Hiring a fractional CFO for B2B SaaS
Most SaaS founders can quote their ARR and almost none can reconcile it to their accounts. That gap is the job. A SaaS CFO's first quarter is usually spent making the number the board sees and the number the auditor sees describe the same company.
A fractional CFO in the UK charges £800 to £1,500 a day, which is £6,133 to £11,500 a month at two days a week. The bands for all eleven seats come off live listings on the bench and are published openly as data.
What is different about this seat in B2B SaaS
ARR is a management metric and recognised revenue is an accounting one
They are not the same and the difference is not a rounding error. ARR annualises what is contracted right now; recognised revenue is what has actually been earned in the period under the relevant standard. A three-year deal billed annually in advance produces a cash spike, a deferred revenue balance and a recognition schedule, and a board pack that shows only the spike is telling a story that the accounts will contradict later.
Deferred revenue is the balance nobody looks at until it matters
Billing annually up front is a working capital gift and an obligation at the same time: the cash is in the bank and the service is not yet delivered. It shapes what you can safely spend, what a lender will lend against, and what a buyer will discount in diligence. A CFO who has run a SaaS balance sheet reads the deferred balance before the P&L.
Net revenue retention is the number an investor underwrites
Growth from existing customers is cheaper and more durable than growth from new ones, so retention above one hundred per cent changes the valuation conversation more than the top line does. It is also the easiest number to calculate flatteringly. Agree the cohort definition, whether it is gross or net, and whether it includes or excludes the customers who left, before it goes in a deck.
The board pack a SaaS investor expects has a fixed shape
ARR bridge, net and gross retention, CAC payback, magic number or an equivalent efficiency measure, cash runway on the current burn and on plan. An investor who sees that pack knows the company is being run; one who sees a P&L and a bank balance assumes it is not. Building it once is a month of work and it is usually the highest-leverage month.
What the seat owns here
- The ARR bridge, and its reconciliation to recognised revenue
- Deferred revenue, billing terms and the working capital they create
- Cohort retention, defined once and reported consistently
- CAC payback and the efficiency measure the board will be judged on
- The audit-ready close, before an audit is compulsory rather than after
What to ask a fractional CFO for B2B SaaS
- How would you reconcile our ARR to recognised revenue, and what would you expect to find?
- What is your definition of net revenue retention, and what does it exclude?
- Which revenue recognition standard applies to us, and where would our current treatment fail it?
- Show me a board pack you built. What did the investors ask for that was not in it?
- At what point should we move from annual billing to monthly, and what does it cost us?
Where it goes wrong
- Reporting ARR to the board and recognised revenue to the accountant, and never reconciling the two
- Spending the deferred balance as though it were earned
- Changing the retention definition between decks so the trend looks better than it is
- Waiting for the first audit to discover the close process does not survive one
When this is the wrong hire
Below roughly a million in ARR with simple monthly billing and one product, a good bookkeeper and a part-time financial controller usually cover it. The CFO question arrives with complexity: multi-year contracts, multi-currency, a funding round, or an audit.
The rate, in all three markets
The UK band comes off live listings on the bench, so it is our own data rather than a scrape or somebody else's index. The US and UAE bands are market observation and say so. Every figure below is also available as JSON and CSV.
£800 to £1,500 a day
£6,133 to £11,500 a month at two days a week. All eleven seats
$1,000 to $2,200 a day
AED 3,500 to AED 7,500 a day
Higher end for fundraise or exit work, and for regulated sectors.
Common questions
What does a fractional CFO cost for a SaaS company?
The published UK band applies, and most SaaS engagements sit in the middle of it rather than the top: the work is demanding but it is not scarce in the way regulated finance is. One to two days a week is the commonest shape.
When does a SaaS company need a CFO rather than a financial controller?
A controller owns the close, the ledger and compliance. A CFO owns what the numbers are used for: the raise, the pricing decision, the board's understanding of the business. If the questions being asked are about what happened, you need a controller. If they are about what to do next, you need a CFO.
Can a fractional CFO run a funding round?
Running the model, the data room and the diligence responses is squarely the job, and a fractional CFO who has done it before will usually get further faster than a first-time founder doing it alone. Deciding who to raise from, and closing it, stays with the founder.
See the rate before you speak to anybody
Browse fractional CFOs in B2B SaaS, each with a day rate on their own profile, checked by hand against their LinkedIn and CV before it went up. Or brief Operator Search and three researched candidates come back against the brief in five business days.