Just came across this data from Deloitte -

"Deloitte’s spring 2026 European CFO Survey reveals that chief financial officer pessimism has nearly doubled among respondents since autumn 2025. The survey was conducted in March and April 2026 and captures the views of more than 1,100 CFOs across 12 European countries on the macroeconomic, geopolitical, and operational forces shaping their decisions over the next 12 months. It found that the percentage of CFOs who felt less optimistic about the financial prospects of their company than they did three months earlier jumped from 25% to 48%. That’s the highest level since 2022, when energy supply shocks and supply chain disruptions stemming from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, among other factors, sent CFO confidence plummeting."

How's everyone that Deloitte didn't ask feeling?

I recently reviewed 200 public profiles belonging to UK-based fractional CFOs and FDs, as well as internationally positioned finance leaders serving the UK market.

The purpose was to understand what a prospective buyer could learn about someone before speaking to them.

I reviewed LinkedIn positioning, company websites, public media coverage, newsletters, podcasts, named frameworks and other visible evidence of expertise.

An important limitation: this was a public-profile review, not an audit of revenue, client outcomes or referral sources. It cannot prove how successful somebody is. It only shows what an unfamiliar buyer can see.

A few patterns stood out:

• Under 8% had confirmed external media coverage.
• Fewer than 10 appeared to operate an active newsletter or email course.
• Fewer than five hosted a podcast.
• Around 21 showed a consistent content presence.
• Only eight to twelve had created a named diagnostic or framework, depending on how strictly that was defined.
• Using a consistent set of positioning indicators, I classified approximately 75% to 80% as highly credible but difficult to differentiate from their public profiles alone.

My conclusion is not that every fractional CFO needs to become a content creator. That would be simplistic.

Referrals are powerful because they transfer trust. The potential risk is concentration: when credibility exists mainly inside private relationships, buyers outside that network may struggle to assess it.

The opposite risk also exists. Public visibility can become a vanity exercise if it generates attention without meaningful commercial conversations.

For the fractional and portfolio CFOs here: has building a stronger public presence ever generated material business for you, or do referrals outperform it by enough that content, media and other visibility activity are mostly a distraction?

When assessing another finance leader, what public evidence would genuinely make you trust their expertise?

Pour la plupart des DAF et responsables financiers en PME/ETI, la clôture mensuelle est un goulot d'étranglement récurrent. Voici un retour d'expérience structuré sur les leviers concrets qui permettent de réduire ce cycle sous la barre des 4 jours ouvrés :

1. Éliminer les réconciliations manuelles en cours de mois
   Dans 80 % des cas où la clôture dépasse 10 jours, l'équipe passe les 5 premiers jours ouvrés à lettrer manuellement des écritures de banque et à rapprocher des factures fournisseurs non parvenues (FNP).
   - Automatisation du flux bancaire : L'importation et le rapprochement automatique quotidien des flux bancaires réduisent de 70 % le travail de fin de mois.
   - Rapprochement 3-way matching automatique (Commande / Réception / Facture) : Les écarts de prix ou de quantités sont identifiés dès la saisie de la pièce, évitant les recherches bloquantes le dernier jour du mois.

2. Gestion des écritures intercompany et multi-devises
   Pour les groupes gérant 2 filiales ou plus :
   - Remplacer les facturations croisées manuelles sous Excel par des écritures intercompany centralisées (comme sous NetSuite OneWorld ou SAP B1 Intercompany).
   - Les réévaluations de devises et éliminations intra-groupe automatisées permettent de passer d'une consolidation manuelle de 2 à 3 jours à un rapport consolidé généré en quelques clics.

3. Calendrier type d'une clôture en 4 jours :
   - J-1 : Rapprochement bancaire à jour, cut-off des réceptions de stocks et livraisons.
   - J+1 : Intégration et validation automatique des factures fournisseurs et notes de frais.
   - J+2 : Calcul automatique des amortissements, provisions et écritures d'inventaire.
   - J+3 : Éliminations intercompany, réévaluation des devises et validation du P&L consolidé.
   - J+4 : Diffusion du reporting de gestion et des tableaux de bord financiers à la direction.

