B2B CFO® is a registered trademark of its owner. This site is an independent comparison by Steven Palmieri (Palmieri Enterprises) and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by B2B CFO.
B2B CFO comparisonWhat the monthly work actually is
A fractional CFO engagement and a Tax CFO month are both leadership. The floor under them is different, and the difference is the closed month and the return.
What a fractional CFO firm publishes
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Their about page describes leadership for a privately held company. The service list is cash flow, bank loans, profitable growth, company value, strategic planning, and preparing a business to sell, transfer, or make an acquisition. The playbook then walks strategic planning, owner objectives, a gap diagnosis, a strategy session, perform and report, and legacy.
Monthly bookkeeping is not one of the names on that list. Preparing the return is not one of the names on that list. That is an observation of the list, not a guess about the bookkeeper you already have.
What the Tax CFO month is
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The Tax CFO month starts when the bank and the books agree. The payday run remains with the payroll company already in your agreement, and the monthly work here includes setting that company up. The return is written from those closed months, and the fall is used while a decision can still change the year. Leadership can sit on that floor. It does not replace the floor.
Steven Palmieri is the name on the close, and the return prepared here is built from those closed months. Your payroll company keeps payday, and setting that company up is part of the month. Signed assurance is a different product from this month, and the disclosures page is where that stop is written. Open the disclosures page for the list of reports this comparison leaves alone.
An owner can hold both models in one year if the jobs stay named. A partner can lead a bank conversation or a sale. Even with a partner leading a bank meeting, the close and the return can stay here as named jobs. The mistake is paying twice for the same unnamed job, or paying once and discovering in March that nobody closed February.
Bring the proposal you were given to the three questions. Circle the sentence that names who touches the books. If that sentence is missing, the proposal is about leadership only, and the close is still an open hire. That is a fair product when you already have a closer. It is a gap when you do not.
A month you can check from the bank statement has a start date and an end date. The statement is matched, the open items are listed, and the list is short enough to read in one sitting. That closed month is what the return is built on. A leadership meeting can use those figures. It cannot invent them when the match was never done.
Ask for the cadence of the close before you compare fees. If one side meets once a quarter and the other meets when the bank file arrives, the word month means two different rhythms. Write the cadence next to the fee. A quarterly conversation and a monthly close are both real offers. They are not the same purchase just because both people call the work fractional.