Senior finance leadership for a fraction of a CFO's salary.
Most businesses between £1 million and £20 million of revenue cannot justify a full-time CFO and cannot run without one. A virtual CFO gives you the person: forecasting, pricing, funding, board packs and the hard conversations, on a fixed monthly fee.
The whole job, not the visible half.
Everything below is in scope on the plan that includes virtual cfo. Nothing on this list is an add-on.
- A named senior finance lead with a monthly strategy session
- Annual budget and rolling 12-month forecast, updated monthly
- Board and investor reporting pack with commentary
- Pricing, margin and unit-economics analysis by product and channel
- Funding readiness: data room, model and lender or investor conversations
- Oversight of the bookkeeping, tax and payroll teams so nothing falls between them
Three situations we see every week.
Founders running finance themselves
You are the CEO, the head of sales and the CFO. The third job is the one that gets done last and costs the most when it is wrong.
Businesses preparing to raise or sell
Investors and buyers price the quality of the numbers. A year of consistent packs and a defensible forecast changes the valuation.
Groups expanding into a second country
Entity structure, transfer pricing, cash repatriation and which entity carries which cost are CFO decisions, not bookkeeping ones.
Four steps, then a rhythm.
Diagnostic
A 30-day review of the numbers, the systems and the questions the business is not asking.
Plan
A budget, a forecast and a set of KPIs agreed with you, plus the reporting calendar.
Monthly cadence
The pack, the strategy session and the decisions that come out of it. Every month.
Events
Fundraise, acquisition, restructuring or exit: the CFO leads the finance workstream.
The rules differ. So does the work.
The same service, applied to each jurisdiction's law. Figures checked September 2026.
Structuring for EIS and SEIS investment, R&D relief, group relief and the salary-dividend-pension mix are standard parts of the UK CFO brief.
Everything about the UK ↗Free-zone versus mainland structure, corporate tax qualification, substance and profit repatriation are the questions a UAE business needs answered before they become expensive.
Everything about the UAE ↗Entity election, state nexus, investor-ready C-corp structure and the QSBS exclusion for founders are where a US virtual CFO earns the fee.
Everything about the USA ↗One senior accountant. One flat fee. Three countries.
Group figures are Shaazford Global LLC's published numbers across all its service lines.
How is this different from an accountant?
An accountant records and files. A CFO decides: what to charge, what to spend, when to hire, how to fund it. The virtual CFO does the second job and oversees the first.
How many hours do I get?
It is scoped by outcome, not hours. A typical engagement is the equivalent of two to four days a month, front-loaded around month end and board meetings.
Can the CFO join board meetings?
Yes. Presenting the numbers to the board or to investors is part of the role.
What if I need more during a fundraise?
Fundraising and transaction support is scoped as a project on top of the retainer, agreed in advance.
Talk to us about virtual cfo.
Thirty minutes, no pitch deck. Tell us the entities and the countries, and we will tell you honestly what applies and what it costs.