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Virtual / Fractional CFO - Are You Ready?

Date postedSeptember 30, 2025
Blog , Business, Featured Blog Posts,

Most small- to medium-sized companies do not need a full-time CFO and certainly cannot afford one, but they do need some of the high-level services that a CFO can provide. A part-time CFO, also called a virtual or fractional CFO, can provide those services. You’ve worked hard to develop strong relationships with your business clients, and by providing additional CFO services, you can significantly grow your Pennsylvania CPA or accounting firm while helping your business clients succeed.

Virtual CFO services

A virtual CFO can offer project-based work or ongoing services with a monthly retainer fee. You may want to offer both options at first until you determine what work you like best, what is best for your firm, and what provides the most service to your clients. Examples of the type of work a virtual CFO can do for a company include:

Strategic financial planning
Short-, mid-, long-term goals
Key performance indicator (KPI) reporting
Forecasting
Cash flow analysis and budgeting
Analysis of financial statements and providing strategic advice
Cost controls, profit maximization
Advising on hiring decisions
Advising on loans and venture capital
Growth strategies
Communications liaison with financial institutions, government, and investors
When your clients need your CFO services

As you offer your clients services such as bookkeeping, tax services, and compliance services, you may see some signs that indicate a need for greater financial help. Some of these might be:

Rapid business growth requiring strategy and planning
Consistent cash flow issues due to limited in-house financial literacy
Major changes in the business: adding a new product line, employment changes in critical positions in the company, etc.
More complex financial processes as the company grows; old systems or procedures that need to be reviewed and updated
Need for loans or venture capital for a new expansion or growth plan
Financial structure and guidance required by start-ups

These are just a few of the issues that could signal an opportunity to discuss with your client how a virtual CFO may help them. Providing your clients with high-level expertise at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CFO offers them a critical benefit that could set them apart from their competition.

Preparing to offer CFO services

If you’ve been offering mostly tax and compliance services, you’ll need to make the mental shift to an advisory mindset. You’re going to be evaluating the bigger picture now and helping your clients with analysis and strategy. Keeping those other services among your firm’s offerings will ensure that you are getting the most accurate and trustworthy numbers to work with, so you’ll want to educate your staff on the expansion of the firm and of your own shift to a more advisory role.

Make sure you have clear standard operating procedures in place for each step of your client services, from onboarding to invoicing to collection. This will ensure that your firm continues to run smoothly and efficiently as your workload expands.

Develop several service packages that describe in detail what services you offer, how much time you will commit to the work, and what the prices are. You may want to reach out to your fellow PSTAP members through our member portal. Our highly-trained accounting and financial professionals are always happy to help other PSTAP members improve their practices.

As your advisory services grow, you may want to mentor a few other members of your team to grow into this position, as well, so that your firm can expand its offerings. Virtual CFO services can easily fit into your firm based on what you like to do and what your customers need. Again, feel free to reach out to our members as you evaluate how best to add these services to your firm’s offerings.

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