A funding round within twelve months.
Diligence is a stress test of whether your numbers were ever built to be examined by somebody who does not trust you.
Fractional CFO
Fractional CFO for startups and growing technology companies
Numminen Advisory is a fractional CFO practice in Helsinki, working with internationally focused growth companies. We work with technology companies whose finance function has to carry more complexity than their size suggests: several legal entities, more than one accounting framework running at once, and capital arriving from investors and public funding at the same time.
Most finance problems in growth companies are not accounting problems. They are structural ones that were solved for a smaller company and never revisited as the company scales.
4days a month
Typically two to seven
What a fractional CFO does
A fractional CFO is a senior finance leader who works with a company part-time on a monthly retainer instead of being hired full-time.
Capital. Where funding comes from, what it costs, how long it lasts, and what the company has to look like structurally before anyone gives you more of it.
Board and investor reporting. A reporting pack that is read before the meeting, with figures that reconcile and questions anticipated.
Cash and planning. Runway, the assumptions underneath it, the hiring plan, and the point after which raising stops being a choice.
Group structure and reporting. Consolidation and intercompany, plus reporting under more than one framework at the same time.
Audit and diligence readiness. Preparing the company for a fast and efficient audit process.
A fractional CFO does not close your books, run payroll or file your VAT. That is a controller and an accounting firm, and this work sits above that layer.
AI in finance
How AI changes fractional CFO work
At Numminen Advisory, AI handles the preparation in fractional CFO work: pulling ledgers, reconciling accounts and drafting variance commentary. Joanna Numminen runs these systems in her own daily finance operations, so the retained days go to judgement and board decisions. Nothing posts to a ledger until the CFO approves it.
| Finance task | What AI does now | What stays with the CFO |
|---|---|---|
| Month-end close | Pulls the trial balance and ties bank and sub-ledgers to the ledger each morning. | Judgement on accruals and estimates, and sign-off of the close. |
| Variance commentary | Drafts first-pass commentary against budget and prior month for every material line. | What the movement means for the business and what the board needs to hear. |
| Cash and runway | Rolls the thirteen-week cash view forward from the bank feed every working day. | Scenario choices and the conversation with the board and the bank. |
| Board pack | Assembles the pack from the reconciled ledger in the agreed format. | The story the numbers tell, and accountability for them. |
How we run it
- Joanna built the workspace behind every retainer: one project per client, with its own context, skills and integrations.
- Reconciliation tie-outs run every working day at 7:00 and report breaks before the first call of the day.
- Integrations are read only by default.
When to hire a fractional CFO
Most startups engage a part-time CFO when they start to scale finance operations, but do not yet require a full-time experienced finance leader.
Your first audit, or a change of auditor.
The gap between books that are broadly right and books that survive an audit is wider than most founders expect, and the work to close it happens months ahead.
A second entity.
A second country brings consolidation, intercompany balances, transfer pricing and often two accounting frameworks at once.
Public funding at scale.
Grants and public funding carry cost eligibility rules and allocation logic that have to be designed into the accounting from the start. Retrofitting them afterwards is where the money gets lost.
None of these is a revenue threshold. We have seen a three-million-euro company with three entities and a grant portfolio that badly needed senior finance, and a twelve-million-euro single-entity business that genuinely did not.
Fractional, interim, outsourced: which one you are looking for
The three terms get used interchangeably and mean different things.
Fractional CFO
Ongoing and part-time, typically two to seven days a month, with no end date. The right shape when the work is senior but intermittent, which is the honest description of most companies below roughly ten million in revenue.
Interim CFO
A defined period with an end, usually because a CFO has left or a transaction needs dedicated hands until it closes.
Outsourced CFO
Usually a package sold by an accounting firm alongside bookkeeping. Useful, and a different product from this one, because the seat sits inside the provider’s organisation.
The companies we usually work with
Patterns matter more than requirements. Most companies show two or three of these, few show all of them, and none of them is a condition of working together.
- A new investment round on the horizon, or close to closing.
- A parent company with subsidiaries abroad.
- More than one reporting framework live at the same time, typically local statutory rules plus IFRS, and US GAAP when the counterparty is American.
- Capital from more than one source: venture equity alongside venture debt or public funding.
- A competent controller already in place, and a founder-CEO carrying the investor relationship alone.
The useful question is whether a competent in-house controller or accountant would be out of their depth in your situation. Where the answer is yes, this is usually our work. Where you are not sure, that is a reasonable thing to bring to a first call.
Who this is not for. If you have one entity, one framework and one source of capital, you do not need a fractional CFO. You need a good controller and a sharper brief to your accounting firm, and we will tell you so.
Fractional CFO
Behind the practice
Numminen Advisory is founded and run by Joanna Numminen. Fifteen years in finance inside international technology companies, from audit at Deloitte through controller and finance director roles to a CFO seat.
