What to Look For in a CFO (Even If You Only Need One Part-Time)
Hiring a CFO can feel like a big leap.
And if you’ve only worked with tax accountants or bookkeepers, it can be hard to know what to look for.
Here’s what great CFOs bring:
Strategic thinking (not just reporting)
Plain-English explanations
Experience with growth, not just compliance
Confidence to challenge your ideas—but always with support
You don’t need someone to give you 50 pages of spreadsheets. You need someone to:
Help you plan for hiring, pricing, or expansion
Make sure you never forget tax again
Translate your goals into numbers
A founder we worked with said, “I thought I needed a business coach. Turns out I needed someone to help me read my numbers.”
Whether you need a few hours a month or a regular sounding board, the right CFO helps you step into your next chapter with clarity.
From Stress to Strategy: How We Help Founders Shift Their Money Mindset
Money can feel heavy.
We’ve worked with founders who:
Avoid logging into their bank account
Don’t know how much they owe the ATO
Feel shame around their pricing or lack of savings
But the thing is—it’s not about being “bad with money.” It’s about not having the tools, support, or confidence.
What changes the game:
Clarity: understanding what’s really going on
Compassion: no judgment, just information
Coaching: helping you take action without fear
✅ Client story: A health clinic owner cried on our first call. She felt like she was failing. Within 3 months, she had paid off two tax debts, created a wage for herself, and started saving for school holidays. “I finally feel in control,” she told us.
Finance isn’t just numbers. It’s mindset, leadership, and freedom.
Building a Financial System That Grows With You
Your business has grown. But are your systems still keeping up?
It’s common to outgrow:
Spreadsheets
DIY bookkeeping
Manually pulling reports from Xero, Stripe, and your bank
Here’s what we recommend for businesses at different stages:
At $1M–$3M revenue:
Bookkeeper + cloud accounting software (like Xero)
Monthly reporting
Simple cash flow forecasting
A part-time finance partner (like a CFO or controller)
At $3M–$5M:
Custom dashboards
Profit tracking by service, team, or client
Streamlined payroll and payment systems
Planning cycles (quarterly forecast updates)
At $5M+:
Finance function with clearly defined roles (bookkeeper, controller, CFO)
Strategic planning and scenario modeling
Board-level reporting
✅ Client story: One agency came to us with $2.5M revenue and still tracked invoices manually. We helped them integrate Xero, Dext, and a cash flow tool. Time savings: 8 hours a week. Accuracy: 100%.
Great systems free up your team and give you data you can trust.
Why Founders Need Financial Visibility—Not Just Reports
Getting a profit & loss report from your accountant once a quarter isn’t the same as financial visibility.
Financial visibility means:
Knowing how much you can spend today
Understanding what’s coming in and out next month
Seeing whether your business model is actually profitable
Without this, it’s easy to:
Overhire or underinvest
Miss payment obligations
Delay key decisions out of fear
Your business deserves more than backwards-looking reports. It deserves a real-time financial dashboard that empowers you to lead.
Tax Planning Isn’t Just for Accountants: Why Smart Founders Do It Early
Most business owners only think about tax at the end of the financial year—when it’s too late to change the outcome.
But tax planning, done strategically before June 30, can help you:
Reduce your payable tax
Improve your cash flow
Reinvest in your business
Avoid nasty surprises
We work with clients in Q3 and Q4 to forecast their tax position and identify opportunities: prepaying expenses, maximising super, or shifting timing of revenue.
Tax planning isn’t just about saving money. It’s about taking control of your future.
What the Numbers Say: How to Know If You're Ready to Hire (Without Freaking Out)
Hiring is one of the most exciting—and terrifying—decisions a founder can make.
On one hand, it’s a sign of growth. On the other, it’s a big commitment: salary, onboarding, training, and the pressure to make it work.
So how do you know you’re financially ready?
1. Run the numbers first (before emotions take over)
We always start with a full cost model:
Base salary
Superannuation
Payroll tax (if applicable)
Software, hardware, and setup costs
Time lost in onboarding or handover
Once you know the true cost of hiring, you can build a revenue forecast to test whether your margins can sustain the new team member.
2. Map capacity and opportunity
If your current team (or you) are:
Working late
Saying no to work
Missing deadlines ... you’re already paying the cost of under-staffing.
Hiring isn’t just about freeing up time. It’s about protecting your business’s reputation and future revenue.
3. Model best, worst, and realistic scenarios
We help clients simulate:
What happens if the new hire is at 80% billable hours?
What if they’re not revenue-generating (e.g., admin, ops)?
What’s the breakeven point?
✅ Client story: One of our clients in a creative agency was terrified of hiring a senior designer. We ran the model and found they only needed 20 hours/week of billable time to break even. They hired—and doubled revenue in 9 months.
Hiring shouldn’t be a leap of faith. It should be a strategic move backed by your numbers.
Is It Time to Raise Your Prices? A Financial Perspective for Service Businesses
“Should I raise my prices?”
