CHECKLIST
First 90 Days Checklist
About fifty five minutes to read as a plan, or as a scorecard for the fractional CFO you already pay. Ninety days is enough to build the whole finance machine, and this is what building it looks like: find the truth, build the machine, point it somewhere, with a final section on how to tell whether it is actually working.
- Four sections, seventeen checks, three phases and a scorecard
- The day ten test that separates CFOs from titles
- Written so the company owns the machine, not the person
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Who this checklist is for
Founders and MDs about to engage a fractional CFO, anyone already paying one and unsure what they should be seeing, and the founder still doing the job themselves who wants the build order.
You are about to hire a fractional CFO
Hand them this as the engagement plan and watch what happens by day ten. Days one to thirty are finding the truth: a live 13 week cash flow, the real margin by client, the debtor book chased, every standing commitment on one page. A candidate who winces at that sequence was planning to start with a strategy deck, which tells you what you needed to know.
You already pay one and cannot tell if it is working
The last section is the scorecard: you know next Friday’s cash position today, the month closes in five days without heroics, the same number appears in every meeting, decisions arrive with a priced downside, and nobody is surprised by anything twice. Score it honestly. Five out of five is a machine; two out of five is attendance.
You are the finance function, for now
The list works as a build order for a founder doing the job themselves: cash visibility first, then the close, the pack and the rolling forecast, then the plan and the funding conversation opened from strength. Every step points at a free tool on this hub, so the ninety days costs discipline rather than software.
FACTS
The day ten test
Whatever else is promised, a fractional CFO who has not produced a live 13 week cash flow by day ten is a bookkeeper with a better title. Cash visibility is the first thing the job exists to know, nothing else on the plan matters if a payroll can be missed unseen, and ten days is generous for someone who has done it before.
Day 10
The live 13 week cash flow deadline
3 phases
Find the truth, build the machine, point it somewhere
FACTS
The machine outlives the person
Days sixty-one to ninety include writing the machine down, the close checklist, the forecast, the pack, so the company owns the process rather than renting it. The reference question that settles any CFO hire, fractional or full time: what stopped working when they left? The right answer is nothing, because the machine stayed.