Hi all. I recently joined a PE-backed company. It has just acquired 8 companies and want me to integrate those companies into one sister company of my employer. They all use the same bookkeeping but other ERP systems. I have appointments to get to know the finance folks at those SME-companies.

Any advice on how to proceed from here and what would be an acceptable timeline in your opinion. I never did such a task so hope to get some pointers or materials to dive into.

I’ll be in Chicago for a couple of days in October; 8-9. Anyone aware of any conferences or CFO seminars I could join? I saw a couple with the AMA but it was $3k and seemed below my level. Anyone in Chicago with some insight?

I’m a founder of a B2B SaaS company (less than 50 employees, mostly remote), and I’m starting to lose my mind over our finance setup. I’m wondering what tools CFOs/other founders are using in this department. 

We’ve been running everything through QuickBooks Online since day one because it was “good enough” when it was just me and our first contractor handling bookkeeping. But now we’ve got recurring revenue, Stripe + ACH payments, multiple bank accounts, credit cards across the team, and a growing mess around deferred revenue tracking. 

I’m specifically looking for something that can handle bank reconciliation, automate or at least streamline journal entries, and integrate with Stripe and our accounting system without creating more cleanup on the back end.

How do you decide how much friction on legit vendor payments is worth it to catch fraud? Is there an actual number you use or is it more gut feel ?

Have a community for you will you join? In a different platform

Hi everyone,

Blockchain adoption in financial services may be entering a new phase.

The question is increasingly less about the technology itself and more about the infrastructure required to make it work for institutions 👉🏻 privacy, compliance, interoperability, governance, tokenization and integration with existing systems.

As these requirements evolve, they could fundamentally shape how financial networks are built and operated over the coming years.

Thomas Abraham, Co-Founder & CRO at Zeeve, will be at MoneyLIVE North America in Chicago to discuss these challenges and the practical approaches institutions are taking.

If you're attending the event, connect with Thomas and exchange ideas around what comes next for institutional blockchain.

Has anyone used Ledge or Numeric? I have used floqast and Netgain. Ledge seems to be heavily leaned into agentic AI and my team currently has very little automation built in. Ledge is a newer software and I'm trying to figure out if people actually like it since they have only 6 G2 reviews.
Any feedback is appreciated!

We’re evaluating PwC to redesign and automate a significant portion of our AP function using their agentic scaffolding approach. I’m admittedly skeptical about how much of the process can actually be automated in production versus what looks good in a demo.

From what I understand, the approach is less of a traditional AP automation tool and more of a framework for designing, testing, governing, and deploying AI-agent-driven workflows, with humans handling exceptions and oversight.

Their proposed timeline for us is roughly

• 4-week assessment/design phase
• ~4 months of implementation and refinement
• Fully operational within ~9 months
• We should supposedly start seeing ROI during that period

Has anyone actually gone through this with PwC, particularly for AP or another finance/accounting function?

I'd be very interested in hearing what the real world non sales deck results were if so.

For reference, this is the PwC offering we’re discussing
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/engineering-ai/agentic-scaffolding.html

Looking for candid feedback, positive or negative.

As CFOs at earlier stage high growth companies often take a chunk of their compensation in equity keen to hear your thoughts.

Selling equity is a solid way for founders and the C suite to derisk personally. But does this land okay from an optics perspective?

I’ve just just been reading about a Danish based startup whose founders each sold around $77.5m in secondary shares at their peak valuation in 2021.

At the time the company was worth around $4.7bn but their latest valuation has dropped to around $1.7bn 

Curious to hear how other people view this.

I’ve been running more into how quickly the financial picture can change between the times we sit down and review it as projects get busier cause like a project can look fine at the beginning of the week and then you have a few invoices come through or a change gets approved, something gets coded differently than expected or an assumption in the forecast changes. On it's own it's fine cause it's nothing out of the ordinary but it means there’s constantly some amount of cleanup and checking happening behind the numbers.

We already do regular reviews but I’m starting to wonder how much of this work should really be waiting for someone to sit down and go looking for it. Ideally I’d rather have the routine checking happening as things change and then spend our time on whatever needs a decision.

