Before you book the call.

Your accountant keeps the books clean and the taxes filed — essential work, and Practical doesn't replace it. We sit a level above: turning that data into management reporting, forecasts, and decision support, and building the financial infrastructure a company needs at an inflection point. That isn't only selling or raising capital — it's just as true for the company trying to scale that keeps hitting a ceiling it can't quite see, or the one that wants to acquire rather than be acquired. Your accountant tells you what happened; we help you decide what to do next, and make the numbers stand up when a buyer, lender, or investor tests them. The roles are complementary — strong financial leadership makes your accountant more effective, not less necessary.

Implementation is embedded in every deliverable. Where deep technical expertise is required, we identify and coordinate client-approved specialists while remaining responsible for defining the business requirement and ensuring strategic alignment.

Ongoing work is a fixed monthly retainer with a five-hour minimum, structured around the decisions in front of the business rather than a task list. Some months run heavier — a board package, a diligence sprint — and we set the cadence together. You're buying senior financial judgment on call, not a fixed number of hours logged.

Every engagement runs under a written scope that includes confidentiality terms, and your underlying data stays in your systems. When a sale, a raise, or a lending relationship is on the horizon, that discipline matters most — the controls that protect your numbers in diligence are the same ones we work under while building toward it.

That's often how engagements start. The Readiness Assessment is deliberately scoped and self-contained — you can stop there, or use it as the blueprint for a single fix (a raise, a reporting cleanup, a technology-cost review) before committing to anything ongoing. We'd rather do one thing well than sell a retainer you don't need yet.

The introductory call books in minutes, and the Readiness Assessment begins once it's scoped and the deposit clears. The first tangible output — a prioritized, costed roadmap tied to valuation impact — lands inside the assessment itself. Improvements to reporting and forecasting typically show within the first monthly cycle.

Because technology is now a top-three cost line in most businesses and almost nobody in the fractional CFO market can actually defend it. Every company is a technology company now, whatever its industry — and making that spend deliver real value is fast becoming a condition of staying in business.

Engagements begin with a paid, scoped Readiness Assessment, quoted after the free 15-minute call. Ongoing work is a fixed monthly retainer — a set fee for a senior finance partner on call, with a five-hour monthly floor.