When Should Founders Fire Themselves as the CFO?

At what point should a founder stop running finance and accounting and hand the numbers to an expert?

In episode #328, Ben Murray walks through the inflection points when SaaS founders should consider hiring a bookkeeper and/or fractional CFO to protect data accuracy, improve forecasting, and strengthen company valuation. You’ll learn the warning signs that your financial systems and reporting are holding back growth—and how to build a finance function that scales with your business.

What You’ll Learn

• When to hire help by ARR stage
• Monthly close discipline: Why closing your books every month—accurately—is critical for investor trust.
• Accrual vs. cash accounting: How switching methods reveals true business performance.
• COGS clarity: Setting up a SaaS P&L that separates revenue streams, COGS, and OPEX for real gross-margin insight.
• Retention readiness: Why your MRR schedule (revenue by customer by month) is worth its weight in gold.
• Cash-flow forecasting: How to move beyond the bank-balance mentality to proactive cash planning.
• Investor presentation: Ensuring your metrics, slide deck, and financial statements tie together cleanly.

Why It Matters

• For Founders: Delegating finance isn’t failure—it’s a strategic step toward sustainable scaling and higher valuation.
• For CFOs and Advisors: Knowing these trigger points helps you coach founders on financial readiness.
• For Investors: A disciplined monthly close and clean P&L build confidence in revenue quality and forecasting accuracy.

Key Takeaways

• Growth dictates urgency: the faster you scale, the earlier you need finance expertise.
• A bookkeeper should close the books by mid-month to avoid costly cleanup later.
• Move to accrual accounting to show economic performance and support fundraising.
• Create an accurate MRR schedule to prove retention and ARR health to investors.
• Build a basic forecast to manage cash runway and hiring decisions with confidence.

Resources Mentioned

SaaS Metrics Foundation Course: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/the-saas-metrics-foundation

Finance 101 for Founders: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/finance-101-for-saas-founders

Quote from Ben

“Just like I couldn’t go in and code your product, most founders can’t scale as CFO. At some point, finance needs a specialist so the business can keep growing on solid data.”