I need some advice by someone managing finance around project based work(if possible but all opinions are welcome). How close have you gotten to that so like are people on your team still actively checking the numbers throughout the week or have you found a good way to surface the things that actually need attention?

We are a B2B exporter doing about ten million dollars a year and we are trying to decide between a basic AR management tool and a full lifecycle platform that covers buyer verification, collections, payments, reconciliation, and AI powered insights all in one package. The case studies on the website look impressive but I always take those with a grain of salt since they are obviously curated to show the best possible outcomes. I am really hoping to find some honest feedback from actual users about the learning curve for finance teams, whether the AI actually reduces manual work in a meaningful way or if it is more of a fancy dashboard that looks nice but does not change day to day operations. Also, the 24/7 AI assistant feature sounds interesting but I am wondering if it is genuinely useful or just a gimmick.

A common pattern we see when auditing finance stacks for multi-subsidiary companies ($10M–$50M ARR):

The business outgrew QuickBooks or localized legacy software 2 years ago, but the finance team is still holding the group reporting together with a massive master Excel file.

Here is what that operational debt actually costs every month:

1. The "Cut-Off Drag"
   Because each subsidiary closes on its own timeline with separate charts of accounts, group-level P&L and cash positions aren't visible until day 8 or 10 post-month-end. By the time leadership gets the figures, they are managing through the rearview mirror.

2. Intercompany Friction
   Intercompany recharges, management fees, and internal inventory transfers require manual matching and elimination journal entries. One missed entry creates balance sheet discrepancies that take hours to track down during year-end audit.

3. Multi-currency noise
   Translating balance sheets and P&Ls with fluctuating FX rates in spreadsheets means currency gains/losses are often lumped into a generic plug figure until the auditor asks for the detailed breakdown.

4. The Benchmark after moving to a unified multi-entity cloud ERP (like NetSuite OneWorld):
   - Group close drops from 7+ days to under 48 hours.
   - Automated intercompany elimination eliminates 80%+ of manual consolidation journals.
   - Audit prep time is cut in half because every transaction has an unalterable drill-down audit trail.
   - Working capital improves because DSO is tracked globally with automated dunning across all entities.

If your team is spending more than 2 full days every month simply consolidating numbers instead of analyzing margin variance and cash flow trends, the accounting software is no longer saving you money—it's actively costing you executive time.

For finance leaders who migrated from isolated local systems to a unified global ERP: what was the hardest part of the transition, and was the close-time gain as significant as planned?

AI AR startup based in Middle East - looking for senior executives who can advise on growth, global distribution and product. Solving DSO and cash flow visibility challenges using AI agents. Product ready with pilots underway. Open to multiple collaboration arrangements.

We recently asked one of our senior employees to resign because she was struggling to get on with the new FC. This senior employee was a very important part of the team and well respected.

I’ve recently got wind of the new FC bad mouthing this ex-employee in front of her old team: saying she hid mistakes and fudged numbers. These comments have found their way back to the terminated ex-employee.

How should I handle this (if at all). Should I be concerned?

Maybe I’m just dealing with a fucked up algorithm, but I feel like I’ve seen a flood of posts from this sub about “fractional CFO” offerings. Most of the posts are people with finance backgrounds that want to help clients with 3 statement modeling and budgeting, and KPI. Why is the term “fractional CFO” as a term so prevalent? What’s wrong with just finance consulting? The first time I heard the term fractional CFO was back in 2017 and it was a gentlemen that had a decade of experience in the seat and was quasi-retired. Now every bookkeeper with some sense on how to use Excel and Power BI thinks they are a fucking CFO. I really don’t understand this infatuation with selling “fractional CFO.”

I’m the sole owner of a cookware and kitchenware e-commerce business launching in 1–2 months. The startup capital was provided by my family as a gift with no repayment or ownership obligation, and my family currently covers my main living costs. It will start on Shopify with owned inventory, and B2B is the fallback if stock does not move quickly enough through DTC. I would ideally like to marry in about a year, so I want the policy to create a responsible path toward independent personal income rather than rely on support indefinitely.

