Traverse is a fractional CFO company providing an ongoing engagement covering FP&A, board reporting, cash management, and strategic finance at the level your stage actually requires. Unlike most outsourced CFO firms, Traverse brings true CFO ownership — not a part-time service contract or temp CFO service.
Schedule a Discovery CallYou need CFO-level thinking but aren't ready to hire one full-time. These are the inflection points where companies get stuck.
The spreadsheets and processes that worked at $3M start breaking at $10M. Reporting takes too long, data isn't trusted, and no one has the bandwidth to fix it.
Lenders, PE sponsors, and board members want clean financials, variance analysis, and forward-looking models, not monthly actuals two weeks after close.
Base salary, bonus, equity, and benefits for a senior CFO can exceed $400K all-in. At your stage, the ROI on a fractional CFO firm engagement is dramatically better than building in-house. Companies often explore temporary CFO firms or a temporary CFO service before realizing a fractional engagement delivers more continuity at similar part time CFO rates.
Every Traverse fractional engagement is scoped to your priorities. The following are the core areas we cover.
The budget you build once a year isn't enough. Traverse owns the full FP&A function — building plans, maintaining rolling forecasts, and explaining variances in a way that actually drives decisions rather than simply documenting them.
Boards and investors form their view of management competence largely through the quality of financial communication. Traverse produces packages that tell a coherent story — not just tables of numbers — and ensures the financial narrative is consistent across every audience.
Running out of cash is rarely a surprise — it's almost always a visibility problem. Traverse builds the forecasting infrastructure and banking relationships that give you a clear line of sight to the runway and the agency to act before problems arrive.
A controller or bookkeeper without CFO direction will default to what they know. Traverse provides the senior oversight that lifts the whole team — setting standards, closing gaps, and building the skills and structure the business needs to scale through the next stage.
The most valuable thing a CFO does isn't produce reports — it's help leadership make better decisions. Traverse brings a senior financial perspective into the room for the trade-offs that matter: where to invest, how to fund it, when to move, and what the numbers are actually telling you.
The close process is the foundation everything else is built on. Traverse tightens the process, improves the reliability of reported numbers, and ensures the books are clean and audit-ready — without creating unnecessary disruption to what's already working.
Most companies wait longer than they should. These are the signals that usually precede a call to Traverse.
If monthly financials are landing two to three weeks after close, leadership is perpetually navigating with old information. By the time the numbers reflect a trend, the window to act has often already closed.
Debt refinancing, an equity raise, or a first institutional round all require financial infrastructure that takes months to build. Companies that start the work in the middle of a process consistently leave money on the table — or don't close at all.
When board members or investors are asking basic questions about cash runway, gross margin trends, or forecast accuracy — and the answers require a week of work to produce — the finance function is behind where it needs to be.
When the CEO is still reviewing payroll, approving vendor invoices, or building the board deck, the business is paying CFO-equivalent time for tasks that shouldn't require it. That's capital allocation — and it's pointed the wrong direction.
Controllers are transaction processors. They close the books, reconcile accounts, and manage the audit. They are not — and shouldn't be expected to be — strategic finance leaders. When the business has outgrown the controllership but isn't ready for a full-time CFO, a fractional engagement is the right bridge.
The systems and processes that work at $5M start breaking between $15M and $30M. Reporting gets slower, data gets messier, and the team that handled everything before can't keep up. Growth creates a finance infrastructure deficit — and it compounds.
Fractional doesn't mean ad hoc. Every engagement runs on a structured cadence so you always know what to expect and when.
Deep dive into your financials, systems, team, and priorities. We identify the highest-leverage opportunities and establish baseline reporting.
Close oversight, variance analysis, cash reporting, and a standing leadership meeting so finance stays tightly connected to operations.
Board packages, updated forecasts, KPI review, and a strategic check-in to align finance priorities with where the business is heading.
Full budget build, long-range model, compensation planning, and a finance roadmap that keeps the team and business aligned for the year ahead.
We use modern finance tools and AI to move faster, so your CFO time is spent on decisions rather than data work.
