO vs. controller vs. bookkeeper
Three different jobs get blurred together when a company says it needs help with the numbers. They are not the same hire, and they are not the same price.
One honest note: a CFO cannot out-think books that are months behind. If transactions are not being recorded and reconciled yet, bookkeeping cleanup comes first, and we will say so on the first call. And if the pain is pay runs rather than strategy, that is our payroll services lane.
Your system, not a consultant’s spreadsheet
The standard model runs on exports: ledger data goes out to a private Excel file and comes back two weeks later as a PDF that is already out of date. When the consultant moves on, the model goes too. We built this service the other way around: the work happens inside the system you already run.
Dashboards are built in Power BI reporting against your live tables, and when your data sits across several systems, our data engineering team consolidates it first. If the diagnosis is that the system itself is the problem, we say so: that is ERP consulting or implementation work, not retainer work.
The first 30 days
No long onboarding program. Access, review, forecast, cadence, and then the monthly rhythm takes over.
01Data access and close review
We take read-only access to your accounting system and read the last two closes the way a CFO would: where the numbers bend, and how much of the close can be trusted.
- Read-only access, so nothing in your system changes
- Chart of accounts health, reconciliation state and close speed reviewed
- A plain-language note on what we found, and the retainer scope confirmed from it
- 02
The forecast gets built
The 13-week cash-flow forecast is built directly against your live data, then walked through with you until you would bet on it.
- Fed by live AR, AP and sales data, not a static export
- Walked through line by line before anyone relies on it
- Refreshes from the system from then on, so it never goes stale
- 03
Reporting cadence set
We agree the KPI set, the pack format and the calendar, so boards and lenders get dates they can plan around.
- KPIs chosen with you, then tracked the same way every month
- Fixed dates for the close review and for the pack landing
- A standing session to walk the pack together, not just send it
- 04
The monthly rhythm
From there it repeats, on the calendar rather than on request.
- Close reviewed, forecast refreshed, pack delivered on its date
- Budget vs. actual explained, with an owner named for each variance
- A working session on the decisions the numbers are pointing at
Decisions built on live data, with names on them
These are systems engagements rather than CFO retainers, but the principle is the one this service runs on: the numbers a decision needs, produced by the system instead of assembled by hand.
RTJ Aviation: vendor quotes that stay comparable
Every quoted line is kept, purchased or not, so purchasing decisions are made against real vendor pricing history rather than whatever anyone can find.
Skutchi Designs: spend tied back to deals
Ad spend and closed sales connected inside Odoo, so acquisition cost stops being a guess and starts being a number on a dashboard.
The rest are public and named. We will not print a CFO case study we cannot put a client name against.
Why Index World
A CPA in leadership
Led by a CPA and an ERP expert, so the ledger and the strategy are read by the same standard.
100+ in-house professionals
Accountants, developers and BI engineers under one roof, not subcontracted.
Official Odoo Partner since 2018
Verifiable in Odoo’s partner directory, and we work in the other accounting platforms too.
150+ clients across three continents
The client stories are public and named, so you can check the work.
Questions, answered.
What does a fractional CFO do?
The same job as a full-time CFO, sized to what a growing company needs: overseeing the month-end close, maintaining a rolling cash-flow forecast, producing board and lender reporting, reviewing pricing and margins, and sitting with the owner when the big calls get made. What it is not: transaction entry, tax preparation, or a body in your office five days a week.
Is a virtual CFO the same as a fractional CFO?
In practice, yes: the terms are used interchangeably and you get the same service under either name. “Fractional” describes the commitment, a share of a CFO’s time instead of a full-time hire. “Virtual” describes the delivery, the work happening remotely inside your systems rather than from a desk in your office. Ours is both.
How much does a fractional CFO cost?
Market pricing is all over the map, which is why most firms will not print a number. Most engagements run as one flat monthly retainer, scoped in writing to your entity count, close complexity and reporting depth, so the figure does not drift month to month. We also work hourly where that suits you better. Either way it costs a fraction of a full-time CFO hire, and the number is agreed before work starts.
What is the difference between a fractional CFO and a controller?
A controller makes the numbers right; a fractional CFO makes them useful. If your close still needs controller-level discipline first, we will say so rather than sell the wrong service.
When should we hire a fractional CFO?
When cash movements surprise you, when a raise, loan, or sale is coming, or when decisions are being made on gut feel because reporting arrives too late. Revenue is a rough guide, not a rule: owner-run finance tends to hold up to about $500K and rarely survives past $2M.
Do we need to be on Odoo for this?
No. Any accounting system with clean, current data works, QuickBooks included. Odoo clients get the deepest version of the service because Odoo Accounting is a core practice here: forecasts and dashboards plug straight into the live database instead of running on exports.
How is this different from our accountant or CPA firm?
Your tax CPA looks backward once a year to keep you compliant, and that work stays theirs. A fractional CFO looks forward every week: cash, margins, and the decision in front of you. We work alongside your tax preparer, and they usually like the arrangement, because the books they inherit are current, reconciled and IRS-ready.
Can you work with our existing bookkeeper or finance team?
Yes, and it is the normal setup. Your team keeps producing the numbers, we review the close rather than redo it, and the forecast and reporting layer sits on top. If nobody is producing reliable numbers yet, we will route you to cleanup first, because a CFO layer on top of stale books helps no one.
Is there a long-term contract?
No. The retainer runs month to month after a one-month, no-obligation start. The honest lock-in is usefulness: the pack lands on a date, the forecast stays current, and stopping starts to feel like turning the headlights off.