Services / Fractional CFO
The primary engagement at Bednar Finance. Weekly cadence, monthly close discipline, banker fluency, pricing strategy, and the strategic financial leadership that turns a profitable company into a bankable, sellable, scalable business.
Investment: $5,500 to $8,500 per month, fixed-scope, six-month minimum.
You have a bookkeeper. The bookkeeper is fine. The CPA is fine. The financials are reasonably clean. And yet the business is producing decisions every week that nobody on the financial team is positioned to help with.
"Should we take this $1.4M project at 19% gross margin?"
"Can we afford to hire two more techs in Q3?"
"Is the line of credit going to renew at the rate we need?"
"What does the next 90 days of cash look like, week by week?"
"Are we leaving money on retention that should already be released?"
The Fractional CFO retainer is the seat that answers those questions, every week, with the working models to back the answers up.
Bookkeeper produces. We review for accuracy, accrual quality, classification, and consistency.
Roughly seven to nine pages. P&L with variance, balance sheet, cash flow, KPI scorecard, working capital, one-page management summary. Delivered by the 12th of the following month.
Updated every Friday. By customer, by crew, by vendor. The single highest-leverage report for a company in this revenue range.
60 minutes, standing calendar, never canceled. Walk the package, three decisions identified for the next 30 days.
90 minutes. Trailing quarter scorecard, expansion or contraction recommendations, banker package update, decisions needed from owner.
Quarterly in-room or on-call presence. We prepare the package, anticipate the questions, and represent the business.
Quarterly review of bid multipliers, gross margin by job type, contribution margin discipline.
Loan vs. lease vs. line of credit. SBA opportunities. Term restructuring.
Four per month, 60 to 90 minutes each, scheduled with the owner.
Slack or email response within four business hours during business days.
Tax preparation, sales tax filings, payroll processing: your CPA and bookkeeper handle these.
Bookkeeping data entry: we work with your existing bookkeeper or place one with you.
Audit, review, attestation: out of scope for any fractional CFO.
Each of these is quoted separately when needed. We do not absorb them quietly into the retainer because that creates scope creep and burns out both sides.
Pricing factors include the number of entities (single entity vs. holding structure with operating subs), revenue size and growth rate, number of active jobs in process, complexity of job costing requirements, frequency of capital events (banker meetings, refinancings), and the owner's preferred meeting cadence.
Six-month minimum on first contract. Quarterly review of scope and fee. Annual price escalator of 6%, built into the engagement letter. Out-of-scope work quoted as a separate project. 50% deposit on signing, monthly invoicing thereafter, net 15.
We strongly recommend starting with the three-week Diagnostic ($8,000 Standard, $12,000 Premium, $16,000 Comprehensive) before committing to a Fractional CFO retainer. The Diagnostic produces a clean baseline, identifies the highest-priority work, and de-risks the retainer for both sides.
For owners who have already worked with another fractional CFO or have a recent third-party financial review in hand, we will sometimes start the retainer directly. This is rare and decided on a case-by-case basis.
A 25-minute discovery call costs nothing and tells us both whether a Diagnostic is the right next step. If it is not, we will say so and point you in the right direction.
Book a 25-minute discovery call