Senior financial leadership for growing Atlanta businesses on a monthly cadence, from a CPA firm that can also keep your books and file your taxes. Construction is our deepest specialty. English or Spanish.
Free 30-Minute ConsultationA fractional CFO is a senior finance leader you share instead of hire. You get forecasting, budgeting, reporting and decision support for a defined part of each month, usually on a monthly retainer. In Atlanta, Xtrategist provides it to construction companies first, and to technology and professional services firms too, inside the same CPA relationship that handles your accounting and tax work.
A fractional CFO in Atlanta does the forward-looking half of finance for a company that can't keep a full-time chief financial officer busy yet. Your bookkeeper tells you what happened last month. The CFO's job is to tell you what's likely to happen next quarter, what it'll cost, and which of your options leaves the company in better shape.
That sounds abstract until you see the questions it covers. Can we afford two more hires before the new contract starts paying? Should we open the bank's line of credit now, while the numbers look good, or wait until we need it? Is our pricing still covering overhead after this year's cost increases? Which customers are profitable, and which ones just keep us busy? An owner can answer those alone, but usually at ten at night, with a spreadsheet, after a full day of running the business.
Fractional means you get that thinking for the part of the month you need it, from someone who's done it across many companies, without adding a senior salary and benefits to your payroll.
Run a construction company? Contractors need a CFO who forecasts from the WIP schedule, the backlog and retainage, not just the income statement, and who can sit across the table from a surety underwriter. That work has its own page: fractional CFO for construction companies in Atlanta.
Construction is where we're strongest and where most of our CFO work happens, because Xtrategist was built as a construction CPA practice. The same discipline carries over to other companies that have grown past their reporting.
General contractors, specialty trades and subcontractors doing $1M to $5M in revenue. Forecasts run on job economics, bonding and backlog. Start with our construction CPA practice.
Cash runway, burn rate, hiring plans and the reporting investors and lenders expect to see, covered in more depth on our technology page.
Utilization, realization, owner and partner pay planning, and cash flow for firms whose revenue depends on billable time. See professional services.
Forecasting, budgeting and KPIs work whatever you sell. If your industry needs a specialist we're not, we'll tell you on the first call.
There isn't a revenue number that flips a switch. The moment usually comes when decisions get bigger than the information behind them. These are the signs we see most often in growing Atlanta companies:
One of these is normal. Three or more at the same time usually means the company has outgrown its setup, and waiting tends to cost more than starting.
And when don't you need one? If your books aren't reliable yet, a CFO can't forecast from them. The first step there is clean monthly accounting, and we'll say so plainly.
These three roles work in layers. Most growing companies need to add a layer, not replace one, so the useful question is which layer is missing.
| Role | What you get | It's enough when | What it won't give you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bookkeeper | Transactions recorded, accounts reconciled, bills and invoices kept current | The business is simple and decisions are small | Confidence that the month is right, or a view of next quarter |
| Controller | A reliable monthly close, accurate statements, internal controls, review of the bookkeeping | You need numbers you trust on a fixed schedule | A plan for what to do with those numbers |
| Fractional CFO | Forecasts, budgets, KPIs, pricing and financing decisions, lender and investor conversations | Decisions now carry real money and you need the forward view | Anything solid if the two layers underneath are weak |
At Xtrategist the bookkeeping and controller layers live inside our accounting service, so a CFO engagement can start on top of books we already close each month. If you have an in-house bookkeeper you like, we work alongside them and review their work instead.
Every engagement is scoped to the company, but the monthly work draws from the same set of services. Here's what can be in it.
A rolling 13-week cash forecast and a 12-month outlook, updated every month, so a tight stretch shows up while there's still time to move a payment, a purchase or an owner draw.
A budget built with you, then a monthly look at actual against plan, so the plan stays a working tool instead of a January document nobody opens again.
We walk through your monthly financial statements with you: what moved, why it moved, and what it means for the next 90 days.
A short list of numbers that fit your business, tracked monthly. For a contractor that's job margin and backlog. For an agency it's utilization. For a software company it's burn and runway.
