Days 1 to 30
Find out what the numbers actually are.
Days 31 to 60
A forecast the company can update.
Days 61 to 90
A pack the board can read.
The operating work is Outsourced CFO. The sequence below is what that work looks like when the company already has books, and the founder is still the person who explains them.
Days 1 to 30: find out what the numbers actually are
The first month is a read of cash, the close, and who owns each number. It is not a forecast.
- Cash by account, and what is already committed against it.
- The last three closes: how many days they took, and which accounts were still open when the pack went out.
- Revenue recognition, payroll, and intercompany, named as the places the close usually waits.
- Who prepares the board pack today, and which lines the founder still edits by hand.
The output is a list of what is reliable and what is not. A model built on the second list will not survive a board meeting.
Days 31 to 60: a forecast the company can update
The second month turns that read into a working forecast and a reporting calendar.
- The forecast uses the same chart of accounts as the books.
- A model in a separate file, with its own categories, gets rebuilt every month and disagreed with in the room.
- A missing accrual, a revenue stream with no recognition rule, or a second entity that does not eliminate gets a date. Those are close problems.
- If the books need a different owner, that is outsourced bookkeeping, scoped beside the CFO work rather than buried inside it.
Days 61 to 90: a pack the board can read
The third month is the first pack that does not depend on the founder to explain the exceptions.
- Cash and runway.
- The month against the forecast.
- A short note on what changed. Variance commentary that arrives six weeks later is a sign the close is still the constraint.
- A clear split between what stays with the outsourced CFO and what would fill a full-time seat.
That split is the decision the first quarter is for. Hiring before that picture exists is how a search starts with the wrong job description.
Questions
What does an outsourced CFO do in the first 90 days?
Three things: a cash view the founder trusts, a board pack that matches the general ledger, and a close that finishes on a date the board already knows. If the engagement ends in a strategy deck and the same late numbers, the scope was wrong.
What happens in the first 30 days?
The first 30 days are a read of the record: cash, the last three closes, revenue recognition, payroll, intercompany, and who prepares the board pack. The output is a list of what is reliable and what is not.
What if the books are not ready for a forecast?
A forecast built on a late close will not survive a board meeting. In that case the first hire is outsourced bookkeeping, so the CFO is not rebuilding the ledger in the meeting.