A great CFO doesn't just report on the past. They illuminate the path forward.

The Big Picture

What Is Fractional CFO and Strategic Financial Advisory?

Advisory is the strategic layer of financial management. While accounting captures what happened and tax ensures compliance, advisory looks ahead. It answers the questions that keep business leaders up at night: Are we spending in the right places? Can we afford to grow? What does our financial future look like?

At Sataurius, advisory means embedding a senior financial strategist into your business. Someone who understands your industry, knows your numbers, and can translate financial data into actionable business decisions. If you are weighing the right time to engage one, read when to hire a fractional CFO.

Whether you need a fractional CFO for ongoing leadership or a targeted engagement around a specific initiative like fundraising, restructuring, or market expansion, our advisory team brings the experience and perspective of professionals who have worked across industries and business stages.

What's Included

Fractional CFO and Financial Advisory Services

Fractional CFO Services

Senior-level financial leadership on a part-time basis. Strategic planning, board reporting, fundraising support, and financial modeling without the cost of a full-time CFO hire.

Cash Flow Forecasting and Optimization

Rolling 13-week cash flow forecasting, working capital analysis, and strategies to give leadership full visibility into liquidity and runway.

Board Reporting and KPI Dashboards

Board-ready financial packages, executive KPI dashboards, and lender or investor reporting designed for clear decisions, not data dumps.

Growth Advisory and CFO for Small Business

CFO-level guidance for small businesses and mid-market companies scaling into new markets, new products, or M&A readiness.

Financial Systems and Process Design

Building the financial infrastructure that supports scale: reporting cadences, close calendars, and decision frameworks tuned to your business model.

Strategic Technology

AI and Technology Investment Strategy for Mid-Market Businesses

Most businesses are being told to "implement AI" without first understanding whether it will actually deliver value.

We take a different approach.

Before any investment is made, we work with you to assess where AI and technology can genuinely improve your financial operations, decision-making, and overall performance. This ensures you are not spending time and capital on solutions that add complexity without clear return.

What this looks like in practice:

Identifying where manual processes, inefficiencies, or data gaps exist
Evaluating whether AI or automation is the right solution, or if simpler fixes will deliver better results
Estimating potential ROI, cost savings, and operational impact
Prioritising initiatives based on value, effort, and risk
Providing clear, commercially grounded recommendations before any implementation

The outcome:

You gain clarity and confidence in your technology decisions, knowing exactly where to invest, what to avoid, and how to maximise return without unnecessary disruption.

How We Help

How Our Advisory Services Turn Financial Complexity Into Confidence

Build Financial Roadmaps

We create detailed financial plans that align with your business goals, mapping out revenue targets, expense benchmarks, and capital allocation strategies for the next 12 to 36 months.

Prepare for Fundraising

From pitch deck financials to investor data rooms, we prepare your numbers to tell a compelling and credible story that resonates with investors and lenders.

Optimize Profitability

We analyze your revenue streams, cost structure, and margin drivers to identify opportunities for improvement that directly impact your bottom line.

Strengthen Board Reporting

We design and deliver board-ready financial packages that give your leadership team the clarity they need to make confident, data-driven decisions.

Who This Is For

When Mid-Market Businesses Need a Fractional CFO

The Founder Scaling Past $5M

You've outgrown your bookkeeper but aren't ready for a full-time CFO. You need strategic guidance without the overhead.

The CEO Preparing for Investment

Investors want clean financials, clear projections, and a CFO-quality narrative. You need someone who speaks their language.

The Operator Managing Complexity

Multiple entities, multiple states, multiple revenue streams. You need someone who can see the whole picture.

Our Process

How Our Fractional CFO and Advisory Engagements Work

Assess Your Current State

We start with a comprehensive review of your financial infrastructure, reporting, and processes to identify gaps and opportunities.

Define Your Goals

We work with you to establish clear financial objectives, whether that means preparing for acquisition, improving cash flow, or scaling operations.