AI tools compress the time required for data aggregation, report generation, and financial modeling, so we spend more time analyzing and less time building.
Pattern recognition built across 20+ years of CFO engagements, 22 transactions, and dozens of board rooms doesn't come from a model. It comes from having been there.
You're growing, you have investors or lenders asking harder questions, and your current finance function can't keep up.
PE sponsors require 100-day plans, monthly reporting packages, and strategic finance support from day one.
There are a lot of fractional CFO companies claiming to be the best fractional CFO option for your business — and no shortage of temporary CFO firms willing to fill a seat on a short-term basis. Here's what actually sets Traverse apart.
Paul Kruglik has sat in the CFO seat directly, not adjacent to it. 20+ years of full-cycle CFO leadership across growth-stage, PE-backed, and public companies means the work is done by someone who's been accountable for the same decisions you're facing.
Traverse doesn't hand you a framework and step back. We take ownership of deliverables, attend the board meetings, manage your team, and stand behind the work the same way a full-time CFO would.
As your business grows, the engagement evolves. Whether that means expanding scope, hiring into the finance team, or transitioning to a full-time CFO, Traverse is designed to leave you stronger than we found you.
Fractional CFO services provide the same strategic finance leadership as a full-time CFO — covering FP&A, board reporting, cash management, investor relations, and team leadership — scoped to the level of involvement your stage requires. Unlike a temporary CFO service focused on gap-filling, fractional CFO services mean ongoing senior ownership of the finance function on a continuing retainer.
A fractional CFO provides the same strategic finance leadership as a full-time CFO, covering FP&A, board reporting, cash management, investor relations, and team leadership, scoped to the level of involvement your stage requires.
Engagements range from around 10 to 40 hours per month depending on your needs. We define the right scope during discovery and adjust as the business evolves.
A part-time hire adds capacity. A Traverse fractional CFO adds accountability for the forecast, the board relationship, the strategic decisions, and the financial narrative. We own outcomes, not tasks.
Part-time CFO cost varies by scope and engagement model. Traverse structures engagements flexibly — as a monthly retainer, a day-rate, or a project-scoped fee — with engagements typically starting around $3,000 per month and scaling based on the level of involvement required. We scope every engagement transparently so you know the part-time CFO rates before anything starts.
That's often the goal. Traverse works to build the infrastructure and documentation that makes that transition seamless and can advise on the hiring profile and evaluate candidates when the time comes.
Traverse works primarily with growth-stage and middle-market companies across SaaS, healthcare services, business services, manufacturing, and financial services. The CFO disciplines — financial modeling, board communication, capital management — transfer across sectors. Where sector-specific knowledge matters most, we're transparent about our depth and bring in supplemental expertise when it serves the client.
The engagement shifts. When a cash crisis emerges — a covenant breach, an unexpected revenue shortfall, a customer concentration event — Traverse moves from steady-state CFO work to immediate triage. That means daily cash reporting, lender communication, scenario modeling for liquidity options, and direct coordination with the CEO and board. Fractional doesn't mean unavailable. It means scoped to what you need — and that scope can change quickly when the situation demands it.
We build quarterly check-ins on scope into every engagement. As the business grows, the demands on the finance function grow with it: more complex reporting, more capital decisions, more stakeholder communication. We adjust hours and scope transparently rather than asking you to notice a gap and raise it. When the business reaches the point where a full-time CFO makes more economic sense than a fractional one, we'll tell you that too.
Week one is an intensive diagnostic: we review historical financials going back two to three years, assess the close process, evaluate the team's capabilities and workload, and get into every system the finance team touches. Week two we're closing the current month alongside the team and identifying the gaps that matter most. By the end of month one, you have a clean close, a first board package built under Traverse ownership, and a clear 90-day plan that prioritizes the highest-leverage opportunities. The rhythm is established quickly because the work starts immediately, not after an onboarding process.
Stop making decisions with stale data and manual reports. Traverse brings you a senior CFO and an AI-powered finance infrastructure deployed in days and built to scale with you.
Schedule a Discovery CallNo long-term contract required to start. Engagements are scoped to your needs, not ours.