What does a fractional CFO cost?

Most firms in this category will not put a number on a page. You get "every engagement is different," a contact form, and a proposal three weeks later. Engagements genuinely are different, but not mysteriously so. Below is what Ascension CFO charges, what the rest of the market charges, what a full-time CFO really costs once you add up everything that comes with the salary, and the specific things that move a monthly figure up or down. Bring your own numbers to it and you should be able to place yourself roughly on the scale before you speak to anybody.

What Ascension CFO charges

Hourly consulting is billed at $250 per hour. Monthly advisory plans are priced to the needs of your business rather than sold from a published tier list. That is not evasion — it is because a $2 million services company with one entity and clean books is not the same job as a $12 million operation with three entities, inventory and a bank covenant, and pretending otherwise would mean overcharging one of them.

The useful thing about a published hourly rate is that you can do arithmetic with it. Ten hours of senior financial work in a month is $2,500. Twenty hours is $5,000. That is multiplication rather than a price list, and it is not what a monthly plan costs — but it tells you the order of magnitude you are dealing with before anyone asks for your P&L.

A monthly advisory plan is not the hourly rate with a discount stapled on. It buys a different thing: a standing rhythm, models that are already built and maintained, a CFO who does not need the business re-explained each time, and access between sessions without a meter running. Owners who move from hourly to monthly usually do it because they got tired of deciding whether a question was worth billing for.

What the rest of the market charges

Here is the comparison with the numbers labelled honestly — one column is what other firms advertise, the other is what Ascension CFO publishes.

Treat the market column as context, not as a benchmark anyone audits. Those ranges are what firms put on their own websites, they move with client size and city, and a rate says nothing about who does the work. A $195 hourly rate where the sessions are run by a junior analyst is more expensive than a senior rate that gets to the answer in a third of the time.

What a full-time CFO actually costs

The salary is the part everyone quotes, and it is the smaller half of the question. An experienced CFO commonly costs more than $200,000 a year in base salary. Then come the costs nobody puts in the job requisition:

• Employer costs on top of base. Payroll taxes, health coverage, retirement match, and in many cases a bonus tied to performance.
• Equity. Senior finance hires at growing companies frequently expect a piece of the business. That is the most expensive line on this list and it never appears on a budget.
• Recruiting. A search for an executive-level finance hire carries a fee, and the fee is a percentage of a number that starts above $200,000.
• Time to useful output. A search, a notice period, then a ramp. It is normal for two quarters to pass before the first forecast you would take to a bank.

Set against that is the question owners find hardest to ask out loud: does the business actually have forty hours a week of CFO-level work? Between $2 million and $20 million in revenue, usually not. What it has is a handful of decisions each month that are worth getting right, and a monthly reporting cycle that has to be reliable. Paying an executive salary for availability is the expensive way to solve that. If you want the two options laid out side by side, we go through the fractional versus full-time CFO comparison in full.

What moves the price up, and what brings it down

Scope is the whole variable. These are the specific things that make a monthly figure larger or smaller, in roughly the order they matter.

What pushes it up

• Complexity in the structure. Multiple entities, multiple locations, intercompany transactions, or revenue in more than one state all multiply the reporting work before anyone does any thinking.
• The state of the books. If the underlying records cannot be trusted, cleanup comes first. That is a real cost — although it is a one-off, and it is work the team does routinely rather than a reason to turn you away.
• Who reads the reporting. Numbers you read yourself are a lower bar than numbers a bank, a board, an investor or a buyer will read. Outside readers want consistency, a stated basis, and projections that reconcile to history.
• Anything live. A fundraise, an acquisition, a lender covenant under pressure, a turnaround, or a transaction on the horizon compresses months of work into weeks.
• Meeting cadence. A monthly rhythm costs less than a weekly one. Most owners need monthly.

What brings it down

• A bookkeeper who is already doing a good job. Reliable data is the single largest cost lever available to you, and you may already have it.
• One accounting system rather than a system plus four spreadsheets.
• A narrow question. Pricing, or the cash forecast, or the lender package — a defined project with an end costs less than an open-ended retainer, and sometimes it is all that is needed.

What is included, and what is not

Vagueness about inclusions is where most advisory relationships go wrong, so here is the line drawn plainly. A monthly engagement with Ascension CFO's fractional CFO services typically covers financial forecasting, cash flow management and a rolling forecast, profitability analysis by product, service line or customer, KPI and scorecard reporting, pricing and margin review, board-ready or lender-ready reporting packages, exit and business-value readiness, a working session with the owner at least monthly, and access to your CFO during business hours between sessions.