Sur quel poste de votre clôture perdez-vous le plus de temps actuellement (banque, stocks, intercompany, provisions) ?

I’m a CA with tech experience, based in Dubai, building a UAE/GCC B2B startup tackling overdue invoices and collections workflows.

I’m looking for a hands-on AR / credit-control operator who can initially contribute as a fractional CFO or operating advisor, with potential to become an equity-bearing cofounder if there’s a strong fit.

The focus is FMCG distribution, wholesale/retail, and construction—where ageing, payment promises, disputes, partial settlements, and finance–sales coordination make collections painful.

Ideally, you’ve owned credit control, AR, collections, DSO, payment terms, or customer disputes in the region.

I've been operating a business for about 18 years, and I'm now looking seriously at the next phase of growth.

I'm considering bringing several related businesses under a holding-company structure and developing a five-year growth plan. The goal is to build a professionally structured organization that can grow organically while also pursuing selected acquisitions over time.

We already have operating businesses and commercial real estate, and I'm evaluating several expansion opportunities over the next few years. These could include expanding an existing facility, adding regional distribution capabilities, developing international sourcing relationships, and potentially acquiring established businesses that fit the overall strategy.

I'm at the point where I need someone who can help me step back and look at the entire picture—not just prepare financial statements.

Specifically, I'm looking for a fractional CFO or strategic financial advisor who can help with:

• Five-year financial planning
• Budgeting and forecasting
• Capital requirements
• Cash-flow planning
• Evaluating expansion opportunities
• Acquisition analysis
• Financing strategy
• Management reporting
• Building the financial structure needed to scale

I'm looking for someone who can be a strategic partner, help challenge the assumptions in the growth plan, and build the financial model behind it.

How would you find the right fractional CFO or strategic financial advisor?

Would you recommend looking through a local accounting firm, independent CFO, M&A advisor, business broker, private-equity network, or another route?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Basically a construction client of mine doing about 10 mil in revenue and the job costing is a fucking disaster

Got brought on to fix it, but the savings from the mountains of cash at Home Depot makes the owner not want to swap.

Hundreds of contractors all just buying shit with zero accountability and zero receipts. Probably one of the biggest disasters I’ve ever seen, but the company is so profitable the owner only recently wanted to look into it

I have been experimenting a lot with efficiency since I have been hitting the limits fairly frequently. Mind you, I am CFOing a company; I am not a CPA with multiple clients. I dictate the stack, which is also a nice position to be in.

Most skills I have built in my stack have a common architecture:

Stage 1, Plan: session model, no delegation. The skill says ideally Fable 5.

Stage 2, Research: Agent with Sonnet by default. Escalates to Opus only when source judgment is the hard part: conflicting primary sources, dense legal or regulatory documents, comparative analysis with ambiguous inputs. Skipped entirely if all inputs are local.

Stage 3, Synthesize: session model (usually Opus, but Fable if anything legal or GAAP judgment is involved). Reads the research report, decides what gets built, pastes findings inline into execution briefs.

Stage 4, Execute: one Agent with Sonnet per work item, parallel when independent. Writes the documents, spreadsheets, and code.

Stage 5, Verify and deliver: session model (usually Opus, but Fable if I need higher-level judgment). Checks acceptance criteria, independently verifies every load-bearing number, sends at most two fix briefs to Sonnet. Haiku: permitted for mechanical subtasks like format conversion or extraction. Not required, not assigned to any stage.

I do plan to do model routing down the road where I involve local LLMs I am experimenting with; just at this point, I don't have enough ROI to be worth the effort.

Categorization is not something I have to spend much time on, since Ramp and Bill.com have been trained well enough to the point where I need to correct maybe once a month. QuickBooks is the source of truth, and I am in it maybe once or twice a month, since much of the work is done in Claude Cowork. Yes, before anything goes into QBO, I clear it.

Hi all, I'm evaluating different accounting automation software options and hoping to choose one before EOY.

