Chief Finance Officer
The Chief Finance Officer steps in and steps up the financial-operations layer of your business: the invoice run on the day of the month you specify, the three or four clients who never pay on time, the bank-feed reconciliation against statements before month-end, and the VAT, PAYE, UIF, and SDL filing rhythms that quietly punish whoever forgets them. Today the role is delivered by a senior South African operator embedded in your function inside Xero or Sage, with the productised AI agent in design and preorder pricing locked at R5,000 a month. The role is scope-narrowed to the financial-operations layer; treasury, FP&A, and audit work sit with your appointed accountant or a separate engagement.
The honest comparison.
The closest hiring alternative is a senior South African bookkeeper at R28,000 to R35,000 a month plus medical aid and 13th cheque, plus the recruitment cost when they leave for a corporate, plus the months of carrying the role when work is quiet.
Sign off the number in discovery, or we work for free until we hit it.
Discovery quantifies a single specific outcome for the Chief Finance Officer engagement. The number gets locked in writing in the one-page brief you sign at the end of week one of onboarding, and the 60-day outcome window opens on the first day of live operation. If the engagement has not hit the agreed outcome by day 60, we keep working at no further cost until it does.
We can promise this because we cap C-Suite AI onboarding intake to the engagements we can actually deliver against in any given quarter. The cap is what makes the 60-day promise something you can read as a real commitment instead of a marketing claim.
What partners ask before they sign.
Does it work with Xero, Sage, or Pastel?
All three. The Chief Finance Officer operates as a delegated user inside the books software you already pay for, working from the same ledger your accountant signs off on. We never ask you to transfer logins, and the right to revoke access at any time stays with you.
What about VAT, PAYE, UIF, and SDL filings?
The role stays current with the SARS filing rhythms, prepares the file your accountant signs off on at month-end, and surfaces the exceptions before the deadline rather than after it. The role does not file on your behalf, your accountant retains sign-off, but it removes the partner-time cost of preparing the submission.
How does it handle the three or four clients who never pay on time?
It follows up on the rules you set in onboarding (cadence, tone, escalation), tracks who is still outstanding inside the agreed window, and surfaces the ones that need partner attention rather than chasing forever. The follow-up sequence is shipped against your firm's actual collections playbook, calibrated to the cadence, tone, and escalation rules your partners already use with these clients.
Two roles most partners stack with the Chief Finance Officer.
Tell us how a chief finance officer would fit your business.
Fifteen minutes on Google Meet that ends with a one-page brief, the outcome we would write into the contract addendum, regardless of whether you sign.