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Virtual CFO Advisory

Fractional CFO leadership for founders and operators — rolling forecasts, board-grade MIS, and an automated finance stack, billed monthly instead of as a full-time hire.

What you get

Outcomes

  • Month-end close compressed from 14 days to 3 via Python + RPA reconciliation
  • Board-grade MIS pack delivered by the 5th of every month, not the 25th
  • Rolling 13-week cash flow with named drivers — no more end-of-quarter surprises
  • Investor-ready data room: cap table, valuation model, KPI dashboard, audited financials
  • Unit economics (CAC, LTV, payback, gross margin) tracked live in Power BI
  • Foreign-entity books kept on US/UK GAAP, reconciled monthly to Indian books

A traditional accountant tells you what happened last quarter. A Virtual CFO decides what happens next quarter. We sit on your side of the table — between the founders and the books — and run the financial machinery that lets a small leadership team operate with the same discipline as a listed company.

The engagement is built around three deliverables that arrive on a clock: a board-grade MIS pack by the 5th of each month, a rolling 13-week cash forecast that is refreshed weekly, and a structured monthly review where we interpret the data and decide what changes. Everything else — bookkeeping oversight, compliance calendar, dashboards, fundraise support — exists to make those three deliverables credible.

Engagement signals

What changes in the first quarter

Faster month-end close

80%

Python and UiPath replace manual reconciliation across bank, ledger, and ERP.

Board MIS delivered

Day 5

Variance commentary, KPIs, and forecast — not raw spreadsheets.

Rolling cash horizon

13 wk

Direct method, named drivers, refreshed weekly with actuals.

Why it works

Tech-forward CFO function vs. the traditional alternative

The conventional model

Backward-looking accountant

  • Reports arrive 3–4 weeks after month-end, when decisions are already stale
  • Manual data entry and spreadsheet reconciliation introduce silent errors
  • Engagement is reactive — you only hear from them at tax season
  • Output is statutory compliance; strategy is left to the founder to figure out alone

Our engagement

Embedded finance leadership with an automated stack

  • Live dashboards refresh from your ERP — KPIs visible the moment a transaction posts
  • Reconciliation runs on Python and UiPath bots; humans review exceptions only
  • Structured monthly board review forces decisions, not status updates
  • Output is capital allocation, pricing, runway, and fundraise-readiness

Core capability areas

Where the engagement actually shows up

A Virtual CFO is judged by what improves on the operating side. These four areas are where most founders feel the change inside 60 days.

Forecasting & runway

Rolling 13-week direct cash flow with scenario toggles. Annual operating plan rebuilt quarterly. Stress tests for hiring freezes, fundraise delays, and demand shocks — so capital decisions are made on numbers, not gut.

Live KPI dashboards

Power BI hooked directly to Tally, Zoho Books, or QuickBooks. CAC, LTV, payback, gross margin, and channel-level revenue visible in real time. No more waiting two weeks for an Excel deck that is already out of date.

Offshore finance department

End-to-end accounting, AP / AR, and inter-company reconciliation for US, UK, and AUS subsidiaries. Books maintained on local GAAP, reconciled monthly to Indian GAAP. Coordinated with your local CPA or chartered accountant.

Investor readiness

Institutional-grade cap table, three-statement valuation model, and a structured data room. We sit alongside founders during diligence calls, model dilution scenarios, and review term sheets before they are signed.

Automated finance stack

Python scripts for bank reconciliation, UiPath bots for AP / AR ingestion, e-invoice and e-way bill generation through APIs. The stack is custom-built per client and handed over with documentation.

Compliance overlay

Tax, GST, ROC, and statutory audit calendars tracked centrally. Filings either run through our compliance team or coordinated with your existing auditor — your choice. Nothing slips through gaps between advisors.

Most Indian growth-stage companies are flying with one quarter of visibility. A Virtual CFO engagement is, at minimum, four.

CA Pardeep Jha · Founding Partner

Who this is built for

This engagement fits a specific shape of company. We have done the most useful work for founders who are past product-market fit but pre-public-markets — typically ₹2 crore to ₹150 crore in annual revenue, with one or more of these conditions in play.

Funded startups between Seed and Series B

You have institutional capital, a board that asks real questions, and a finance function that is one over-stretched controller plus a junior accountant. You need a CFO voice in board meetings without taking a 0.5–1.5% equity hit.

Founder-led SMEs preparing to scale

Annual revenue ₹10–80 crore, profitable, family-owned, considering a second product line, a fundraise, or a generational transition. The books are clean enough but the operating reporting is non-existent.

Foreign parents with India subsidiaries

US, UK, or AUS-incorporated parent running an India captive or product subsidiary. You need finance ownership in the India timezone, GAAP-aligned reporting, and someone who handles transfer pricing and FEMA without translation.

Indian companies with foreign subsidiaries

Delaware C-Corp, UK Ltd, or Singapore Pte sitting under your Indian holding entity. Inter-company invoicing, multi-currency consolidation, and overseas tax exposure handled in one engagement.

The monthly operating rhythm

Once the engagement is live, the cadence is fixed and the team knows what to expect. This is what an ordinary month looks like end-to-end.

  1. Day 1–4 — Close acceleration

    Bank, ERP, and ledger reconciliation run automatically overnight. The team reviews exceptions, posts adjusting entries, and hard-closes the period. No founder involvement required.

  2. Day 5 — Board MIS pack delivered

    P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, and KPI dashboard land in your inbox by 6pm. Variance commentary explains why every line item moved against budget — not just that it did.

  3. Day 8–10 — Board review

    A 90-minute structured review with founders or the executive team. We do not present slides — we open the live dashboard and walk decisions: hiring, pricing, vendor terms, capital deployment.

