Fractional CFO
Financial leadership for consequential decisions.
Companies bring in a fractional CFO when financial questions become strategic: growth that is consuming cash, a lender or investor asking harder questions, a leadership gap, or a transaction on the horizon. Most middle-market companies need that level of judgment before they can justify a full-time CFO, and many that have one find the role has become a controller’s job with a bigger title.
A Buxbaum fractional CFO gives you a finance leader who has run functions, closed transactions, and sat across from buyers, for the portion of the week the business actually requires. Because our CFOs work from real-time, AI-enabled reporting rather than a month-old package, their judgment is applied to where the business is today, and the company stays deal-ready as a matter of course.
- Strategic Finance & Decision Support
We give owners and CEOs the analysis behind the decisions that shape the business: what to price, what to invest in, which customers and products to keep, and what the company can afford.
What We Deliver
- Unit economics and margin analysis by product, customer, location, or contract
- Pricing strategy and quoting discipline grounded in loaded cost
- Long-term planning and capital allocation
- KPI frameworks built around the drivers that actually move the business
- Performance diagnostics when results move and nobody can explain why
- Forecasting, Cash & FP&A
Cash should be forecast, not discovered, and a budget should be a management tool rather than a document filed in January. We build the forecasting discipline that lets leadership see the next quarter before it arrives.
What We Deliver
- Rolling 13-week cash forecast tied to billing, collections, payables, and payroll
- Annual budget and quarterly reforecasts with variance explanations
- Scenario and sensitivity analysis for hiring, expansion, pricing, and financing decisions
- Working capital management across receivables, inventory, and payables
- Real-time dashboards that connect the forecast to actual results as they develop
- Transaction & Capital Event Support
Whether the event is a sale, a refinancing, a capital raise, or an acquisition, the finance leader’s job is to have the numbers ready before anyone asks and to keep the process moving once it starts.
What We Deliver
- A seat on the deal team, leading the financial side of the transaction
- Ownership of the company’s financial narrative in the CIM
- Management of the buyer’s diligence process and request lists
- Deal structure and working capital advisory
- Finance Team Leadership
We lead the team, build the processes, and put the systems in place so the function runs on discipline rather than heroics.
What We Deliver
- Leadership and mentoring of controllers and accounting staff
- Assessment and upgrade accounting processes, procedures, and systems
- Close and reporting processes institutionalized so they survive turnover in the department
- Implementation of AI-enabled reporting and automation of manual work
- Ownership of all financial reporting
- Owner-Operator Support
Founders often run on instinct and second-generation leaders often cannot. We build the reporting and the cadence that lets a capable operator run the business as well as a founder did, with information in place of intuition.
What We Deliver
- Weekly operating metrics tailored to how the CEO thinks about the business
- Monthly review of results with plain-language explanation of what changed and why
- Cash and working capital forecasting that replaces emergency funding with a plan
Why Buxbaum
- Our CFOs have run accounting and finance functions and have led transactions through closing.
- We work from real-time, AI-enabled reporting, so decisions are made on today’s numbers rather than last month’s.
- We keep companies deal-ready every day, so a sale, refinancing, or raise starts from strength rather than a last-minute cleanup.
- We deploy fast. Friday call, Monday start when the situation demands it.
What Clients Gain
- All the functions of a full-time CFO for a fraction of the time and cost
- No cost or disruption from CFO turnover
- An accounting and finance department that runs reliably and consistently
- A finance leader who is transaction-ready at all times
