Senior finance leadership for startups and SMEs that do not have a full-time CFO: a finance function that closes on time, reports numbers people trust and gives the board what it asks for.
Built for software & SaaS companies, e-commerce businesses and SMEs across Europe and English-speaking markets
A fractional CFO gives a company senior finance leadership for a few days a month instead of a full-time hire. DeFiGure sets up the finance function (chart of accounts, month-end close, reporting and KPI dashboards), runs the budgeting and forecasting cadence, prepares investor and board reporting, and supports decisions that need numbers behind them.
Think of the finance roles as a ladder. A bookkeeper records what happened. A controller makes sure it is accurate and closed on time. A CFO looks forward: forecasting, capital strategy, fundraising and board-level decisions. A fractional CFO does that forward-looking work part-time and, in a company that has never had a finance lead, also builds the routines the numbers depend on.
A typical case: a company plans to raise within the year, its month-end close takes three weeks, and nobody fully trusts the dashboard. The first job is not a new model. It is a close that finishes on a fixed day and a reporting pack people believe. The fundraise preparation then sits on solid ground.
Pricing, treasury and capital structure decisions sit with our Strategic Advisory service, and the financial model itself is built under Forecasting & Modeling. This page covers the function that keeps those numbers reliable month after month. Unfamiliar terms are explained in our corporate finance glossary.
Eight areas of work. Not every company needs all eight; the first call shows which come first.
A chart of accounts built around how you need to report, a month-end close checklist with owners and deadlines, and a reporting cadence: cash weekly, the profit and loss statement and KPIs monthly, the board pack quarterly. Your bookkeeper or accountant keeps recording; we design the system they record into.
One screen with the handful of numbers that change decisions: cash, net burn, runway and gross margin, plus the acquisition metrics that fit your model, such as CAC payback (months to earn back the cost of winning a customer) for software or contribution margin per order for e-commerce. How each number is calculated is written down.
An annual budget agreed with the leadership team, a rolling forecast refreshed after each close, and a monthly variance review that explains what moved and why. If the underlying model has to be built first, that is our Forecasting & Modeling work.
A monthly investor update and a quarterly board pack in a fixed format: highlights, KPIs, financials against plan, risks and the one decision you need from the board, sent on a predictable schedule ahead of each meeting.
What a board reporting pack should include →
What to put in a monthly investor update →
Controls sized to your stage: segregation of duties so no one person controls a payment end to end, a written approval matrix with spending limits, monthly reconciliations and access rules for bank and accounting systems. For German companies, record-keeping that meets the GoBD, the rules for keeping books electronically.
Buy the commodity tools (ledger, payroll, expenses, billing) and upgrade only when complexity demands it. We choose and connect the stack, decide when spreadsheets give way to planning software or an ERP (one integrated system for accounting and operations), and set where AI automation fits behind a human sign-off.
Build vs buy for your finance tech stack →
Which CFO tasks AI tools actually automate →
A senior hire, a large contract, a change in payment terms: before you commit, we show the effect on cash, margin and runway, and what would have to be true for the decision to pay off. Pricing strategy itself sits under Strategic Advisory.
We help decide which role you need next (bookkeeper, controller or CFO), write the job scope, sit in on interviews and hand over a documented close and reporting pack, so the new hire starts with a working system instead of a clean-up job.
Usually when several of these are true at the same time:
One or two of these is normal at any stage. When several hold together, the cost of carrying on without finance leadership tends to exceed the cost of getting it. If your books are not yet reliable, the right first step may be a bookkeeper or controller rather than a CFO, and we will say so on the first call. Founders without a finance background can start with the financial statements every founder needs to understand.
We compare public benchmarks with your own numbers and systems, show our sources and state the limits, then rank the fixes by impact before building anything.
Your stage, your current set-up and what is breaking: the close, the reporting, the board's questions, the next raise. No obligation.
A written scope with deliverables, sequence and timeline, ranked by impact so the most urgent gaps are fixed first.
We set up the chart of accounts, close process, dashboards, controls and tools inside your systems, working alongside your bookkeeper or accountant, and run the first cycles with you.
Your team, or your first finance hire, takes over with documented processes. Or we stay on for the monthly review, investor updates, board packs and the decisions in between.
More detail: how a DeFiGure engagement works, step by step.
Hire for the gap in front of you, not the title. Finance help usually comes in sequence: a bookkeeper records transactions, a controller makes the monthly close accurate and on time, and a fractional CFO turns reliable numbers into forecasts, a fundraise and board decisions. A full-time CFO follows when the strategic work becomes continuous and part-time hours start creating bottlenecks.
A touchless close is a month-end where the routine steps, such as capturing invoices, coding transactions, reconciling the bank and posting recurring entries, run automatically, leaving only exceptions and approvals for a person. A fully touchless close is not realistic for most growing companies yet, but a mostly touchless one is. We set it up so a named person still approves anything that posts or pays.
Fewer than you think. A working monthly set is six: cash, net burn, runway, LTV:CAC (customer lifetime value against acquisition cost), CAC payback and the burn multiple. Businesses without subscriptions swap some inputs, such as contribution margin or repeat-purchase value, but the questions stay the same. Dashboards with forty metrics get ignored; a focused handful that changes decisions gets reviewed, and its trend matters more than any single month.
A board pack is a formal document for directors who carry governance and oversight duties; it supports decisions and votes and goes out before each board meeting. An investor update is a lighter, broader note, often monthly, that keeps every investor informed, not just board members. The board pack is deeper; the investor update is wider.
Start with segregation of duties, so no single person controls a payment from start to finish; a written approval matrix that sets who can approve spending at each amount; a monthly close with reconciliations; board-level financial reporting; and access controls on banking and accounting systems. Add them before growth makes the gaps expensive, not after an auditor or investor finds them.
No. AI tools automate production work such as reconciliations, first-draft forecasts, board-pack tables and cash reports. They do not own judgement, negotiation or accountability. The finance role shifts from producing numbers to reviewing, deciding and defending them, and a person still signs off on the assumptions and on anything an investor, auditor or tax authority reads.
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A stage-by-stage map of the startup finance tech stack — and why buying commodity tools beats building until well past $5M ARR.
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Tell us where the numbers break down today. The first call takes 30 minutes and is free; if we are a fit, a scoped proposal follows within 48 hours.