Because we're also your CPA, big decisions get modeled with the tax effect included. Business and multi-state tax planning and preparation stay in the same conversation.
QuickBooks setup or cleanup, Sage for larger companies, and a chart of accounts that actually produces the reports a CFO needs.
Projections and reporting packages for your bank, and someone who can explain the numbers when the lender calls. For contractors, the same goes for the surety.
Pricing, hiring, expansion, equipment, owner pay and financing, worked through with numbers before you commit. It's part of our broader business consulting work.
The 13-week forecast is usually the most useful thing a company gets in the first month. Here's a six-week slice for a growing service business that starts with $60,000 in the bank. The income statement for the period looks fine, because the work was billed. The forecast shows when the cash actually arrives.
| Week | Starting cash | Collections | Payroll and bills | Ending cash |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $60,000 | + $45,000 | ($38,000) | $67,000 |
| 2 | $67,000 | + $20,000 | ($52,000) | $35,000 |
| 3 | $35,000 | + $15,000 | ($38,000) | $12,000 |
| 4 | $12,000 | + $10,000 | ($52,000) | ($30,000) |
| 5 | ($30,000) | + $70,000 | ($38,000) | $2,000 |
| 6 | $2,000 | + $55,000 | ($40,000) | $17,000 |
| Total | $60,000 | + $215,000 | ($258,000) | $17,000 |
Two large customers pay in week 5 instead of week 3, and week 4 is a payroll week with a big supplier bill. The result is a $30,000 hole that the monthly statements would never show, because by month end the cash has come back. Spotted in week 1, it's a call to the bank about the credit line or to a customer about timing. Spotted in week 4, it's a missed payroll. The arithmetic is simple: $60,000 plus $215,000 collected, minus $258,000 paid out, leaves $17,000.
We don't publish a price, and it's worth being careful with anyone who quotes one before seeing your books. The cost of a fractional CFO comes down to scope, and scope comes down to a handful of things you can see in advance. Here's how pricing is usually structured and what moves it.
A fixed monthly fee for a defined set of recurring work: the forecast, the monthly review meeting, KPI reporting and an agreed level of availability. It's how we structure ongoing engagements, because the value comes from doing the work every month.
A fixed fee for work with a clear finish line: building a budget and forecast model, preparing a loan package, getting ready for a sale or a partner buyout, or rebuilding reporting before a growth push.
Time billed for occasional questions. It's a fair way to test the relationship, but it rarely includes the recurring forecast, which is where most of the value sits.
Within any of those models, six things decide how much work there is:
| What drives scope | Lighter | Heavier |
|---|---|---|
| Condition of the books | Closed and reconciled every month | Months behind, cleanup needed first |
| Number of entities | One company | Several entities, or a holding company plus operating companies |
| Meeting cadence | One monthly review | Weekly during a tight cash stretch or a big decision |
| Who reads your numbers | The owner only | A bank with covenants, investors or a surety |
| Geography | Georgia only | Employees or sales in several states |
| Revenue model | Simple sales or monthly fees | Job-based revenue, long contracts or deferred revenue |
The fair comparison isn't fractional against doing nothing. It's fractional against the full cost of a full-time hire: salary, payroll taxes, benefits and the months it takes to recruit. A fractional engagement is designed to give you the senior thinking for a fraction of that. When you compare quotes, compare what's delivered each month, not the headline number. The free consultation ends with a scoped answer for your company, including a straight one if you don't need a CFO yet.
A standalone CFO consultant forecasts. A CPA firm can forecast, close the books those forecasts depend on, and prepare the tax returns that follow from the decisions. When those three sit with one team, nothing falls through the gaps between them, and you're not paying two firms to reconcile each other's numbers.
Our office is at 1775 The Exchange SE in Atlanta, near Cumberland. We meet in person or remotely, and every engagement is available in English or Spanish, including the reports and the meetings with your bank.
Free 30-minute consultation with a senior CPA. We'll look at where your finance function stands and tell you honestly whether a fractional CFO pays for itself at your size.
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