Build the Framework

We design and implement financial models, reporting cadences, KPI dashboards, and decision frameworks tailored to your business.

Ongoing Partnership

Advisory is not a one-time engagement. We stay embedded with your team, adapting our guidance as your business evolves and new challenges emerge.

Why Sataurius

What Sets Us Apart

Typical Firms

Deliver a report, send an invoice, and move on. You're left to interpret and implement on your own.

Sataurius

We embed with your team. We attend your meetings. We own the outcomes alongside you, not just the deliverables.

Typical Firms

Advisory, accounting, and tax live in separate silos. Your CFO doesn't talk to your tax advisor.

Sataurius

One integrated team. Your advisory strategy is informed by real-time accounting data and coordinated with tax planning from day one.

Better Together

Advisory + Accounting

Strategy without clean data is guesswork. Most of our advisory clients pair their engagement with our accounting services so the numbers driving decisions are always accurate.

Explore Accounting Services

Common Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a fractional CFO and what services do they provide?+

A fractional CFO is an experienced chief financial officer who works with a business on a part-time, fractional, or project basis. Fractional CFO services typically include financial strategy, cash flow forecasting, board reporting, KPI dashboards, fundraising and lender support, scenario modeling, M&A readiness, and oversight of the accounting team, all delivered without the cost of a full-time CFO hire.

When should a business hire a fractional CFO?+

Most businesses hire a fractional CFO between $2M and $50M in revenue, when financial decisions outpace what a bookkeeper or controller can support. Common triggers include preparing for a fundraise, planning an acquisition or exit, multi-entity or multi-state expansion, weak cash flow visibility, or a board or lender asking for higher-quality reporting.

How much do fractional CFO services cost in 2026?+

Fractional CFO services typically cost between $4,000 and $15,000 per month in the U.S., depending on time commitment, complexity, and whether the engagement is ongoing leadership or project-based (such as fundraise prep or M&A). Sataurius scopes each engagement to hours and deliverables so pricing is transparent and tied to outcomes.

What is the difference between a fractional CFO, an outsourced CFO, and a controller?+

A controller owns day-to-day accounting accuracy and the monthly close. A fractional or outsourced CFO is forward-looking: financial strategy, forecasting, capital structure, board and investor reporting, and decision support for leadership. Many growing companies use both, a controller for the books and a fractional CFO for strategy.

What does board reporting from a fractional CFO include?+

Sataurius board reporting packages typically include a one-page executive summary, monthly P&L and cash flow with variance analysis, KPI dashboards tied to the business model, a rolling 12-month forecast, and a written narrative explaining what changed and what to watch next quarter.

Do you provide CFO services for small businesses, not just mid-market?+

Yes. Sataurius provides CFO services for small businesses as well as mid-market companies. Smaller engagements often focus on cash flow forecasting, pricing strategy, and clean reporting; larger engagements add board reporting, M&A support, and capital strategy.

How is advisory different from accounting?+

Accounting captures what happened: bookkeeping, close, financial statements, and compliance. Advisory looks ahead, answering strategic questions about growth, investment, capital allocation, and financial decision-making. Most clients pair the two so the strategy is grounded in clean, real-time numbers.

Strategic Financial Leadership

A CFO Should Improve the Business, Not Just Report the Numbers.

Financial reporting tells leadership what happened. Strategic financial leadership explains why it happened, what it means, and what should happen next.

Sataurius works across finance and operations to connect decisions about cash, pricing, margins, collections, investment, systems and growth to their financial consequences.

01
Report
What happened?
02
Understand
Why did it happen?
03
Decide
What should leadership do next?
04
Improve
How do we change the underlying business?

What does an operational CFO do?

An operational CFO connects financial results to the operating decisions that produce them. Instead of stopping at monthly reports, the role examines collections, pricing, margins, staffing, systems and investment choices, then helps leadership change the activity behind the numbers. In Michael Minnaugh's words: "A great CFO understands operations and how to make them better."

