Financial Strategy or Financial planning it's when a Fractional CFO help you set long- and short-term financial goals and build a strategy to achieve them. Financial planning also helps you assess whether your company is on the right track and identify ways to improve different areas of your business. For example:
- Know when your company might run out of cash and the cash impact of every decision — such as hiring, increasing ad spend, expanding into a new market, etc.
- How efficiently you use your resources. Are you spending too much money on Customer Success costs, is your marketing efficient enough. How much are you spending on acquiring a customer, etc.
A fractional CFO will make sure your cash flow forecasts are updated monthly, giving you a clear view of your runway and helping you make smarter decisions as things change.
🎯 Why you should link financial planning to one goal?
Financial planning needs to be linked to a goal. At different points in time, a company will have different goals.
Here are the most common goals you have when dealing with financial planning:
• Raising money through equity
• Taking a loan
• Selling the company in X years
• Improve some financial metrics like gross profit margin, reaching profitability, increasing sales with X %, etc.
You should focus on one goal at a time because some goals contradict each other.
You can’t tell investors you're raising equity while also planning to sell the business in two years — no serious investor will fund a company they know is heading for a quick exit.
As your Fractional CFO I make sure your financial planning is focused on a single goal that drives your decisions in the right direction.
Taking a loan vs. raising money through equity are very different goals. An investor that takes equity and gives you cash expects a company to grow quickly. They won't invest in your business if they see you dealing with a saturated market.
When applying for a loan, banks will review your balance sheet to assess your assets and evaluate your retained earnings. Retained earnings represent the total profits or losses the company has accumulated since its incorporation.
Businesses that are growing quickly have huge losses because all the profits are reinvested. If they raised any funds previously, then the retained earnings will be significantly negative, and banks tend not to like that.
Selling a business in X years is different from the other goals. You need to ensure you are profitable and that there is an increase year over year while growing your revenue, etc.
⚡ Financial planning & short-term decision-making
Setting a goal is a long-term plan; however, financial planning helps you with short-term decision-making, as well. For example:
• It will help you understand how hiring is affecting your short-term cash forecasts.
• It will help you understand how long your business can sustain itself if things continue as they are.
🤑 Financial planning & resource allocation
Financial planning also helps you assess if you use your cash efficiently.
Metrics like revenue per employee, sales and marketing costs as a percentage of revenue, customer support costs as a percentage of revenue, cost allocation across departments, etc., help you evaluate resource efficiency.
As I use financial planning to guide you through these metrics so you can lead with clarity and make decisions backed by numbers.
Do you need help with building a financial strategy for your business? Let's book a call:
