The CFO and controller who lead the first conversation shall lead the engagement throughout its term, supported by the specialist resources of the firm at no additional fee.
You meet the people who will actually hold your seats, in the first hour, and they are the people who hold them in month twenty. In a category where the senior person in the pitch is routinely replaced by a junior after signature, this is the clause that costs the most to offer and is therefore worth the most.
A named backup is assigned to every seat on the account, carries the file from the first month, and assumes the seat within two business hours of an unplanned absence.
Somebody other than your CFO already knows your business, your close and your lender. Cover is drilled on your live file every quarter, so it is something we have already done rather than something we promise.
The scope of the engagement is set out in Schedule 2, agreed in writing at week three following the diagnostic, and reviewed at ninety days and each quarter thereafter.
The single most common failure in this category is that nobody wrote down what was being bought. Yours is written down before you commit to it, in terms specific enough to be judged, and it moves as the business moves without the fee moving with it.
Response times, close dates and reporting dates are as set out in Schedule 1. A close date missed for reasons within the firm’s control carries a credit against that month’s fee.
Adjectives are free. A scheduled figure with a credit attached is not. Schedule 1 is reproduced in full below, and it is the page to hold any firm against, including us.
The firm accepts no referral fee, commission or revenue share from any software vendor, lender, broker or adviser it recommends to a client.
Our only revenue is your fee. When we recommend a lender or a system, there is nothing in it for us, which is what makes the recommendation worth having.
Access is granted by role and withdrawn on exit. Confidentiality applies by default. All models, documentation, process material and systems configuration created on the engagement are the property of the client from the date of creation, in native editable format.
You are handing a finance function the keys to the bank. This says who can open what, and it says that everything built for you belongs to you as it is built — not a locked file, not a report you have to ask for, and nothing held back.
The engagement is delivered remotely across the United States and Canada, with attendance in person for the diagnostic, board meetings, lender and investor negotiations, transactions and the first month of any material change.
We hire for your sector rather than your commute, which is the only reason we can put someone in your seat who has run finance in a business like yours. Travel is booked around the moments where being in the room changes the outcome.
One fixed monthly fee. No hourly billing, no timesheets, no charge for correspondence, and no separate charge for specialist resources engaged under clause 1.1.
A quiet month and a brutal one cost the same. Nobody has to ask permission to raise something, and nobody inside the firm has a reason to keep you out of a specialist’s calendar.
The initial term is ninety days. Thereafter the engagement continues month to month, terminable by either party on sixty days’ written notice, with handover as set out in clause 1.10.
You are committing to a quarter, not a year, and after that you are free every month. A firm that is confident in the work does not need a lock-in to keep it.