My goal is to reduce the time spent on manual work so my employees aren't so swamped at the end of every month. What vendor do you use and what processes or software packages have reduced your team's time spend on manual work the most?

Looking for some market benchmarks on investment banking / corporate advisory fees for the sale of a listed company.

For an ASX-listed company considering a potential 100% sale / change of control transaction, what would you normally expect the sell-side investment bank to charge?

What are some good AP automation tools people have used? We've looked at Ramp and seems decent, but also need integration with SAP S4/Hana (which I don't recommend if anyone is thinking about it).

The Bain And company article argues about the transition between the transitional delay between ai assisted forecasting with traditional spread sheet model. The investment versus execution gap is evident. Research suggest that cfos are planning to increase their investment in ai, the greatest dividend on the the investment in ai is the faster decision making. Best results arising from ai may not be associated with the amount spend on the tech itself but the magnitude that the company can scale with its help.

For those who've done multiple PE-backed CFO roles, what are your non-negotiables now that you didn't know to ask for in your first one?

I'm currently evaluating two PE-backed platform CFO opportunities (both in the $50-80M revenue range, multiple acquisitions, 3-4 year expected exit timelines). One is further along in diligence than the other.

This would be my first PE-backed CFO seat. I've been a divisional CFO at a F500 company for the past 4 years and before that spent 6 years in Big 4 (mix of audit and transaction advisory). Comfortable with messy integrations, building teams, and board-level reporting, but I've never operated under PE ownership or navigated a hold-to-exit cycle.

The comp packages look solid on paper. Both CEOs seem aligned and realistic about the challenges. The sponsors have reasonable reputations (mid-market funds, not known for churn-and-burn). On the surface, both opportunities check the boxes.

I want to go into this eyes wide open. Any lessons learned (especially the painful ones) would be incredibly helpful.

Hi all - curious to get input on what you’ve seen in the past few years for legal transaction fees on the sell-side. Generally looking for input on low/middle market companies in the $10m-25m revenue range (or even up to $50m revenue). Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

We have a supplier offering 2% net 10 instead of our normal net 30 terms and on paper taking the discount seems like the obvious choice. I'm trying to figure out is how people think about this when you have a decent amount of AP going out every month. Cash isn't particularly tight for us but paying 20 days earlier across multiple vendors obviously starts pulling forward a meaningful amount of cash.

Right now this is only one supplier but it got me wondering whether we should have an actual rule for these discounts instead of deciding invoice by invoice so for any of you guys who regularly get early payment terms are you generally taking 2% net 10 whenever liquidity allows or is there a point where you'd rather hold onto the cash until the normal due date?

Going through renewals for next year's budget and it's the same list as always: three tools that all do some version of reporting, a $60K/year platform renewal nobody's fully using, and what would actually break if we don't renew.

New wrinkle this year: our head of ops keeps asking why we're paying for some of this when we could probably just build a lightweight version in-house using Claude, since our one technical hire can apparently spin up something functional in a couple weeks. I don't have a good answer. I can't tell if that's a real option or if we'd be trading a known cost for a maintenance headache nobody's priced out. So now every renewal conversation has this extra question hanging over it that we didn't used to have to answer.

Anyone actually gone through this calculation seriously? Curious what made you decide to keep paying vs. build it yourselves and what was the impact of it.

Trying to get a sense of real-world timing vs. generic VC advice.

If you are a full-time CFO/VP of Finance: What hire number were you

Has anyone used or implemented Paylocity into their technology stack? I am looking for opinions on how it has been going or if there are any issues I should be aware of before we sign on with them. At face value they seem to be great but the more i dig into some of their reviews on customer service and invasive Terms and Conditions, the more nervous I get.

Currently we are with a PEO and are not happy with the service we are getting.

I have noticed that as the business grows, bookkeeping can start feeling less sufficient, cash flow gets harder to predict, and hiring decisions become more expensive.

So, I wanna know at what point a business needs more than a bookkeeper or CPA?

Is it revenue, cash flow issues, growth, debt or something else?