A Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is responsible for managing your business’s finances. This includes all aspects, from budgeting to cash flow analysis. Moreover, it is the highest financial position a company can have. As such, they analyse the company’s financial strengths and weaknesses, proposing corrective actions. An outsourced CFO can fill this position remotely and often tailoring their service to meet the businesses requirements.
Why Choose an Outsourced CFO?
Outsourcing such an important position within your business may be an odd thought. In fact, the benefits of choosing to do this for your small business far outweigh any drawbacks. Many new and small businesses can’t afford to put on a full time CFO. They still need someone to assist in managing finances, monitoring cashflow and to advise on future financial decisions. By choosing to outsource a CFO, a business will be able to get all the benefits of this service. They can then have it tailored to their specific needs at a fraction of the monthly cost and on a fixed rate.
Do I Need to Outsource a CFO?
Do you ever find yourself asking the following?
- Is my business profitable?
- Do I need to hire more staff?
- Is a business expansion viable?
- These numbers don’t seem right. Has a mistake been made?
- I feel like I’m drowning. How do I move forward?
If any or all of these questions resonate with you, you and your business could benefit from the expertise and guidance of a CFO. If you are growing your business, wanting to take a different direction or need a bit of help bringing your business back to profitability, then you can definitely benefit from all that an outsourced CFO has to offer. Perhaps you are the owner or manager of a business and are currently trying to juggle too many balls all the time and you would rather spend your time focusing you energy on what you do best? By outsourcing a CFO, you will be taking the weight of managing the business finances off your shoulders, free you up to focus on the important things, running and growing your business.
What are the Benefits of an Outsourced CFO?
Easy Integration
An outsourced CFO is easier to integrate into a team environment than a fresh full or part time employee. They generally don’t need a lot of training, if any at all, aside from a basic introduction to your company. As many CFOs work remotely, there is little need to find office space for them to work.
Objective Insight
This is an important quality that is difficult to find in an owner, manager or in-house employee who is emotionally invested in the business. An outsourced CFO has the unique ability to view your business from the outside and advise and guide without past decisions, on going debates and company politics affecting their decision making. In short, they are able to offer an unbiased perspective.
Lower Costs
Many new or small businesses don’t have the ability to employ a CFO full time. More than that, hiring, training, and setting up a new employee can be a costly endeavour, especially if it turns out that they are not the right fit for your business.
Contrary to that, an outsourced CFO is not an employee of your business, rather they generally work through a bookkeeping or accounting firm. This means that you get all of the benefits of an experienced CFO without the hassle of hiring new staff.
Broad Experience
An outsourced CFO has a different range of skills and expertise to offer. A new CFO employed directly may have long term experience with several businesses. Whereas an outsourced CFO is uniquely positioned to have worked with a wide range of companies from all different industries. As a result, they have been able to build up an extensive and often unsurpassed knowledge base. This wealth of knowledge is beneficial to both established and new businesses alike.
How Can Astute Help Your Business Grow?
Astute Administration Services offers an outsourced CFO services that is unique and tailored especially to your business. This means that, moving forward, you will see clear and tangible results for your finances. We provide accurate information that can help you understand a business entity’s past performance and its current financial position. This allows us to provide insight into its future prospects. At Astute, our aim is to clearly outline what required of our client to improve their business.
This is directly related to Astute’s mission statement “To Empower business owners around their finances by removing confusion, doubt and anxiety and replacing it with clarity, direction and focus.”
A CFO differs from your every day accountant. At Astute Admin, we don’t do tax returns or financial statements. Our CFO skills are derived from hands-on experience, working with businesses and assisting them to put in place structures, building upon business growth. We work side by side with your accountant so you can derive greater value from their technical knowledge. We believe both skills are necessary but are distinctly different and require different focus.
Our clients appreciate the high level of expertise and the value we add to their knowledge and our personalised approach means that they know who is on the other end of the phone or email, offering you the peace of mind that Astute team members know and understand your business. We work closely with you every step of the way, highlighting your business strengths and possible areas of growth and advising a proactive and efficient game plan for your company.
Soonah, Astute’s director and fearless leader, has years of experience in the financial sector. As such, she has built a wealth of knowledge equipping her to assist any business.
