What’s the Difference Between a Financial Controller and a CFO?

But keep in mind that a fractional CFO service can provide a dedicated, full-time CFO when the time comes. You get all of the advantages of a resource totally committed to your business, along with support staff, process, and more—without the overhead of hiring in-house. In a business, the chief financial officer (CFO) and controller work closely together. In the early startup days, a SaaS company can outsource its finance and accounting needs to bookkeepers and accountants.

At Driven Insights, we have clients who take advantage of Controller and/or CFO services depending on their specific needs. The easiest place to start in a controller vs. CFO comparison is to give you a description of each role.

What are your biggest financial challenges?

Choosing when to hire a SaaS CFO—whether full-time or fractional—depends on the gap between your current in-house expertise and your future business needs. These vary at each stage of growth, so it’s always important to hire in preparation for the next stage. You’re likely to get the most value from a fractional CFO service before you hit $50M in recurring revenue.

On the other hand, the CFO is primarily responsible for developing financial strategies that help a company achieve its objectives. They serve as advisors to senior management on all things related to finance and often hold ultimate decision-making authority on key financial matters. Whether you’re in the market for a full-time, dedicated CFO or experienced financial leadership on a fractional basis, an outsourced service will customize a solution to fit your needs. Yes, that’s right, some outsourced CFO service providers can dedicate a CFO to your business, one who has been trained to work alongside the rest of the finance & accounting team they’ve dedicated to your business.

Accrual accounting and revenue recognition

Business owners might be able to handle lower-level activities such as reporting (getting insight on CAC, Churn, Payback period etc) on their own. However, they might not have the expertise to engage in forecasting to help them identify the cash impact of a new feature they add to their product. At the same time, they CFO vs Finance Controller: Whom Does your SaaS Business Need? might not be able to appropriately analyze their data in order to provide insights into strategic decisions involving their business model, pricing model, and market expansion. The three primary financial manager positions in most businesses are bookkeeper or accountant, controller, and Chief Financial Officer or CFO.

We do not recommend this for smaller companies, as most startups at the seed or Series A stage don’t have enough tasks to require 40+ hours of work from a full-time CFO each week. The major issue here is that companies who hire a CFO too early end up paying someone a full-time, CFO-level salary to carry out tasks that aren’t CFO-level, and should be carried out by another https://quickbooks-payroll.org/ role. Additionally, a CFO typically isn’t involved in everyday accounting duties, data entry, supervision of bookkeeping staff, etc. CFOs are business advisors and contribute to the fundraising process, but don’t don’t oversee day-to-day financial data. They lead the accounting department and oversee financial reports like balance sheets and income statements.