Hiring guide
How much fractional CFO availability does your reporting calendar need?
By CFO Index · Published
A monthly allocation of CFO time can look sufficient while leaving nobody available before your board meeting. Build the reporting calendar first, then ask providers which work windows they can commit to. Total time, delivery deadlines and access to a named person are separate parts of the agreement.
Work backwards from the decisions
List the meetings and decisions that require finance input: a weekly cash review, monthly management meeting, board pack or lender update. Record the agreed delivery deadline for each output, not just the meeting date. Add preparation, review, corrections and management approval before it. Distinguish genuine external deadlines from internal preferences that could move. The resulting calendar should explain when senior judgement is needed and when accounting or analyst preparation must already be complete.
Reserve the right role in the right window
Estimate effort by task and named role. Separate the CFO's review and decision work from data collection, reconciliations and report preparation. Where an estimate is uncertain, show a range and its assumption rather than pretending it is a service benchmark. Include meeting preparation and follow-up. Do not count the same hour as both production time and contingency. A team-based provider should identify which person owns each window; a solo CFO should be equally clear about committed availability.
| Output | Input ready | CFO window | Dependency to confirm |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly cash decisions | Bank data and collection updates before the review | Agreed weekly review slot | Who refreshes the forecast and flags urgent changes |
| Management report | Reviewed accounting pack by working day 6 | Working days 7–8 | Time for questions and corrections |
| Board materials | Management comments returned by working day 8 | Final review on working day 9 | Distribution deadline and approval owner |
| Quarterly planning | Current forecast and operational assumptions | Separate booked project window | Whether this work is additional to the recurring scope |
Why a monthly total can still fail
Hypothetical example: a provider reserves sixteen hours for a month, of which six are available during working days 7–9. Your plan needs four hours for report review, two for corrections, two for board preparation and two for the meeting in that same window: ten hours. The immediate gap is four hours even if time remains later in the month. These figures are invented, not recommended service levels. Resolve the gap by changing an agreed deadline, booking additional capacity or assigning suitable work to another qualified person; do not assume a monthly balance creates availability on demand.
Agree what happens when inputs arrive late
A review slot cannot be used as planned if the accounts are incomplete. Decide how late inputs affect the output deadline, rescheduling and any extra charges. Identify the latest input cutoff and the person who can authorise a change. Consider whether a clearly labelled provisional report is useful, with the accounting owner's agreement, or whether the decision must move. Buying more CFO hours will not by itself repair an upstream reconciliation that nobody owns.
Define urgent access without implying constant cover
Separate acknowledgement of a request from completion of the work. Agree working days, time-zone overlap, an urgent contact route and examples of issues that qualify for escalation. Ask what happens if an urgent task consumes the time reserved for a scheduled deliverable. Record the reprioritisation owner and any extra-capacity approval. Confirm absence cover with named people and appropriate access, rather than relying on a general statement that the firm has a large team.
Ask the provider to test the busiest real month
Show a calendar containing the quarter-end review, normal reporting and a known management absence. Ask the proposed delivery team to mark available windows and conflicts. ICAEW's guidance for its firms addresses adequate resources and avoiding workloads that undermine client service. This calendar is CFO Index's practical buying method, not an ICAEW staffing formula or a rule covering every provider. Test both firms and solo CFOs against the same deadlines and dependencies.
Review planned versus actual effort after a complete cycle
Track time spent preparing, reviewing, correcting and meeting, along with delays caused by missing inputs. Use that evidence to revise the scope and recurring windows. Repeated corrections may indicate a data or process problem rather than too few contracted hours. Request a maintained calendar with owners, backup arrangements and a change log. The engagement is workable when both sides can explain who does the work, when the necessary inputs arrive and how a collision between deadlines will be resolved.