It’s one of the most common questions we hear from service-based founders. But too often, pricing advice is fluffy or emotional. You don’t need hype—you need clarity.
Here’s how to know, from a financial perspective, whether it’s time to raise your rates—and how to do it well.
First: Is your pricing aligned with your delivery model?
We often see businesses undercharging for:
High-touch, complex services
Customised solutions
Senior team involvement
Your pricing should reflect:
The time and expertise required
The results you deliver
The true cost of delivering (not just hourly wages)
✅ Use your P&L to calculate your gross profit margins by service or client type. That’s where the truth lives.
Signs it’s time to raise prices:
You're fully booked but not hitting your profit goals
Your costs (team, software, overheads) have increased
You're working with clients who expect gold for silver pricing
You’re the most affordable option in your market—and you shouldn’t be
How to raise prices without losing your best clients:
Communicate clearly and confidently
Explain the change, reinforce the value, and give notice.Add value—not just cost
Refine your offering or improve client experience alongside the price change.Test before you roll out
Try new pricing with new clients before applying it to existing ones.
✅ Pro tip: We often build pricing models with clients to simulate different rates, packages, and capacity levels so they can raise prices strategically, not emotionally.
Raising your prices isn’t greedy. It’s necessary. It’s part of scaling sustainably.
📌 You don’t need to apologise for wanting to be profitable. You need the numbers—and the confidence—to back it up.
Why Cash Flow Is the Real CEO Stress Test (And How to Fix It)
You can be profitable and still feel broke. That’s not a failure—it’s cash flow.
We’ve worked with founders earning multiple six or seven figures who still felt sick logging into their bank accounts. The problem wasn’t that their business was broken. It was that they didn’t have visibility.
Cash flow problems show up in sneaky ways:
Scrambling for money at BAS time
Not paying yourself regularly
Losing sleep over whether you can afford to hire
Here’s how we help clients fix it:
Build a 12-month cash flow forecast
Set aside money for tax and super
Create a salary plan for the founder
Improve the timing of receivables and payables
Cash flow is a lagging indicator of business health. If yours is tight, it doesn’t mean your business is broken. It means it needs strategy.
And the peace of mind that comes with knowing what’s coming.
How to Read Your Numbers Like a CEO: A Guide for Service-Based Founders
Let’s be honest: most founders don’t feel confident with financial reports.
That doesn’t mean you’re bad at business. It means no one has ever explained it in a way that’s actually useful.
At Goldi Group, we believe numbers shouldn’t be scary—they should be empowering.
If you want to step into your CEO role with confidence, here are the 3 reports every service-based founder should know, and how to use them to make better decisions:
1. The Profit & Loss Statement (P&L)
Also known as your income statement, this report shows your revenue, expenses, and net profit over a set time period.
What to look for:
Are you generating consistent revenue?
What are your biggest expense categories?
Is your profit growing over time?
✅ Pro tip: Don’t just look at total profit—look at profit margins (profit as a % of revenue). This helps you understand efficiency and scalability.
2. The Balance Sheet
This shows what your business owns (assets) and what it owes (liabilities), plus what’s left for you (equity).
What to look for:
Are you building retained earnings, or constantly drawing them out?
Do you owe more than you own?
How much working capital do you have (i.e., cash + receivables minus payables)?
✅ Pro tip: A strong balance sheet means resilience. It's what banks and investors look at first.
3. The Cash Flow Forecast
Cash is oxygen. You can be profitable on paper and still run out of cash.
We help clients build 12-month rolling forecasts that show:
When tax is due
When major expenses hit
How hiring or new clients will affect your bank balance
✅ Pro tip: Don’t leave this to your accountant once a year. Review it monthly so you can stay ahead.
Knowing your numbers isn’t about becoming a spreadsheet nerd. It’s about:
Feeling confident with decisions
Being proactive, not reactive
Leading your business like a CEO
📌 When you understand your numbers, you stop operating in the dark—and start building with intention.
What a Fractional CFO Can Do for Your Business
As your business grows, so do the numbers—and so does the complexity behind them.
Many founders rely on a trusted bookkeeper to handle the essentials: reconciling bank accounts, paying bills, lodging BAS. But at a certain point, you need more than the numbers recorded. You need someone to help you understand them.
That’s where a Fractional CFO comes in.
Unlike a bookkeeper, a CFO is focused on strategy: how your numbers tell a story about where your business is heading, what needs attention, and where you can grow.
Here’s what a Fractional CFO can help you do:
Turn data into decisions
Understand your true profit margins
Optimise pricing, team structure, and capacity
Plan for growth, hiring, or exit
Spot risks before they become issues
Think of your bookkeeper as the person keeping your car engine running. Your CFO is the one helping you plan the route, avoid traffic, and reach your destination faster.
If your business is earning $1M+ and you’re still running it from the driver’s seat and the engine bay, it might be time to ask what’s possible with the right co-pilot.