Decisions on current numbers
A close that lands on a published date means pricing, hiring and capital decisions are taken against this month rather than the one before last.
Finance Function
Virtual CFO Services
Senior finance ownership of your close calendar, cash forecast, management reporting and lender pack, delivered as a monthly retainer without the cost or notice period of a full-time finance director.
Overview
Companies rarely lose control of their finances in a single event. Control leaks away because revenue grows faster than the finance function behind it.
The pattern is consistent. Books close five or six weeks after month end, so every decision is taken on stale numbers. The cash position is whatever the bank balance says this morning. The lender wants a stock and book-debt statement by the tenth and it goes out late, or approximate. Advance tax is estimated in March instead of planned in June. The statutory auditor arrives to a trial balance nobody has reconciled since the last audit.
A Virtual CFO engagement places one senior finance owner across that whole cycle without a full-time appointment. We take the close calendar, the cash forecast, management reporting, lender reporting and oversight of the statutory compliance calendar. Your accounting team stays where it is. What changes is that someone is accountable for the numbers being right and being on time.
Scope of engagement
Scope is fixed in the engagement letter before work starts. A typical retainer covers the following work items.
Volume-driven items are scoped against your transaction counts recorded during the diagnostic, not estimated.
- Month-end close calendar with cut-off dates, a named owner for every schedule and a review gate before publication
- Review of AS or Ind AS applicability and presentation of the balance sheet and statement of profit and loss in Schedule III format
- Rolling 13-week cash flow, refreshed weekly, with receipts modelled from the debtor ageing rather than from the sales budget
- Monthly MIS: actual against budget, contribution by segment, working capital bridge, DSO, DPO and inventory days
- Bank reconciliation control across every operating, collection and borrowing account, with ageing of unreconciled items
- Lender reporting: monthly stock statement, book-debt statement, drawing power computation and the annual renewal data pack
- Compliance calendar oversight covering GSTR-1, GSTR-3B, GSTR-9 and 9C, TDS returns in Forms 24Q, 26Q and 27Q, advance tax instalments in June, September, December and March, PF and ESI, and ROC filings including AOC-4, MGT-7, DPT-3 and MSME Form 1
- Chart of accounts and cost centre structure rebuilt so that reporting lines survive audit and consolidation
- Annual budget, quarterly reforecast and a variance commentary that explains movement rather than restating it
- Delegation of authority and a payment approval matrix, applied through system controls where the platform supports it
- Monitoring of MSME vendor payment terms and the Section 43B(h) disallowance exposure carried into the tax computation
- Audit readiness file maintained through the year rather than assembled in July
Deliverables
Every item below is a named artefact you receive and retain.
- Month-end close calendar and schedule templates
- Monthly MIS pack as a report and as the underlying workbook
- Rolling 13-week cash flow model with weekly refresh
- Budget against actual with rolling twelve-month forecast
- Lender pack: stock statement, book-debt statement and drawing power working
- Audit schedule file: fixed asset register with Schedule II useful lives applied, debtor and creditor ageing, provisions, prepaid and accrual schedules, related party disclosure working
- Compliance calendar showing every due date, the owner and the filing status
- Board reporting pack ahead of each meeting
- Quarterly finance review memorandum recording positions taken and open risks
Process
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Diagnostic
We read the current trial balance, the last two sets of audited financials, the GST and TDS filing history, the sanction letter and the debtor and creditor ageing. The output is a written statement of where the numbers are unreliable and why. Five to seven business days.
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Baseline and remediation plan
Unreconciled bank items, stale advances, unmatched inter-unit balances and gaps between the ledger and the fixed asset register are listed with a clearing plan and a date. You approve the plan before we act on it.
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Calendar and controls
The close calendar, approval matrix, schedule templates and compliance calendar are built and handed to the people who will operate them. Controls are documented, not assumed.
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Steady-state monthly cycle
Close runs to calendar. Cash flow is refreshed weekly. The MIS pack and lender pack are issued on fixed dates. Exceptions are raised when they arise, not at month end.
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Quarterly review
Forecast is rebuilt, the control environment is retested, and the finance review memorandum records what changed. This is also where scope is adjusted if your transaction volumes have moved.
Benefits
Visible thirteen weeks ahead
A cash forecast built from ageing rather than budget shows the payroll week that will be tight while there is still time to act on it.
Reporting that reconciles
Stock and book-debt statements drawn from the same ledgers as the audited accounts remove the divergence a bank inspection looks for.
