CFO training and development
Recently moved from IB to a fast growing, small but stable business (~$10m revenue, 20 employees, growing 50%+ YoY for the three years in business). I am running finance and was sold on the premise of moving into the CFO role within the next 3 years.
While I feel good about my abilities with strategic finance and the things you would expect coming from IB, I am completely deficient on many aspects of the day to day accounting (outsourced for the most part) and operations.
CEO seems fine with it, but if I want to take ownership of all finance related functions (even from a high level) I feel I need a better understanding. Any recommendations?
-Sit side by side w/ the head of FP&A and study the company's approach to budgeting and allocating for strategic initiatives and regular operating costs
-Participate in a couple of month end closes w/ the Accounting team and see how the GL gets reconciled
-Is there a treasury group? You want to analyze their debt servicing and credit situation
-The rest is just managing / overseeing the P&L and getting a handle on the levers you'd need to pull to boost / support operating income targets
Only other things to consider is whether the company is acquisitive? Do they handle M&A internally or bring on bankers? Are they going through rounds of fundraising to fuel their growth? Issuing debt?
The rest is insuring proper financial controls, knowing some GAAP rules, and you might have to be responsible for ERP implementations and management assuming they grow past a certain point and have to do system upgrades.
Good luck!
Appreciate this. The company is small but growing. Without giving too much away, we manage real estate with hundreds of employees, so the accounting is somewhat complex. The corporate team is mostly just heads of their respective divisions (sales, HR, operations, etc) with some admin / operations employees as well.
I took the place of two extremely subpar finance employees and am solo everything finance outside of our outsourced accounting. This makes observing / asking questions near impossible. I have some old models and forecasts I’ve improved upon, but it’s sort of trial by fire.
That's actually not a bad spot to be in - given the compartmentalization taking place there are probably a core group of reports that the CEO relies on that you would need to know cold - how they're prepared, what success looks like, and how to spot red flags. So you just need to ramp up on learning the business cold - know how the money gets made.
Beyond that, there's probably a dedicated team responsible for consolidations and financial reporting - you'll want to embed yourself within that group or build a direct line of communication with them.
On the other side is the FP&A group and management of the P&L and budgeting process.
Getting a handle across both groups would take you 75% of the way there as far as preparation.
The rest is just exposure. Problems have a habit of recurring during normal seasonal cycles so as you're getting your reps in just keep a brain bank of any financial/accounting issues and how they get handled - who they get delegated to, that sort of thing. Building relationships is your best approach here.
Then you put it all together. Easier said than done, but doable.
Thank you! One day at a time it seems.
Lookup SecretCFO or something on Twitter. I think he has interesting material. May be useful for you.
This is helpful thank you. I’m more so looking for external knowledge I can use to get up to speed. Would really appreciate recommendations for classes, books, trainings, etc
Eos dolorem totam aperiam voluptas suscipit est similique. Unde ex quia ut libero aut et.
Soluta consectetur maiores quia eum molestias. Veritatis repellendus dolores sit tenetur. Molestias sed at est corporis error nemo.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...