Fractional CFO for E-Commerce Brands
Your Shopify dashboard says you're crushing it. Your bank balance disagrees. Somewhere between the two is the truth, and it's usually sitting in a warehouse as unsold inventory.
Revenue is a vanity number. Contribution margin isn't.
Every e-commerce founder can quote their revenue to the dollar. Ask for contribution margin after COGS, shipping, payment fees, returns, and blended CAC, and the room goes quiet. That number — not top-line — is the one that decides whether scaling ad spend makes you richer or just busier.
A fractional CFO builds you the model that ties it all together: what each order actually earns after everything, how fast you can spend into growth without running out of cash, and which SKUs are quietly funding the whole operation while the hero product coasts on its reputation.
The cash trap nobody warns you about
E-commerce has a cruel bit of math: you pay for inventory today and get paid by customers later, and the faster you grow, the wider that gap gets. Plenty of profitable brands have run themselves straight into a wall because growth ate all the cash and the next PO was due.
We forecast that gap 13 weeks out, so a big season is something you plan for instead of survive. If you need a line of credit, you'll know before the bank does — which, incidentally, is exactly when banks like to say yes.
How Kaizen runs it
You get a senior CFO a couple of days a month, sitting on top of clean books — not a junior analyst and a template. We connect the store, the ad accounts, and the accounting so the numbers reconcile instead of arguing, then run a monthly rhythm: margin by channel and SKU, a rolling cash forecast, and a short list of the decisions that actually move the business.
If you're building toward a raise or a sale, this is also the work that makes diligence painless later. Buyers pay more for a brand whose numbers already add up.
What's included
- True contribution-margin model — per order, per SKU, per channel
- Blended and channel-level CAC vs. LTM contribution, watched monthly
- 13-week cash forecast built around inventory and PO timing
- Inventory and working-capital planning so growth doesn't eat the bank account
- Ad-spend guardrails tied to margin, not just ROAS
- Monthly board-ready reporting pack and KPI scorecard
- Scenario models for a raise, a new channel, or a big inventory bet
- Diligence-ready financials for when you eventually raise or sell
Pricing
Straight answers
We're on Shopify with an agency doing our bookkeeping. Why add a CFO?
A bookkeeper records what happened. A CFO tells you what to do about it — how hard to push ad spend, when cash gets tight, which SKUs to kill. Different jobs. We can also review the bookkeeping while we're in there.
How do you handle inventory and COGS?
Accrual-based, with COGS matched to the orders that sold the goods — not the month you paid the supplier. That's the only way contribution margin and cash forecasting mean anything.
Do you plug into our ad and store data?
Yes. We connect Shopify, the ad platforms, and the accounting so margin and CAC reconcile automatically instead of living in four spreadsheets that disagree.
We're pre-$1M. Are we too small for this?
Probably, honestly. Under about $1M in revenue, a solid bookkeeper and a simple margin model usually do it. Come back when scaling ad spend feels scary — that's when a CFO pays for itself.
Related
Free 20-minute books assessment
We'll show you the five things we'd fix first in your books — useful whether you hire us, hire someone, or do neither.
Talk to SalesOr call us directly: +1 786 789 0969