It does not cover tax preparation or filing your returns — that stays with your CPA, and we work alongside them rather than replacing them. It is not day-to-day bookkeeping or transaction entry, it is not an audit, it is not payroll processing, and your fractional CFO is never a signer on your accounts. Nobody moves your money but you. If the split between these roles is unclear, the difference between a CFO and a controller is the distinction that clears up most of the confusion.

Retainer, project, or hourly — how the model gets chosen

Ascension CFO works in three shapes, and the right one is usually obvious once somebody has looked at your numbers.

• Retainer. An ongoing monthly partnership with consistent guidance and a predictable cost. This fits a company that wants a CFO inside the rhythm of the business rather than summoned when something breaks.
• Project-based. Focused work with defined deliverables and clear timelines: funding preparation, building a reporting system, or a profit improvement push. It ends.
• Hourly consulting at $250 per hour. On-demand guidance for reviews, one-off assessments and specific decisions. It is the right answer more often than a firm selling retainers would like to admit.

The choice gets made against three questions. Is the work continuous or does it have an end? Does the reporting need to be produced every month, or does a decision need to be made once? And is anyone waiting on the numbers — a lender, a buyer, a board? Continuous plus recurring plus an external reader almost always means a retainer. A single decision with no audience usually means hourly.

Working out whether the fee is worth it

The instinct is to compare the fee against your current accounting spend. That is the wrong denominator, because your bookkeeper and your CPA are not doing this job. The right comparison is against what the gap is costing you now.

Pricing that has never been tested against delivery cost. A customer segment that has been unprofitable for two years and looks fine at company level. A cash crunch you will finance on a credit line rather than see coming. A hire made on optimism in a quarter that could not carry it. These are real numbers sitting in the business today, and in a company doing several million in revenue they are usually larger than the fee — often by an order of magnitude.

There is also a version of this where the answer is no. If the business is under $1 million in revenue, or stable and simple enough that the owner genuinely can hold it in their head, hourly guidance a few times a year may be the whole solution. We would rather tell you that on the first call than sell you a retainer you will resent by month four. The fastest way to find out which of those you are is a business financial assessment, which is a structured look at profitability, cash position, working capital and controls, and produces a written picture rather than an opinion.

"Having a CFO forces you to look at what you're doing and see if you are hitting the targets that you should be hitting so you can be profitable." — Jonathan Breeden, The Breeden Law Office

Questions owners ask about fractional CFO cost

How much does a fractional CFO charge?

A fractional CFO charges either an hourly consulting rate or a fixed monthly fee scoped to the work. Ascension CFO's published hourly rate is $250, and monthly advisory plans are priced to the needs of the business. Across the wider market, firms commonly publish hourly rates between roughly $200 and $500, and monthly retainers from about $3,000 upward.

How much does a fractional CFO cost?

The honest answer has two parts. The hourly number is fixed and public: Ascension CFO bills consulting at $250 per hour. The monthly number depends on scope — entities, revenue, the state of your books, who reads your reporting, and whether anything urgent is running. What does not vary is that it costs less than a full-time CFO salary of $200,000 or more.

How does the cost compare with a full-time CFO salary?

For most companies under roughly $50 million in revenue, yes, and not marginally. A full-time CFO costs more than $200,000 in salary before payroll taxes, health coverage, retirement match, bonus and any equity, plus recruiting and ramp time. A fractional engagement buys the same seniority for the hours the work actually requires.

How much should a fractional CFO charge?

Enough to be senior, and specific enough that you can check it. Rates far below the market usually mean you are buying analyst or bookkeeping time with a CFO label on it. What matters more than the number is whether the firm will tell you the scope behind it: hours, deliverables, meeting cadence, and what is excluded. Ascension CFO publishes $250 per hour.

How much does a fractional CFO charge per hour?

Ascension CFO charges $250 per hour for hourly consulting. Hourly rates published by fractional CFO firms across the United States commonly sit between roughly $200 and $500 an hour, varying with the seniority of the person doing the work and the market they operate in. Most ongoing engagements move to a monthly plan, because strategy does not arrive in tidy hourly blocks.

Are fractional CFOs worth it?

It depends on whether there is a decision worth getting right. If pricing has never been tested, if cash surprises you, if a lender or a buyer is about to read your numbers, or if you are choosing between two six-figure commitments, the fee is small against the decision. If the business is stable, simple and predictable, hourly guidance may be all you need — and we will say so.

Get your number

The quickest route to a real figure is a conversation with your numbers in front of us rather than a form. Schedule a free strategy call and we will tell you which engagement model fits and roughly what it would take — including if the honest answer is that the work does not justify the fee yet. You can also call 801-833-0991, or read what fractional CFO services cover.