That is the difference between Sataurius and a bookkeeping firm, a traditional accounting firm, or a CFO provider that mainly produces reports. The number matters, but the operational reason behind the number matters more.

Financial Visibility

The Numbers Every CEO Should Understand

What financial KPIs should a CEO track?

Beyond revenue and profit, a CEO should track days cash on hand, gross margin, operating margin, unit economics, working capital and cash conversion. Together they show whether the business can fund its own growth, where value is created, and which operating decisions are moving the numbers. The Sataurius advisory team builds these into a monthly scorecard.

Days Cash on Hand

How many days the company could keep meeting its operating obligations using the cash it holds today. It is calculated as cash divided by average daily operating expenses, and it is the clearest early warning of liquidity risk.

Gross Margin

What the company keeps after direct costs. As a business grows, margin quality matters as much as revenue: discounting, product mix and rising delivery costs can erode it quietly.

Operating Margin

How efficiently the underlying business converts revenue into operating profit after overhead. It shows whether growth is building a stronger business or just a bigger one.

Unit Economics

Revenue, contribution and profitability measured at the level of a customer, product, location or service line. Unit economics show which parts of the business create value and which consume it.

Working Capital

The cash tied up in receivables and inventory, offset by payables. The length of the operating cycle decides how much cash growth requires before it pays back.

Cash Conversion

How quickly profit turns into cash. A growing, profitable company can still run short of cash when collections slow, inventory builds or payroll rises ahead of revenue.

Go deeper with our guide to the financial clarity for growing businesses, the 13-week cash flow forecast, our article on why profitable companies still run short of cash, and our board and management reporting service.

Cash Flow

Why Can Revenue Grow While Cash Flow Gets Worse?

Revenue growth does not automatically make a business financially stronger. Cash weakens when collections slow, margins compress, payroll rises ahead of revenue, inventory and working capital needs grow, debt service increases, or spending is poorly controlled. A profitable income statement can hide a shrinking bank balance, which is why the Sataurius advisory team forecasts cash weekly, not just profit monthly.

We pair a rolling 13-week cash flow forecast with accounts receivable discipline, margin analysis and working capital management, so leadership sees pressure weeks before it arrives. The detail sits in our financial forecasting and modeling work and our outsourced accounting that keeps the underlying numbers current.

CFO Advisory

Already Have a CFO or Finance Team?

Can a fractional CFO work with an existing CFO? Yes. Sataurius can work alongside an existing CFO, controller or internal finance team when additional capacity, specialist expertise or an outside perspective is needed. We augment internal leadership on a defined scope rather than requiring the company to outsource the entire finance function.

Typical reasons leadership brings us in alongside their team:

Industry-specific financial expertise, such as healthcare practice finance
Acquisition or exit preparation through our transaction advisory services
ERP implementation and finance systems transformation
Financial modelling and board or investor reporting
Temporary capacity constraints and complex strategic initiatives

Interim Leadership

Interim CFO, Controller and Finance Team Support

What does an interim CFO do? An interim CFO temporarily leads the finance function during a gap or a period of change. The role keeps reporting, controls, cash management and stakeholder communication running while also moving priority initiatives forward, so the business keeps strategic continuity until a permanent leader is in place or the project is complete.

Sataurius provides interim CFO, interim controller and finance team augmentation for a CFO departure, controller vacancy, parental leave, recruitment transition, ERP implementation, acquisition integration, restructuring or rapid-growth capacity constraints. See our interim CFO services and outsourced controller services.

Client Perspectives

What Our Clients Say

“Sataurius brought a level of precision and insight to our accounting practices that we hadn't experienced before. They helped us refine our financial reporting processes and implemented strategies to improve cash flow management. Their strategic insights were instrumental in guiding our financial decisions, ultimately strengthening our bottom line. We consider Sataurius an invaluable partner in our growth journey.”

Angela TeaglePresident, Cardiac Registry Support

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