Workout & turnaround CFO · for PE-backed and lender-backed companies
When the lender is at the table, you need a weekly 13-week cash flow the bank believes, a lender-ready reporting package, and an operator who has taken a company through forbearance — and out the other side. That's the seat we fill.
Not in a workout? CipherCFO is still the CFO your business can't yet afford — board-ready monthly reporting, cash forecasting, and covenant monitoring, without the hire.
Monthly board report · sample
Sample Co.
Cash runway
18.4 mo
Gross margin
61.2%
13-week cash forecast
+ $412k
“Prepared for the board — by the CFO who knows your numbers cold.”
The gap
So the most important seat in your finance function sits empty — and you make seven-figure calls on month-old numbers.
"I’m running this business off numbers that were already stale when they landed."
The close drags past the deadline and the reports are stale the moment they land. You’re steering by the rear-view mirror.
"I don’t know how many weeks of runway we actually have until it’s already tight."
No forward view of runway, no covenant warning, no plan for the quarter where it gets tight — until it already has.
"The board wants a story and I’m the one who has to figure it out on the spot."
The board wants a narrative, the bank wants covenants, investors want a model — and it all lands on a founder who’s already stretched.
How it works
No new systems to learn. We work on top of the books you already keep.
Read-only access to QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite or Sage. Encrypted, scoped, revocable. Minutes to set up.
Reconciliation, runway, health scoring, covenant and margin review — every month, owned end-to-end by your CFO.
A polished report, a clear narrative, and a standing line to your CFO for the calls that matter.
Which situation are you in?
Step 1 — Your situation
What you get
A rolling 13-week cash forecast with scenarios, so you always know how long the runway really is.
Liquidity, leverage and efficiency ratios benchmarked and tracked, with plain-English context.
Continuous tracking against your loan covenants, with early warning long before a breach.
True product- and customer-level margins, with the leaks and the winners called out.
Vendor-spend analysis that surfaces savings, duplicate tools and creeping costs.
Budget-vs-actual variance and a board-ready narrative — the story behind the numbers, written for you.
Field guides from the practice: the 13-week cash flow forecast, variance analysis, what a CFO for hire actually does, the role of a turnaround CFO and a PE-backed CFO, and fractional CFO pricing.
The work, not the wrapper
Two of the analyses you get every month, shown the way we build them — the real formula, the real numbers, the result that decides the call. Not a mockup.
Covenant monitor · illustrative
DSCRDebt-service coverage
1.85×
vs. 1.25× covenant · +0.60× headroom
13-week cash forecast · illustrative
WeeklyEnding cash · wk 13
$1.08M
Liquidity floor · wk 8
$0.58M
Drawdown into a week-8 trough, then recovery — the curve a workout has to defend.
The deliverable
Not a data dump — a designed, plain-English financial briefing covering cash runway, covenant monitoring, margin by segment, budget variance, and a prioritised risk register. Delivered as a polished PDF and a one-screen summary, every month.
Financial Briefing
CONFIDENTIAL$2.4M
61%
Why this CFO
I’ve spent my career inside finance — building the forecasts, closing the books, managing cash through tight quarters, and sitting across the table from boards, banks and acquirers when the calls actually mattered. Not auditing companies from the outside; running the numbers from the inside.
No CPA on a wall, no Big-4 stamp. What you get instead is hard-won operating experience — through exits, an acquisition, and a debt workout that most CFOs will never see in a career.
$80M
Led the finance through a private company sale to close.
$15M
Closed an acquisition via public-company stock swap.
Forbearance
Steered a business through a private-capital workout — and out the other side.
The track record
$80M private sale
The situation
A growth-stage company preparing for acquisition needed financials that would survive buy-side due diligence — every number defensible, no surprises in the data room.
What I did
Rebuilt the close process, converted to accrual accounting, standardized the chart of accounts, and built the data room package from scratch.
The outcome
Closed an $80M private sale — no re-trades on the numbers.
$15M stock-swap acquisition
The situation
A company pursuing a public-company acquisition needed a financial model that could hold up under regulatory review and carry the board through an unfamiliar structure.
What I did
Built the acquisition model, structured the stock-swap mechanics, and owned the financial narrative from offer through close.
The outcome
Closed a $15M public-company stock-swap acquisition — on schedule, on terms.
Private-capital forbearance
The situation
A business under covenant pressure had weeks to convince its lender to hold rather than call the loan. The cash picture wasn't clear and there was no credible plan on paper.
What I did
Built the 13-week cash flow from scratch, drafted the forbearance request, and managed every lender communication through the negotiation.
The outcome
Secured the forbearance, stabilized cash, and steered the company through the workout — and out the other side.
The value
Engagements typically run $5–12K / month — versus a $250K+ full-time hire. No long-term contract; honest pricing on the call.
~80%
less than a full-time CFO hire
3-day
monthly close, done for you
13-wk
rolling cash visibility
<1 wk
to stand up your function
“I built this for the company I wish I’d had on call when I was in the thick of it — a CFO’s judgment without a CFO’s salary. You don’t get a junior analyst and a template. You get me: the same person who’s been through the sale, the swap, and the workout.”
Not ready for a call?
Free, practical tools we actually use with clients — no call required.
What a fractional CFO actually costs, and how to scope an engagement.
Get it freeThe exact model we use to see runway 13 weeks out.
Get it freeTrack headroom against your loan covenants before a breach.
Get it freeInteractive tool · ~2 minutes
Is it time for a CFO?
7 questions, a scored result, and a free recommendation — no call required.
Not sure where to start?
See exactly what lands in your inbox every month before you commit to anything.
Open sample reportNot ready for either — start with the cash flow template or the pricing guide.
Browse free resourcesQuestions
A bookkeeper records what already happened and an accountant files it. A CFO reads the same numbers and tells you what to do next — where cash is heading, which margins are leaking, when a covenant gets tight, and what the board should hear. You keep your bookkeeper; we sit a level above them.
Yes — and here's exactly how. We connect to your accounting system using read-only OAuth, which means we never see your password and you can revoke access in seconds from your own system. Your financial data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest (AES-256). We do not share your numbers with third parties, and data is deleted at the end of your engagement on request. Full details are on our Security page.
QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, and Sage. If your books live in one of those, setup takes minutes — we work on top of what you already keep. If you're running a different ERP, reach out — we're actively working to incorporate additional systems and can often find a path forward.
Common, and fine. We'll tell you on the intro call what's needed to get a clean first report, and the monthly review surfaces the gaps as we go. You don't need to be audit-ready to start.
You get an experienced operator who's been in the CFO seat through exits, an acquisition, and a debt workout — not a junior analyst and not a template. Software does the heavy lifting on the data — our own TechForCFO suite, 12 QuickBooks apps we built — and the judgment and the narrative are the CFO's.
Engagements typically run $5–12K / month — a fraction of a $250K+ full-time CFO hire, with no long-term contract. We'll quote you straight on the intro call once we see your stage.
From the desk
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Read moreExplainerA practical guide to working capital management for manufacturers — free up cash trapped in AR, inventory, and AP.
Read moreBook an intro call
We’ll walk your numbers, show you what a board-ready report looks like on a business like yours, and tell you straight whether a fractional CFO is the right call right now.