There is a stage in every growing business where the owner stops being the best person to read the management accounts. Not because they cannot — but because the questions have changed. Pricing strategy, working capital, optimal funding structure, equity dilution at the next raise — these are CFO questions, not founder questions. And the founder is now the bottleneck.
The classic answer is to hire a CFO. At £120,000 to £180,000 a year fully loaded, that is wrong for the vast majority of businesses under £10m turnover. The right answer is usually a Virtual CFO.
What a Virtual CFO actually does
A Virtual CFO (vCFO) is a senior finance professional engaged on a part-time basis — typically two to six days a month — to deliver the strategic finance function that bigger businesses have in-house. The deliverables vary by client but the spine is consistent:
- Monthly board pack — management accounts with commentary, KPI dashboard, variance analysis
- 13-week cashflow forecast — rolled forward weekly, stress-tested monthly
- Annual budget and 3-year plan — built bottom-up, reviewed quarterly
- Funding strategy — debt, equity, grants, asset finance — chosen against cost of capital and dilution
- Pricing and margin reviews — at least annually, more often in volatile markets
- Board and investor representation — vCFO often sits in board meetings and runs the financial portions of investor updates
What a vCFO does not do: bookkeeping, payroll, VAT returns, supplier payments. Those sit with the bookkeeper or BPO team and the vCFO supervises them.
Five signals you need one
- You cannot answer "what is your gross margin by product line?" in under 30 seconds.
- You have raised — or plan to raise — external capital. Investors expect financial discipline.
- Cashflow has become tight despite revenue growth. This is almost always working capital.
- You are making £500k+ decisions on gut feel. CAPEX, new hires, new markets, new product lines.
- Your accountant only talks to you once a year. If your only financial conversation is at year-end, you are flying blind.
The economics
A full-time CFO costs £120,000 to £180,000 base, plus NI, pension, bonus, and equity in many cases. Call it £180,000 to £240,000 fully loaded.
A vCFO at PushDigits typically runs at £2,500 to £6,000 a month depending on scope and complexity — between £30,000 and £72,000 annually. For most businesses this is 70% to 85% cheaper, and you get a more experienced person than you could afford to hire full-time, because they are split across three or four clients.
It is also lower risk. CFO hires take 3 to 6 months to source, 6 to 12 months to settle, and the failure rate is uncomfortably high. A vCFO arrangement scales up or down month to month without redundancy cost.
What good vCFO engagements look like
The signals of a credible vCFO:
- Named senior person — usually ACA/ACCA with 10+ years of post-qualification experience, ideally with industry as well as practice background
- Fixed monthly retainer with a clear scope, not hourly billing
- A defined deliverables calendar — month 1 looks predictable, month 12 looks predictable
- Genuine availability — not a name on the proposal who you never see
- Backed by a junior team who handle the underlying preparation, so the vCFO's time is spent on analysis and conversation, not data wrangling
When to graduate to a full-time CFO
The honest answer is: later than most founders think. Businesses through £20m turnover with relatively predictable models can run very effectively on a vCFO with strong financial controller support. The trigger for full-time tends to be one of:
- Active M&A — buy-side or sell-side
- Pre-IPO preparation
- Multi-jurisdiction expansion with complex transfer pricing
- Regulated sector requirements (financial services in particular)
How we structure it
Our vCFO engagements sit at the intersection of business advisory and finance BPO. The bookkeeping, payroll, and management accounts run as outsourced services; the vCFO sits on top and turns numbers into decisions. The two layers together usually cost less than a single mid-level in-house finance hire.
If you would like a 30-minute exploratory call to scope whether a vCFO is the right fit, book one here. We will be honest if it is too early — sometimes the right answer is "fix your bookkeeping first and revisit in six months".