Fractional CFO vs. software: the real cost of seeing your group clearly

Owners of multi-company groups usually discover the visibility gap the same way: a bank asks for consolidated statements, a partner asks how the group is doing, or two entities quietly drift in opposite directions for a quarter. The question then becomes what to buy — a person, or software.

What a CFO actually costs

• —Full-time CFO: US$150,000+ a year in base salary before benefits and equity — rarely justifiable below substantial group revenue.
• —Fractional CFO: US$3,000–7,000 a month for a part-time engagement — the typical answer for groups our size.
• —Your own time: the invisible option — owner-built spreadsheets cost the most expensive hours the group has.

What the person is genuinely better at

Be honest about this side of the ledger: a good CFO negotiates with your bank, structures the next acquisition, manages a board, builds relationships. No software does that. If your group is heading into a raise, a sale or a restructuring, you want a human in the room — and software doesn't change that.

What software is genuinely better at

• —Cadence: a weekly consolidated view, every week, without depending on anyone's calendar.
• —Consistency: deterministic rules applied identically every period — no month where the eliminations were done slightly differently.
• —Auditability: every figure tracing to source transactions, so you (or your bank) can verify anything.
• —Cost: at US$249–699 a month, group-level visibility costs less per year than one or two months of a fractional engagement.

The quiet middle path most groups end up on

This is rarely an either/or. The pattern we see: software carries the weekly consolidated reporting and the owner's understanding of the group, and a human adviser is engaged for the moments that need one — at far fewer hours, because the numbers arrive already composed. Your accountant stops rebuilding spreadsheets and starts answering better questions.

Composenz takes the software seat in that arrangement: read-only connections to each company's QuickBooks or Xero, a deterministic engine that consolidates and eliminates intercompany activity, and a Monday Brief that reads like a CFO's note — the numbers, plus the story behind them. Your first brief is free, so you can judge the output on your own group before paying anything.