The Perpetual CFO Diagnostic helps business owners gain cash flow visibility, improve profitability, and build scalable financial systems without the cost of a full time CFO.
The Perpetual CFO Diagnostic is a structured financial review designed for CEOs and founders who want CFO level insight before committing to a longer engagement.
In a 30 minute working session we:
Review how you manage cash flow and runway today
Look at margins and pricing discipline at a high level
Assess your financial reporting and forecasting cadence
Discuss how ready your systems are to support your next stage of growth
You leave with a clear view of where you are strong, where there are gaps, and what a focused 90 day plan could look like.
Our framework brings big company financial discipline to small and mid sized businesses. It is built around four pillars.
We use a rolling 13 month cash flow forecast and runway analysis so you can see upcoming constraints before they happen and plan around them.
We look at margin by service or product, pricing practices, discounts, scope changes, and write offs to find leakage and protect profitability.
We focus on forward looking leadership reporting, not just historical results. That includes forecasts, simple driver based models, and budget versus forecast versus actual views.
We review systems, processes, and controls to see whether finance can scale with growth, support lenders or investors, and avoid last minute scrambles for key reports.
Our CFO work is goal driven. Every engagement starts with clear business outcomes, such as improving cash reliability, achieving margin targets, or supporting growth milestones, and we align the financial cadence to those goals.
Many businesses already have bookkeeping and tax support but lack a true financial strategy layer. This often shows up as:
Cash flow surprises
Thin or volatile margins
Slow or unclear reporting for leadership
Difficulty answering lender or investor questions
Most financial support functions are reactive. They explain what already happened. A fractional CFO is proactive. The goal is to help leadership see ahead, not behind, using forecasts, scenario planning, and systems that give you foresight rather than after-the-fact reporting.
Industry research consistently shows that better cash flow visibility and rolling forecasts are linked to stronger growth outcomes and fewer crises. Our role as a fractional CFO is to close that gap in a practical way, using tools and routines that fit the size and stage of your company.
As part of the diagnostic, we can share:
CFO diagnostic checklist & scorecard
A simple checklist that highlights strengths and risks across cash flow, margins, reporting, and growth readiness based on your answers in the session.
A view only forecasting template you can copy into your own Google account. It helps you see inflows, outflows, and runway over a 13 month horizon.
These tools are designed to give you something tangible you can continue to use, whether or not you choose to engage us beyond the diagnostic.
After your diagnostic, you receive:
If there is a mutual fit, we can also outline what an ongoing fractional CFO engagement would look like for your business.
If you are responsible for cash, margins, and growth and want a clearer, more structured view of your financial position, a short diagnostic can be a useful starting point.
Disclaimer: This page and the CFO Diagnostic are for general information and planning purposes only and do not constitute tax, legal, or formal CPA advice.