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.”
