Fractional CFO, FP&A + Dashboard Specialist Needed

Summary We provide fractional CFO services, FP&A, dashboards, and reporting for business owners across e-commerce, construction, home services, healthcare, and manufacturing. Bookkeeping is handled by a separate team. We need someone who owns everything above the books: budgeting, forecasting, cash management, KPI dashboards, variance analysis, and value engineering. You will report directly to me. I have over 15 years of corporate finance, M&A, and direct business operations experience. You will have strong direction and oversight, but we need someone who can execute at a high level and take ownership of deliverables. You will start with a small number of client engagements and ramp from there based on performance and fit. Work Annual budgets and monthly variance analysis tied to operational drivers. 13-week rolling cash flow forecasts updated weekly per client. 12-month P&L forecasts. KPI dashboards in Excel, Sheets, or BI tools covering both financial and operational metrics. Working capital, gross margin, and segment profitability analysis. Value engineering: identifying and quantifying margin improvement, cost reduction, and operational efficiency opportunities. Scenario modeling for expansion, pricing, new product lines, and staffing. Monthly strategy calls directly with business owners. Requirements Strong finance skills with real depth in budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, and cash flow modeling. This is core FP&A work and you should be able to do it well without heavy hand-holding. Strong accounting knowledge. You are not entering transactions, but you need to understand accrual accounting, know when the books do not tie, and work fluently with financial statements. Clean, formula-driven Excel modeling with assumptions on the assumptions tab and no hard-coded numbers in calculation sheets. Dashboard and reporting design that business owners actually use week to week. Understanding how a warehouse runs, how a construction job flows, or how a service business schedules and bills makes you materially better at this work. Comfort setting up FP&A software, reporting tools, and data integrations for clients. Not a developer role, but someone who can work with tools like Power BI, Looker, or similar. Comfort across industries. Direct communicator. Honest and high integrity. Must be comfortable using AI tools to work efficiently. Available during US business hours with at least 5 to 6 hours of overlap with Eastern time. To Apply Answer all four. We read every response carefully. Tell us about a specific time a client or stakeholder pushed back on your forecast or analysis because the numbers did not match their expectations. What was wrong, what did you do, and how did it resolve? We want the real story, not a framework. You inherit a monthly reporting package from a prior advisor. The P&L ties to QB, but the client tells you the numbers do not feel right and their cash balance never matches what the forecast says it should be. You have 30 minutes before a call with them. What are you actually looking at first, and what questions are you asking on that call? How do you go about building budgets and variance analysis? How many have you done? Describe your experience using AI tools in your finance work.