Outsourced CFO for a scaling B2B SaaS company

The Challenge

A B2B software company specialising in process automation for the logistics sector had been growing at 40% per year for three consecutive years. With twenty-two employees, an ARR above three million euros, and active conversations with four venture capital funds, the company had clearly outgrown the accounting model it had started with.

The problem was structural: the CEO managed finances with the support of an external bookkeeping firm that closed the books three weeks late. There was no reliable cash flow forecast, SaaS financial KPIs (MRR, churn, CAC, LTV) were calculated manually in spreadsheets each time an investor asked for them, and internal management reporting did not exist. When funds requested documentation to begin due diligence, the team needed two weeks to prepare data that should have been available the next day.

Hiring a full-time CFO would have solved the problem, but at a cost of between €120,000 and €150,000 per year plus benefits — a figure the board was unwilling to commit to before closing the round. The company needed C-level financial intelligence without the fixed cost that comes with it.

Our Approach

The engagement began with a two-week financial diagnostic during which we audited the close process, the quality of the accounting data, and the consistency between the books, the CRM, and the payments platform. This analysis revealed three core problems: the bookkeeping firm was recording revenue on a cash basis rather than an accruals basis (distorting the true MRR figure), there was no systematic reconciliation between receipts and invoices, and customer acquisition costs were being expensed in the month of payment rather than amortised over the contract period.

We corrected the accounting foundation and designed a financial model structured across three layers: operational reporting (monthly close in five days with profit and loss statements by business line), planning and forecasting (a rolling twelve-month model updated each month with actual results), and investor reporting (standard SaaS KPIs — MRR, ARR, NRR, LTV/CAC, gross and net churn — in dashboard format).

For the monthly close, we automated the extraction of data from the payments platform (Stripe) and reconciled it directly against the books, removing the main source of manual delay. We established a close calendar with weekly milestones and a review process with the CEO on the first Monday of each month.

For Series A preparation, we built the financial model that funds would require: a normalised three-year historical, five-year projections under three scenarios (base, upside, and conservative), a use-of-proceeds analysis, and modelling of the round’s impact on the company’s metrics. We attended financial due diligence meetings with the funds alongside the CEO, answering technical questions from investment teams directly.

Results

The first monthly close under the new model was completed in four and a half days, ahead of the five-day target. The second month closed in exactly five days, establishing the working rhythm. The twelve-month cash flow forecast, validated against actual closes over four consecutive months, showed an average variance of 2.8% — within the ±3% target agreed at the outset.

All three funds that initiated formal due diligence on the company completed their financial review in under two weeks each, compared to the two months the company had originally estimated for that process. One of the funds specifically cited the quality of the financial reporting as a differentiating factor in their decision to accelerate the process.

The company closed its Series A four months after the engagement began. The total cost of the service over the sixteen-month relationship — including the round-preparation phase — represented savings of over €130,000 compared to the cost of having hired a full-time CFO from the start of the project.