Playbook · For founders

Finance-ready for a Series A in 90 days

What a fractional CFO should deliver in the first three months before a raise, what you need to hand over on day one, and how to tell it is working.

The Fraconomy Note · 28 September 2026

Investors in a Series A will ask for clean monthly numbers, a model they can stress, and a data room that answers diligence without a week of scrambling. None of that needs a full-time CFO on day one. It needs someone senior for one or two days a week, with a clear 90-day plan.

Before day one: what to hand over

• Read-only access to bank accounts and company cards.
• Access to the accounting system, and the last 12 months of statements.
• The cap table, and every signed investor document.
• Customer contracts, or at least the ten largest.
• A payroll summary and the current hiring plan.
• Your current deck, so the numbers and the story can meet.

Days 1 to 30: close the books properly

• A monthly close that finishes on a set working day, every month.
• A chart of accounts that shows revenue the way investors will ask for it, for example recurring versus one-off, by product or by market.
• Bank reconciled, and revenue recognised consistently.

At the end of the month you should get one short pack: profit and loss, cash, and what changed.

Days 31 to 60: the model

• A three-statement model where profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow are linked.
• Costs driven by the hiring plan, so moving a hire moves the runway.
• A base case and a downside case, with the assumptions written next to the numbers.
• Runway stated in months, under both cases.

Days 61 to 90: data room and metrics

• A data room with a folder for each diligence area: corporate, finance, customers, people, product and legal.
• Written definitions for the metrics you report, so everyone calculates them the same way. Which metrics depends on your model: recurring revenue, gross margin, customer acquisition cost payback and revenue retention are common.
• A one-page monthly investor update template you can keep sending after the raise.

How to tell it is working

• You know the date the books will close each month, and it happens.
• You can answer "how many months of runway do we have?" in one sentence.
• When you change a hire in the plan, the model changes with it.
• Diligence questions get answered from the data room, not from a late-night rebuild.

When to move to a full-time CFO

Signs the role needs daily presence: several entities or markets to consolidate, a finance team to manage, monthly board reporting after the raise, or a second raise already on the calendar. Many companies keep the fractional CFO through the raise and then use them to hire their full-time successor.

What it costs

On the Fraconomy Rate Benchmark, a fractional CFO costs about SGD 6,500 to 8,500 a month for one day a week and SGD 13,000 to 16,500 for two. Plan on two days a week for the 90 days before a raise. The benchmark explains how we set it and what moves the price.