Symptoms of a missing finance function
No line of sight on cash
Future revenue and cash flow are a guess, not a plan.
Caught off guard by big costs
No way to plan and fund major expenses with confidence.
Growth has stalled
The business is not scaling to its potential or expectations.
Profitability is a black box
Limited visibility into cost and margin by product, project, or customer.
No roadmap forward
An undefined long-term plan and the moves required to reach it.
These are growing pains, not dead ends.
Every one of them is solvable with the right person owning the numbers and the right processes behind them.
The layer most finance teams are missing
Most growing businesses have the first two layers covered. The third, forward-looking finance leadership, is where value is created and where I come in.
Bookkeeper / CPA Firm
Clean, accurate, timely books and monthly close.
Tax Advisor / Attorney
Filings, entity structure, and regulatory obligations.
Fractional CFO
Forecasting, strategy, profitability, capital, and M&A.
Built at the highest levels of finance
Louis Neff
Fifteen years across corporate finance, private equity, and the C-suite. I bring the rigor of a Fortune 500 finance organization and the urgency of a turnaround to businesses that need both.
Corporate Finance
GE Aerospace FMP alumnus. 10+ years across FP&A, controllership, and finance transformation.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Closed $3B+ in transactions at GE Aerospace: acquisitions, divestitures, JVs, and partnerships.
Private Equity
Delivered 8 to 10x value-to-fee for PE portfolio businesses at Alvarez & Marsal.
CFO Leadership
Grew SaaS ARR from $200K to $10M and swung EBITDA from -$4M to +$2M in 24 months.
Industries and businesses I know well
Hands-on experience across complex, multi-site, and high-growth environments.
🏭 Manufacturing
Multi-site operations, cost structure, and margin by product.
✈ Aerospace & Defense
Program economics, complex contracts, and make-vs-buy.
☁ SaaS & B2B Tech
ARR growth, unit economics, and the path to profitability.
💼 Professional Services
Utilization, project profitability, and capacity planning.
♻ Plastics & Recycling
Throughput, commodity exposure, and working capital.
🌱 Agriculture
Seasonality, asset-heavy economics, and cash cycles.
What I own for your business
Dedicated financial leadership that connects day-to-day numbers to long-term goals.
Fractional & Interim Leadership
I act as your CFO: owning forecasting, the operating plan, board and lender reporting, and the financial decisions that steer the business.
Technical Reporting & Analysis
Clear, decision-grade reporting and analysis: KPIs, dashboards, and profitability by product, project, and customer.
M&A Support
Evaluating inorganic growth, partnerships, and exits, from screening through diligence and integration.
Performance & Profitability
Finding and pulling the operational levers that grow the top line, reduce cost, and expand margin.
What you bring, and what sits outside scope
My work builds on a sound financial foundation. These items are prerequisites that keep the engagement focused on high-value finance leadership.
Four ways to work together
Flat monthly retainers. No hourly billing, no surprises. Scale up or down as your needs change.
Foundation
Growth
Strategic
Sponsor
Flat retainers billed monthly, with no hourly clock. Deal execution, fundraising, and multi-entity complexity are scoped separately.
Exactly what is included at each level
| Capability | Foundation | Growth | Strategic | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rolling 180-day operating plan | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Revenue forecasting | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cost forecasting | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Margin forecasting | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Revenue analysis | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Cost analysis | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Deep-dive data analytics | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Multi-year strategic planning | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Capital allocation | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| M&A advisory & screening | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Interim / embedded CFO coverage | ✓ | |||
| Board, lender & sponsor reporting | ✓ |
Most engagements start at Foundation or Growth, then expand into Strategic or a sponsor-backed mandate over time.
Project work & pricing adjustments
High-intensity and specialized work is scoped separately, so monthly retainers stay clean and predictable.
Diligence, modeling, negotiation, and integration support.
Investor and lender materials, model, and process management.
Assessment through a board-ready operating model.
A fraction of the cost of a full-time hire
A fractional engagement typically runs at a fraction of the cost of a full-time finance hire. The comparison below is directional and illustrative — not a quote.
How to read this: heights are illustrative, not to scale. The point is the gap: a fractional retainer generally costs well below the fully loaded expense of an equivalent in-house hire once salary, bonus, taxes, and benefits are included. The savings tend to grow as the scope of the engagement increases. Actual figures vary by market, scope, and seniority.
From raw data to decisions you can act on
A repeatable approach that turns messy operational data into a clear story and a prioritized plan.
Gather
Pull the data that already exists: bills of material, invoices, cost by product, revenue by location.
Validate & visualize
Clean and confirm the data with your team, then build visuals that surface the real patterns.
Find the story
Pinpoint the problem areas: loss-making contracts, labor inefficiency, material waste, excess inventory.
Recommend & execute
Translate insight into a prioritized plan your team can run to realize the improvement.
Margin analysis: winners vs. losers
The approach
Build a P&L at the most granular level the data allows, from invoices and bills of material.
Layer direct costs first, then allocate overhead and SG&A to reach true product margin.
Rank profitability by product to inform clear retain, fix, or exit decisions.
The takeaway: a handful of products quietly drive the business, and a few quietly drain it.