ACCAQualified since 2017Member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
MScInternational Accounting and FinanceBayes Business School, City, University of London
MAEconomics, majoring in Controlling and Corporate FinanceKraków University of Economics
What it costs
All fees are fixed and quoted against scope before the work starts. Amounts exclude VAT.
| Retainer | Commitment | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Light | 2 days a month | 3 500 € |
| Standard | 4 days a month | 6 500 € |
| Embedded | 7 days a month | 10 500 € |
What moves the number is how many days the work genuinely takes. That follows from how many entities exist and how many frameworks are live. A running transaction moves it further, and the month’s workload does not.
For comparison, a full-time CFO in Finland costs roughly 11 800 to 12 300 euros a month fully loaded, taking the national average CFO salary in Duunitori’s salary data and adding employer contributions. That is before recruitment fees, equity, and the three to five months it takes to hire.
How a fractional CFO engagement starts
If you are evaluating our fit for your business needs, we typically assess suitability in three steps:
Step one
Intro call.
About forty-five minutes, on what is unclear, what is urgent, and whether a fractional CFO is the right answer at all.
Step two
Fixed-scope diagnostic.
Three to five days at a fixed fee, ending in a written findings memo with a ranked remediation list and the euros at risk quantified where they can be. Some conclude that you should hire a controller first, and we will say so plainly.
Step three
Retainer.
Once the work turns out to be continuous. Minimum three months, invoiced monthly in advance.
Track record
Our track record as a finance leader
Due diligence and integration. Supported an applied AI group through financial due diligence and post-deal integration by a global semiconductor company, after building its finance function from the ground up.
Group consolidation. Led end-to-end group consolidation across every entity in a fast-scaling multi-country group, owning the full close cycle.
Three frameworks at once. Ran Finnish reporting, IFRS and US GAAP concurrently off a single underlying ledger in a B2B SaaS group, alongside a control framework built from scratch.
Venture rounds. Prepared the financial materials and ran the due diligence for venture rounds, from the company’s side of the table.
Systems. Owned NetSuite as product owner across offices in five countries, including the implementation projects and not only the specification.
Numminen Advisory is founded and run by Joanna Numminen. ACCA qualified since 2017, after training in audit at Deloitte. MSc in International Accounting and Finance, Bayes Business School, City, University of London. MA in Economics majoring in Controlling and Corporate Finance, Kraków University of Economics.
Common questions
What is a fractional CFO?
A fractional CFO is a senior finance leader you retain part-time, on a monthly basis. The work is the same work a CFO does. You buy the share of it your company actually needs, which for most companies below roughly ten million in revenue is two to seven days a month.
What is the difference between a fractional CFO and an interim CFO?
The difference is the shape of the commitment. Fractional work is ongoing and part-time, sized to a company that needs senior finance judgement a few days a month. Interim work covers a defined period with an end, usually because a CFO has left or a transaction needs dedicated hands until it closes.
How much does a fractional CFO cost?
A fractional CFO in this market is priced by the month. Numminen Advisory retainers run from 3 500 to 10 500 euros a month depending on how many days the work takes. A full-time CFO in Finland costs roughly 11 800 to 12 300 euros a month fully loaded, based on Duunitori’s salary data, before recruitment fees, equity and the three to five months it takes to hire.
What makes you different from an accounting firm’s CFO service?
An accounting firm’s CFO product is a seat inside their organisation, usually sold alongside the bookkeeping. Numminen Advisory is founded and run by Joanna Numminen: fifteen years inside international technology companies, ACCA, and group consolidations built from zero in more than one of them. The same person turns up every month, and that person has sat in the seat.
What are your qualifications?
Joanna Numminen has been ACCA qualified since 2017, after training in audit at Deloitte, and holds an MSc in International Accounting and Finance from Bayes Business School, City, University of London, and an MA in Economics majoring in Controlling and Corporate Finance from Kraków University of Economics. In a market where most finance credentials are Finnish, ACCA is the one an international fund recognises without explanation.
Who provides fractional CFO services?
The market has three kinds of provider. Accounting firms sell a CFO product alongside bookkeeping. Interim brokers place people into defined assignments. And independent practices like Numminen Advisory work directly with a small number of companies at a time. The third is the right shape when the work needs one senior person who knows your group.
Should we hire a fractional CFO or a controller?
Hire the controller first, almost always. Senior finance brought into a function without a reliable monthly close spends its first six months doing controller work at CFO cost, and then leaves. If your close does not land on a predictable date with accruals and a review before it circulates, that is the thing to fix.
Which accounting frameworks do you work with?
Finnish accounting rules, IFRS and US GAAP, often more than one of them at once in the same group. That concurrency is the part most finance functions at this size are not built for.
Do you replace our accounting firm?
No. Your accounting firm keeps the books and we work above that layer. Where the relationship is not working, the problem is usually the brief, and fixing the brief is cheaper than switching.
What language does the work run in?
The work runs in English, which is the language of the data room, the diligence process and the investor relationship.