One of the most common questions I get from advisors and from business owners who've been referred to me is some version of this: does this company need a CFO?
The answer is almost always yes. The more useful question is what kind, and how much.
Most businesses in the $2 to $20 million revenue range don't need a full-time CFO. What they need is CFO-level thinking applied to their specific financial problems on a cadence that matches what's actually happening in the business. That might be a few hours a month or it might be two days a week. The work required drives the answer.
Here's how I think about it.
What a CFO Actually Does
Before you can evaluate whether a business needs one, it helps to be specific about the function.
A bookkeeper records transactions. An accountant interprets them, often for tax purposes. A controller ensures the books are accurate and the financial reporting is reliable. A CFO uses all of that to inform decisions — about capital structure, growth, risk, pricing, operations, and the strategic direction of the business.
The CFO function is inherently forward-looking. It's less about what happened and more about what it means and what to do next.
When a business is missing this — when financial statements are only produced to satisfy the CPA at tax time, when the owner can't tell you their gross margin on the most recent job, when banking conversations happen reactively rather than proactively — that's the absence of the CFO function. It doesn't matter whether the business has a person with that title. What matters is whether anyone is doing that work.
The Signs a Business Actually Needs It
The owner is making significant financial decisions without confidence in the numbers. This is the most common indicator. An owner who is considering a major equipment purchase, a new hire, taking on a large contract, or restructuring debt — but can't clearly articulate the financial impact of those decisions — is operating blind. That's a CFO function gap.
The business has outgrown what the bookkeeper can provide. A bookkeeper can produce accurate records. They're not equipped to analyze those records, identify patterns, or connect the financials to operational decisions. At some revenue level, the gap between what the bookkeeper produces and what the owner needs becomes a real constraint. When the owner is routinely confused about what the financial statements mean, the issue isn't the owner — it's that nobody is translating the reports into decisions.
Banking relationships are deteriorating or the business is being denied credit it should qualify for. Banks extend credit to businesses they understand. When a business can't clearly explain its financial position or provide clean, well-prepared financial packages, the banking relationship suffers — even when the underlying business is sound. A CFO who can prepare and present clean financials, manage the banking relationship proactively, and explain the numbers confidently changes what the business can borrow and on what terms.
The business is growing fast enough that working capital is becoming a recurring crisis. Growth is a leading consumer of cash. A business that's growing without a financial model for what that growth requires is going to hit a cash wall. The CFO function is what builds that model, monitors the warning signs, and makes sure the business has the capital structure to support the growth before the crisis arrives.
Full-Time vs. Fractional
The full-time versus fractional decision mostly comes down to volume and complexity.
A full-time CFO makes sense when the business is large enough that the CFO function is a continuous, full-time role — typically somewhere north of $30 to $50 million in revenue, though it depends heavily on complexity. A contractor doing $40 million in revenue with complex bonding relationships, large equipment financing, and significant subcontractor management might need a full-time CFO earlier than a services business at the same revenue. A business with a clean, simple model might not need one at all.
Below that level, the business typically doesn't generate enough CFO work to fill a full-time role — and a competent full-time CFO is expensive. The fractional model exists to serve this gap: CFO-level expertise, engaged at a level of commitment that matches what the business actually needs.
The value of fractional engagement is that the business gets someone who has seen the same problem at multiple companies, who brings pattern recognition from a broader range of situations than any single employee accumulates, and who is paid for results rather than for showing up.
The limitation is continuity and availability. A fractional CFO who is working with eight clients isn't always available the moment something urgent comes up. For businesses where financial issues are genuinely day-to-day, that constraint matters.
What to Look For in Either Case
Regardless of whether the business needs full-time or fractional support, the person doing the CFO function needs to have actually done it before. This sounds obvious, but the title gets used loosely. A controller who has never managed a banking relationship, never navigated a restructuring, and never built a financial model for growth is not a CFO — they're a very good controller. The skills are related but not the same.
The things that actually distinguish CFO experience: having been in the room when a bank said no and understanding what it would take to change that answer; having advised on an acquisition or a business sale; having managed a business through a difficult stretch where cash was the constraint and every decision had financial consequences. That set of experiences produces the judgment that makes the CFO function genuinely useful.
The credential behind the name matters less than the breadth of the experience.
Joshua R. Bohlke spent over a decade as a commercial banker before serving as fractional CFO and financial advisor to businesses from $1M to $50M in revenue. He works with business owners and their advisors on financial structure, credit, and growth.
jrbohlke.com • The Analysis