The standard advice ties a CFO hire to a revenue threshold. That is a poor test. Plenty of twenty-million-dollar businesses run fine on a strong controller, and plenty of three-million-dollar businesses are actively destroying value because nobody owns the cash forecast.
Four honest triggers
- You are about to raise capital or refinance. The diligence load alone justifies the engagement, and the cost of a badly packaged file is far higher than the fee.
- You cannot answer, from memory, what your cash position will be in eight weeks.
- Job or project margin is a guess. If you cannot rank your work by profitability, you are growing your worst revenue.
- The board, the community, or a development corporation requires reporting your current close cannot produce on time.
What the first ninety days should produce
A defensible thirteen-week cash flow, a month-end close under fifteen days, a chart of accounts that supports margin analysis rather than only tax filing, and a single reporting pack that the owner, the lender and the board all read. If an engagement has not produced those four things in a quarter, it is advisory theatre.
For community-owned entities and development corporations there is a fifth deliverable: a reporting rhythm that separates operating performance from distribution decisions, so that leadership can discuss reinvestment without relitigating the business plan every quarter.