How we work

Every engagement looks a little different on the surface. A pre-deal sprint, a post-close transition, a recurring fractional seat. Underneath, the work moves through the same four phases. We've found that naming them explicitly is the cheapest way to avoid the two failure modes we see most often in fractional finance work: engagements that never find their footing, and engagements that never end.

PHASE 1

Understand

Before we touch the work, we spend time inside it. That means a detailed general ledger review, reading the last three close files, sitting with the existing back-office team, walking the systems the company actually uses (not the ones on the org chart), and reviewing whatever deal materials or diligence reports already exist. The deliverable of this phase is not a slide deck. It is a written point of view on what's working, what isn't, and what the real scope of the engagement should be, sometimes different from what we were hired to do.

PHASE 2

Build

This is where most of the visible work happens. Close checklists get rewritten. Reporting packages get rebuilt. Models get stood up or replaced. Controls get documented and tested. Contracts get standardized. The phase is bounded: we start with a detailed project plan and every workstream has a start, an owner, and a definition of done, because open-ended build phases are how fractional engagements turn into permanent ones for the wrong reasons. We build to hand off.

PHASE 3

Operate

Once the function is built, we run it. For recurring engagements this is the steady state: monthly close, board reporting, forecast updates, strategic guidance, banking and audit relationships, the rhythm of a real finance function delivered on a defined cadence. For transaction-linked engagements, Operate is a shorter window: we run the new process alongside the internal team until the handoff is real, not theoretical. The test of whether a build actually worked is whether the operating phase is quiet.

PHASE 4

Transition

Every engagement has an end date, whether it's written down at the start or not. We'd rather write it down. Transition means training the internal team that will own the work after we leave, documenting everything a successor would need, and building a clean handoff package that doesn't require us to be on a call six months later. Some engagements transition into a longer Fractional CFO relationship; others transition out entirely. Both are good outcomes, and both are written into the engagement at the start.

Four things we do differently

Every engagement is run by a partner. The person in the kickoff meeting is the person in the close meeting six months later.

We deliver findings and recommendations in prose, with attribution and a basis statement on every material conclusion. If a slide is the right format for a specific audience, we'll build it, but the underlying work is always written down.

Most of the back-office teams we inherit are doing the best work they can with the tools and processes they were given. We rebuild the tools and processes, not the team, unless there's a specific reason to do otherwise.

Every engagement starts with an explicit definition of what "done" looks like and what handoff will require. Engagements that don't have an ending defined at the start are the ones that become problems later.

How we think about agentic AI

Agentic AI is going to change how finance work gets done, and the change is already underway in the parts of the function that are document-heavy, rules-driven, and repetitive. What's less clear is which workstreams are ready now, which are a year away, and which shouldn't be automated at all.

Our position on it is straightforward. We stay close to the tooling and the research, we bring a point of view to every engagement on where agentic AI can earn its place in the work, and we're equally willing to say when it can't. Where it fits, we help scope it, build it, and measure whether it actually worked. Where it doesn't, we say so.

In practice, this means compressing QoE readiness timelines by automating the document and data preparation work that usually takes weeks; scoping and prioritizing automation opportunities as part of a post-acquisition back-office rebuild; and running continuous evaluation of what tooling is actually working for the finance function within an ongoing fractional engagement. We're not selling AI. We're using it where it earns its place.

Every engagement starts with a conversation, not a scope document. One call is all it takes to know if the fit is there.