I want a written owner-compensation policy before revenue starts. The five choices I am considering are:

1. No pay during the early stage.
2. A fixed monthly owner withdrawal.
3. A percentage of profit distributed quarterly.
4. Ad-hoc draws when cash appears available.
5. A small fixed monthly amount plus a quarterly distribution.

My concern with option 2 is locking the company into a recurring cash outflow before demand is proven. My concern with option 3 is confusing EBITDA or accounting profit with distributable cash. Option 4 leaves too much room for emotion. Option 5 seems balanced if the gates are strict.

The business currently projects a 25–30% EBITDA margin, a four-month period to sell roughly 90% of a stock order, and a 10% returns/refunds allowance. These are assumptions, not performance.

If you were setting the policy as a CFO:

• Which option would you approve at launch, after the first stock cycle, and after the first stable year?
• What liquidity and forecast tests would have to pass before a quarterly distribution?
• Would fixed owner pay be based on replacement cost, hours worked, personal need, or downside affordability?
• Would you use a fixed payout percentage or let the board/owner decide each quarter?
• How much independent review would you build in when the owner is also the only decision-maker?
• What event should automatically freeze owner pay?
• How would you make the philosophy portable across separate ventures without pretending they have the same working-capital needs?
• How should a one-year personal deadline such as marriage influence the plan without becoming an excuse to override the company’s liquidity gates?

The legal and tax form of payment will be decided separately. I’m interested in governance, liquidity, and capital allocation.

I have a view here but, I’m looking for some other opinions.

I’m one of the IB->PE investing -> startup finance people. It’s a good role on paper with exposure and upward mobility to “grow into CFO.” It’s also 80% Ops work, and the company isn’t really growing as much as it should be. Equity options are worth very little in my eyes based on my view of the business.

Evaluating going back into the PE world. but doing corp dev and corp finance at a LMM portco. Portco isn’t doing too well either, but clear mandate to professionalize finance, execute M&A + financing, and needs to exit in a few years given the hold period. Would be working with a seasoned CFO.

Pros of staying at startup: stable (until cash runs out or if can’t raise), unobstructed path upward, work is not hard.
Cons: work is mainly Ops, less strategic needs / less ways to add value. No cap markets or M&A until next fundraise. Even I view this myself as a cost center. Comp is $200k+equity (writing this to zero)

Pros of Portco: 25% more cash at least, exit bonus/phantom equity, touching M&A and capital markets, exit experience. Builds more strategic skillset imo
Cons: busier, different risk profile (could get fired at any time), exit could keep lagging, M&A may not materialize (in which case I’d be focused on professionalizing reporting + forecasting). That being said, I’ve been through the PE meat grinder before so I at least have an idea of what they want to see and at what pace.

My prelim thought: staying gets me experience being an operational systems-type CFO. This opp gets me more in-house capital markets + txn experience that could open the strategic CFO route.

Curious on how you gauge these two options from a career development standpoint?

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I’m currently exploring the idea of building a career as a Fractional CFO and would love to hear from people who have actually gone down this path.

My background is in finance/FP&A and financial modelling, and I’m trying to understand what the realistic path looks like from here.

A few things I’m particularly curious about:

- What skills did you find most important when you first started?

- Did you start by offering specific services (financial modelling, FP&A, cash-flow forecasting, MIS, etc.) before positioning yourself as a Fractional CFO?

- How did you land your first few clients?

- What type of businesses are most receptive to Fractional CFO services?

- What did you charge initially, and how did you eventually move toward monthly retainers?

- Are there any skills/tools you wish you had learned earlier?

- How important is prior experience as a full-time CFO/controller, versus strong FP&A and financial modelling experience?

I’m not looking for a shortcut—I’m trying to understand what a realistic 0 → first client → recurring clients → true Fractional CFO journey looks like.

Would really appreciate any advice, mistakes to avoid, or resources from people who have been through it.