A full time CFO is a senior salary plus bonus and benefits. Most businesses between roughly $1M and $50M in revenue do not need that person five days a week. They need the judgment a few days a month. That is what fractional pricing is built around, and it usually shows up in one of three shapes.
The three pricing models
Hourly
$150 to $400 per hourBest for. Short, defined questions. A board deck, a lender package, a one-off model review.
Watch for. Costs are hard to predict, and hourly work rarely builds the reporting rhythm most owners actually need.
Monthly retainer
$2,000 to $10,000 per monthBest for. Ongoing finance leadership: monthly close review, reporting, forecasting, and a standing conversation about the numbers.
Watch for. Check what the retainer includes. Some cover strategy only and assume your books are already clean and closed on time.
Project based
$5,000 to $50,000 per projectBest for. A fundraise, an acquisition, a systems migration, a first real budget, or a cleanup before an audit.
Watch for. Scope creep is the usual problem. Agree on deliverables and an end date before work starts.
Those ranges reflect what the market generally charges for senior finance talent. They are a starting point for a conversation, not a quote. Rates vary by industry, complexity, and how much of the work sits with the CFO versus a team underneath them.
What actually drives the number
Revenue and transaction volume
A business doing $2M with one revenue stream is a different job than $20M across three entities and two currencies.
State of the books
If the close is late or the balance sheet has never been reconciled, the first few months are cleanup, not strategy. That work is real and it gets priced.
Hours per month
Most engagements land somewhere between 10 and 40 hours a month. The number of standing meetings and reports drives most of it.
Scope of the mandate
Reporting and forecasting is one price. Adding lender conversations, pricing analysis, or a fundraise is another.
Whether bookkeeping is included
Some firms quote CFO time only. Others include the bookkeeping and close underneath it. Compare like for like before you compare price.
Comparing it to a full time hire
A full time CFO is typically a base salary in the low to mid six figures, plus payroll costs, benefits, and often equity. A monthly retainer at the middle of the range above works out to a fraction of that, and it comes with no recruiting cycle and no severance risk. The tradeoff is availability. A fractional CFO is not sitting in your office every day, so the engagement has to be structured around a clear reporting calendar and a standing meeting.
Questions worth asking before you sign
- Who is actually doing the work, and what are their credentials?
- Is bookkeeping and the monthly close included, or billed separately?
- What do I receive each month, and by what date?
- How many hours does the retainer assume, and what happens if we go over?
- What does the first 90 days look like?
- How do we end the engagement if it is not working?
A reasonable way to start
Most engagements that work well start narrow. Get the close reliable, agree on a short set of reports that actually get read, then add forecasting and analysis once the foundation holds. That sequence also keeps the cost honest, because you are paying for senior time on decisions rather than on cleanup.
If you want a rough number for your own situation, the cost estimator covers the bookkeeping layer, and a 30 minute consultation covers the rest.