Issue #29 & Aug 31st, 2026

Happy Monday!

It’s been a minute. After a little August break, The Net Effect is back.

This week’s guest post is from my friend Luke Templin.

CFO services can feel elusive, but in reality, you may already be providing pieces of them to your clients without calling it that.

I think accounting firms make CFO services sound way harder than they need to be.

When we hear “fractional CFO,” we start thinking about forecasts, dashboards, KPIs, cash flow models, scenario planning, and all the other things we probably should build before we dare charge someone for CFO services.

I used to think about it that way too. But the longer I do this work, the more I think the actual service is much simpler.

A business owner is paying to put another strategic mind in the room who understands the numbers. That’s really it.

Think about the conversations you already have with clients.

“I’m thinking about hiring another salesperson.”

“Can I afford to open another location?”

“Revenue is up, so why does cash still feel tight?”

“Should I raise prices?”

“Can I take more money out of the business?”

If you are helping a client think through those questions, you are already doing pieces of CFO work.

The problem is that a lot of accounting firms give this thinking away between discussions about the tax return or last month’s bookkeeping.

Most accounting firms just don’t call it a service. Or get paid for it.

One of the easiest ways I’ve found to move a client conversation from accounting to advisory is to ask:

Where do you see the business at the end of this quarter or year?

Then stop talking.

If the owner says they want to grow from $3 million to $4 million, you suddenly have plenty to discuss.

·      Where is the extra $1 million coming from?

·      Can the current team handle it?

·      Do we need to hire?

·      How much cash will the growth require?

·      Can we fund it internally or will we need debt?

Now we aren’t talking about what happened last month. We’re talking about what happens next.

I also think accountants underestimate the experience we bring into these conversations.

Most business owners know their business extremely well. But we get to see inside a lot of businesses. We’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.

We’ve watched companies hire too early. We’ve seen businesses grow revenue while destroying margins. We’ve watched owners run out of cash during periods of rapid growth. We’ve seen compensation plans that work and ones that absolutely do not.

That pattern recognition matters. Sometimes it is more valuable than building another 52-week forecast.

The forecast is a tool. Your experience and judgment are the service. That is how I think about CFO services.

Accountants love getting things perfect. Normally that’s a good trait.

It becomes a problem when we convince ourselves we need the perfect CFO offering before we can sell one. You don’t.

Find one client who already asks you strategic questions and make the conversation more intentional.

Ask where they want to go.

Talk through what has to happen financially to get there.

Then build whatever tools the conversation requires.

Maybe you need a forecast.

Maybe you need a cash flow model.

Maybe you need to model a hire.

Or maybe the client just needs somebody who understands the financial consequences of the decision they’re about to make. You’ll figure out the offering by doing the work.

This is another thing that has made CFO work feel much simpler to me.

At the end of the day, there are only so many financial levers we can pull:

There might be 100 different strategies underneath those levers, but financially we keep coming back to the same handful of choices.

A good CFO conversation helps the owner figure out which lever to pull, what happens when they pull it, and what tradeoffs come with the decision.

You don’t need a giant FP&A department to have that conversation. You need to understand the numbers, understand the business, and be willing to give the owner your perspective.

Most accounting firms are closer to offering CFO services than they think.

They just need to stop giving the best part away for free.

Question of the week

If you enjoyed this one, check out Luke’s Cas Cache and connect with him on Linkedin!

Have a lovely week,

- Tailor

P.S. I’ll be speaking at Intuit Connect this fall!

If you haven’t registered yet, you can use code “Tailorconnect” for $300 off your ticket.