Hiring guide
Specialist help in a CFO mandate: who contracts and who reviews?
By CFO Index · Published
Your fractional CFO needs a specialist to complete a forecast input. Agreeing who pays is only one decision. Who commissions the specialist, challenges their assumptions and accepts the output? Use a delivery-responsibility schedule alongside the purchasing approval. This original worksheet distinguishes subcontracted work from a direct adviser appointment; it is not a legal contract or a recommendation to outsource regulated advice.
Choose one contracting route for the work package
In its accountancy-practice guidance, ICAEW distinguishes a firm retaining responsibility while passing services to its client from a specialist providing services directly to that client. That distinction is a useful question for a CFO engagement, not a universal legal classification. Record the actual contracting entities, scope and agreed responsibility. If your company appoints a tax adviser directly, the CFO's coordination role does not automatically make the CFO responsible for the adviser's technical conclusions. Conversely, a provider should not describe an included subcontracted output as someone else's problem without resolving the engagement terms.
Separate technical review from business acceptance
Name the person who can assess the specialist's method and the company owner who accepts the output for its intended use. They may be different people. A managing director can accept that an agreed document was delivered without being qualified to validate specialist tax advice. Ask how competence, conflicts, confidentiality and permitted data access will be checked; ICAEW also highlights these considerations in its practice context. Where regulated or reserved work is involved, obtain the appropriate qualified advice and required permissions. Do not infer eligibility from the title CFO or from a subcontractor invoice.
Make the responsibility schedule testable
For each package, record a scope reference, recipient, deadline, technical reviewer, acceptance owner and correction route. Include the assumptions and source-data cutoff the reviewer needs. The following is a proposed procurement control, not a statement that every provider must use the same contracting model.
| Question | Provider subcontracts an included model module | Company appoints a specialist directly |
|---|---|---|
| Who commissions? | CFO firm under its specialist agreement | Company under a separate appointment |
| Who reviews technical work? | Named competent reviewer agreed with firm | Named reviewer under direct appointment |
| Who integrates the result? | CFO owner reconciles module into agreed model | CFO integrates only within agreed coordination scope |
| Who accepts delivery? | Company owner against included deliverable | Company owner against specialist deliverable |
| Who handles a defect? | Firm's agreed correction route | Direct adviser's route; CFO tracks model impact |
Walk a failed assumption through both routes
Hypothetical example: a specialist supplies an inventory module using a 60-day purchasing assumption, while the approved operating plan uses 45 days. Under an assumed firm-led subcontract, the CFO firm's named reviewer returns the module for correction before integration and company acceptance. Under a direct appointment, the company routes the correction to its adviser and asks the CFO to show the forecast impact. In neither route should a received spreadsheet be marked accepted merely because its invoice was approved. This is a synthetic delivery test, not a finding about any real firm's work.
Set a correction and continuity boundary
Agree how rejected work is recorded, who approves revised assumptions and whether correction is included or a new request. Preserve the original submission and review comments rather than silently replacing them. If the specialist becomes unavailable, identify an escalation owner and the consequences for the reporting deadline; do not assume the company can freely transfer the specialist's licence, confidential files or professional opinion. Confirm permitted use and onward disclosure with the relevant owners. The schedule should identify dependencies without promising that every technical disagreement has an automatic remedy.
Close delivery separately from the recharge
Before closure, have another owner trace the accepted version to its review evidence and contracting route. Reconcile any recharge through the separate expense-approval process, but do not use payment as proof of technical acceptance. Apply the same questions to every shortlisted provider, including John Galt Finance. Success means the company can identify who commissioned, reviewed, integrated and accepted the specialist's actual contribution, and who owns any remaining exception.