  4. Weekly — Cash flow refresh

    The 13-week cash forecast is refreshed every Monday with the prior week’s actuals. Material drift triggers an email; otherwise it sits in the dashboard for self-service.

  5. Quarterly — Strategy review

    A two-hour session covering the next quarter’s operating plan, fundraise milestones, tax-efficient structuring, and any capital actions. Output is a written decision log, not a deck.

Engagement commercials

Retainers are fixed monthly, billed in advance, with a 90-day initial term. We do not bill hourly and we do not charge for ad-hoc calls inside the scoped cadence. Below is the rough shape — the actual proposal is built off the diagnostic.

StageIndicative monthly retainerTypical scope
Early-stage startup (< ₹5 cr revenue)₹75,000 – ₹1,25,000Single entity, one currency, monthly cadence
Growth-stage (₹5–30 cr)₹1,50,000 – ₹2,75,000Two entities, KPI dashboards, fundraise support
Scale-up (₹30–150 cr)₹3,00,000 – ₹5,50,000Multi-entity, multi-currency, weekly cadence
Foreign subsidiary overlay+ ₹50,000 per entityUS / UK / AUS GAAP books, transfer pricing

Methodology

How we work

  1. Diagnostic & finance-stack audit

    Two-week review of your books, ERP (Tally / Zoho / QuickBooks), bank flows, and existing MIS. We document where data lives, where it breaks, and the three highest-leverage fixes.

  2. Scoping & engagement charter

    Fixed-fee proposal mapping deliverables, cadence, KPIs, and access. You see exactly which artefacts arrive each month and who on our team owns them.

  3. Automation buildout

    We deploy Python scripts and UiPath bots for bank reconciliation, AP/AR ingestion, and ledger sync. Power BI dashboards are wired to your live database, not exported spreadsheets.

  4. Monthly operating cadence

    MIS pack by the 5th, rolling cash flow refresh weekly, and a structured 90-minute board review with the founders or executive team to interpret variance and decide next moves.

  5. Quarterly strategy & capital review

    Funding readiness, pricing posture, headcount plans, and tax-efficient structuring revisited each quarter — with concrete recommendations, not abstract memos.

Scope

What's included

  • Monthly board MIS pack — P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, variance commentary
  • Rolling 13-week direct cash flow forecast with scenario toggles
  • Live Power BI dashboard — revenue, gross margin, CAC, LTV, runway
  • Annual operating plan and quarterly re-forecasts
  • Investor data room: cap table, valuation model, KPI history, due-diligence index
  • AP / AR ageing reports with automated dunning workflows
  • Unit economics model tailored to your business (SaaS, D2C, services, manufacturing)
  • US / UK GAAP book-to-Indian GAAP reconciliation for offshore entities
  • Bank, vendor, and inter-company reconciliation — automated, audit-ready
  • Monthly 90-minute board review with written decision log
  • Quarterly tax and statutory compliance calendar tracker
  • Fundraise support — pitch financials, term sheet review, founder dilution modelling

Common questions

Frequently asked

When does it make sense to hire a Virtual CFO instead of a full-time CFO?
If your monthly revenue is under roughly ₹10 crore or your finance function is fewer than four people, a full-time CFO is usually overscoped — you pay senior salary for work that is 60% controllership and 30% reporting. A Virtual CFO engagement gives you the same strategic output at a fraction of the cost, scales up as you grow, and converts cleanly into a full-time hire when the work genuinely needs one. We have moved several clients onto in-house CFOs after 18–24 months and stayed on as advisors.
How is this different from outsourced bookkeeping?
Bookkeeping closes the past. A Virtual CFO engagement is forward-looking — forecasts, scenario models, capital allocation, and pricing decisions sit at the centre. We do oversee bookkeeping and statutory compliance through our team, but the deliverable you actually buy is the monthly board review, the cash forecast, and the strategic recommendations. If all you need is clean books, our outsourced accounting service is the right fit instead.
What does a typical engagement cost?
Monthly retainers begin at ₹75,000 for early-stage startups (under ₹5 crore revenue) and scale by complexity — number of entities, transaction volume, multi-currency exposure, fundraise activity. Most growth-stage clients sit between ₹1.5L and ₹4L per month. Engagements are fixed-fee, billed monthly, with a 90-day initial term and 30-day notice thereafter. We share a written proposal within 48 hours of the diagnostic call.
Can you support foreign entities and offshore operations?
Yes. We run finance operations for India-incorporated companies with US (Delaware), UK, and Australia subsidiaries, and for foreign parents with Indian subsidiaries. We maintain books on US or UK GAAP for the foreign entity and reconcile monthly to Indian GAAP, handle transfer pricing documentation, and coordinate with local CPAs or chartered accountants overseas. Multi-currency consolidation and inter-company elimination are part of the standard pack.
Will you replace our existing CA, auditor, or tax consultant?
Not unless you want us to. The Virtual CFO function sits above compliance — we work alongside your statutory auditor and tax counsel, feeding them clean, audit-ready books and signing off on decisions that need CFO-level judgement. If you would rather consolidate, we can absorb statutory audit, ROC, GST, and tax filings into a single engagement through our other practice areas.
What information do you need to start, and how soon do we see output?
Read-only access to your accounting system, bank statements for the last 12 months, your latest cap table, and any existing financial models. The diagnostic finishes in two weeks; the first board MIS pack lands by the 5th of the second full month of engagement. Power BI dashboards typically go live in week six. Cash flow forecasting starts in week three.

Next step

Ready to begin?

Book a 30-minute discovery call. We'll scope the engagement, confirm deliverables, and give you a fixed-fee proposal within 48 hours.