An outsourced CFO in Sydney gives a business the finance leadership of a full-time CFO for a fraction of the cost: a monthly reporting pack read with you; a rolling forecast; a view on pricing and margin; the bank and board conversations; and someone accountable for the numbers meaning something. You do not get a person at a desk in your office five days a week, and that trade is the whole point.
Sydney has no shortage of firms offering it. This article is about what the fee should buy and how to tell a CFO engagement from an expensive bookkeeping one. It ends with the signs that a business is ready.
What an outsourced CFO does
The job sits above the books. Bookkeeping records what happened; a CFO decides what it means and what to do next. In a typical month that is:
- A management reporting pack by an agreed date: profit and loss against budget; balance sheet; cash; the handful of operating numbers that drive the business (margin by job, product line or site; revenue per practitioner; days sales outstanding), with commentary rather than tables alone.
- A rolling forecast, cash first, updated as reality lands, so a bad quarter is a reforecast rather than a surprise.
- Decision support: the pricing change, the hire, the lease, the new site, the equipment finance, each worked through with real numbers before you commit to it.
- External conversations: the bank, a lender, an investor or a buyer, with the finance person in the room or on the call.
- Oversight of the compliance layer, so one person does the compliance work (BAS, payroll, year end) and another reviews it.
What it is not
Three things get sold under the CFO label that are not CFO work, and each of them can look convincing on a proposal. Bookkeeping with a nicer report on top is still bookkeeping. A quarterly catch-up with an accountant who then disappears is tax compliance with a chat attached. And a dashboard tool with no named person accountable for interpreting it is software. We would rather a business kept a good bookkeeper and skipped the CFO label than paid for the label alone. The test is simple. If a number in the pack is wrong or worrying, is there a named person whose job is to notice it, explain it, act on it?
Remote by default, in the room when it counts
Ascend operates from Canberra and Brisbane and serves Sydney businesses remotely by default. For the work above, that is no handicap. The pack, the forecast, the analysis: each comes from the cloud accounting file, and we talk it through on a call. Presence matters at the board meeting or the pricing workshop, the planning day or the lender conversation. For those we come to you by arrangement, with travel quoted in the written proposal rather than appearing on an invoice. The Sydney page sets out how that works.
The comparison that matters is with the alternative. A Sydney-based part-time CFO in your office each week suits a business that wants a person on the floor; it also costs a good deal more and ties you to one individual’s availability. A CPA-led practice gives you the role, with the compliance team behind it, and a way to scale the hours up or down as the business changes.
What you should expect for the fee
We scope and quote each engagement in a written proposal before it starts, because the right scope depends on the business: a trades business with three crews needs job costing and cash forecasting; a professional services firm needs utilisation and work in progress; an online retailer needs margin after fees and inventory cash. Four things belong in any proposal as fixed terms: the reporting date each month; the meeting rhythm; who the named CFO is; what sits inside the fee and what carries its own quote. If a proposal cannot tell you those four things, it is not a CFO engagement yet.
When a business is ready for a CFO
The signals are reliable, and most businesses show more than one at once. The owner makes pricing, hiring or borrowing decisions from the bank balance. The accountant’s year-end figures arrive months after the year they describe. Revenue has grown but the owner cannot say whether profit has. A bank or investor has asked for a forecast and there is not one. Or the business has reached the size where a full-time CFO would make sense if the budget allowed, and it does not yet.
Below that point, a strong outsourced CFO engagement is still worth it in one circumstance: a decision is coming (a sale, a second site, a major contract) that is bigger than anything the business has made before.
Frequently asked questions
What does an outsourced CFO cost in Sydney?
It depends on the reporting and forecasting the business needs, and on the meeting rhythm, so we scope it first and quote a fixed monthly fee in a written proposal. Published package figures on our CFO page are indicative starting points rather than the fee.
Do you need to be in Sydney to do this?
No. The reporting and forecasting come from the cloud accounting file and get reviewed on a call. In-person meetings for a board, a planning day or a lender happen as needed, quoted up front.
Can you work with our existing accountant and bookkeeper?
Yes. The CFO role sits above both. Many engagements keep the existing tax accountant and either keep the bookkeeper or bring the books in-house with us, so the pack comes from a file we reconcile ourselves.
How quickly does the first reporting pack arrive?
That depends on the state of the books. If the file reconciles, the first pack follows the first month end; if it does not, the catch-up comes first, and the proposal says so.
If you want a conversation about what a CFO engagement would look like for your business, book a discovery call at ascendsolutions.com.au/contact or phone (02) 9451 4424.
