One of the most critical questions a growing business must answer as it develops its strategic plan is when to hire a chief financial officer. For many small businesses, there rarely are enough projects to keep a full-time CFO productive, so to save money, many rely on their controller to act as both CFO and controller, which can be a costly mistake.

By nature, the special projects handled by a CFO, such as loan packaging, budgeting, mergers and acquisitions, software and hardware selection, and tax planning, are critical to your growth. The same can be said of the controller producing accurate and timely financial statements. When the controller is pulling double duty, something suffers, and usually it’s the day-to-day accounting operations.

Whether it’s completely outsourcing your controller or CFO services or co-sourcing to boost your team’s efforts, the Ericksen Krentel team can provide you with the support to continue driving profits.

One of the benefits of outsourcing these roles is that while you may hire an internal CFO or controller with experience in your specific industry, you gain a range of experience by outsourcing with an accounting firm, including their business, professional and banking contacts.

Whether you’re a multi-location restaurant, an independent barge company, general contractor or solo practitioner in the legal or medical fields, our outsourced services are local, personalized and responsive to provide you with actionable financial intelligence that can help create strategies to provide growth and increased focus on future goals for your business or organization.

Outsourced controller services such as handling real-time accounts payable and accounts receivable management, real-time cash management reports, reviews of real-time financial reports, be it daily, monthly, quarterly or annually and variance analysis and comparative financial reporting are only some of the services the Ericksen Krentel team can assist you and your team with.

As an outsourced CFO, we will help you dig deeper to support your overall growth strategy. That includes

• Budget preparation, analysis and advice
• Historical financial analysis and advice to management
• Financial strategy and modeling (forecasts/projections)
• Real-time cash flow analysis and advice
• Market analysis
• Strategic planning (financial and organizational)

As you grow and it becomes clear you need to bring in a CFO or controller, we can help you search for and hire the right professional. By the time you are ready to take that step, the function – and your expectations – will be clearly defined, and we’ll be here to ensure a smooth transition for years of continued success.

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