A shorter audit
Schedules maintained monthly reduce the audit to review rather than reconstruction, and reduce the volume of audit adjustments carried into the accounts.
Industries served
The work changes shape by sector. Manufacturing turns on inventory valuation, drawing power and job costing. Technology and SaaS turns on deferred revenue, cohort economics and foreign currency receipts. Retail and e-commerce turns on marketplace settlement, returns and TCS credits. Healthcare turns on payer receivables and long collection cycles. Growth-stage companies turn on runway, investor reporting and the data room they will need at the next round.
Typical timeline
- Diagnostic report: 5 to 7 business days from receipt of data
- Remediation plan agreed: within 10 business days of the diagnostic
- Close calendar and controls operating: end of month two
- First close delivered to calendar: month three or month four, depending on the opening backlog
- Full reporting cycle in steady state, including lender pack: month four onward
Engagement model
Contracted as a monthly retainer with a minimum term of three months and thirty days written notice on either side. Scope, the reporting calendar and the review points are set out in the engagement letter before the first invoice is raised.
Delivery is virtual. Work happens over scheduled calls, a shared document workspace and read access to your accounting system. We do not require signing authority on any bank account and do not ask for it. A single engagement lead owns the relationship, and the same person attends board and lender discussions where you want finance represented.
What is not included
- Statutory audit under Section 143 of the Companies Act. We are not appointed as auditor, do not issue an audit opinion, and do not perform work that would compromise your auditor’s independence.
- Signing of statutory returns. GST returns, TDS returns, income tax returns and ROC forms are signed by your directors or your appointed signatory, never by us.
- Fiduciary directorship. We do not accept appointment as a director, nominee director or key managerial personnel, and hold no position on your board.
- Bank operating rights. No signing authority, no payment release, no custody of funds or instruments.
- Day-to-day bookkeeping and voucher entry, payroll processing and payroll disbursement.
- Company secretarial execution: board minute drafting, ROC form filing and registers maintained under the Companies Act.
- Legal opinions, contract drafting and representation before tax or regulatory authorities.
- Internal audit, and any certificate or attestation requiring a professional body membership.
- Fundraising as an arranger or placement agent, and transaction execution work.
Several of these are available as separate engagements. Where a need falls outside this scope we will say so in writing and quote it separately rather than absorb it.
Frequently asked questions
No. The bookkeeping team stays where it is, whether in-house or outsourced. We sit above it. We set the close calendar, define what each schedule must contain, review the output before it becomes management information, and own the reporting that goes to the board and the lender. Where the existing team is under-resourced we say so in writing rather than absorbing the work silently.
No. Signing statutory returns and financial statements is a fiduciary act attaching to a director or an appointed professional. We prepare, reconcile and review the underlying numbers, and we maintain the compliance calendar so nothing is missed. The signature stays with your directors and your appointed auditor or return signatory. This boundary is stated in the engagement letter.
The first close under our calendar usually lands in the third or fourth month. Getting there depends less on effort than on the opening position. If the trial balance carries unreconciled bank items, unmatched advances and a fixed asset register that does not agree to the ledger, that backlog is cleared first. We quantify the backlog in the diagnostic so the timetable is a plan rather than a hope.
Tally Prime, Zoho Books, QuickBooks, NetSuite, SAP Business One and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central are all workable. We hold no reseller, partner or referral relationship with any software vendor and receive no commission from one. Where the current system genuinely cannot support the reporting you need, we say that, and the remediation is scoped separately rather than absorbed into the retainer.
Yes. Monthly stock statements and book-debt statements, drawing power computation against the sanctioned margin, and the annual renewal data pack are inside scope. We reconcile what goes to the lender against the same ledgers that produce the audited accounts, because a divergence between the two is the item a bank inspection finds first.
Thirty days written notice on either side. On exit you receive the full working file: the close calendar, all schedule templates, the cash flow model, the compliance calendar with due dates and owners, and the reporting pack in editable format. Nothing is built in a proprietary tool you cannot keep. The intent is that your next finance hire inherits a functioning system.
Related services
- Accounting & Assurance Advisory for the accounting policy, Schedule III presentation and audit readiness work underneath the reporting.
- Accounts Payable (AP) Management for three-way match, GSTR-2B reconciliation and MSME payment discipline.
- Data Analytics & Business Intelligence where the MIS pack needs to become a dashboard the whole management team can read.