KBS CFO

08/31/2026

If you have been doing the CFO job yourself, the calendar is not on your side.

Fourth-quarter budget season arrives whether the plan is ready or not. Bring financial leadership in ahead of it and the budget gets built with intent: targets set, cash mapped, scenarios run before the year turns. Wait, and you end up backfilling a plan around decisions you already had to make.

For federal contractors especially, the planning window matters. Contract timing, funding cycles, and reporting demands do not wait for you to catch up, and a plan assembled late tends to show it.

A virtual CFO gives you the strategic time to build the plan now, not the scramble to reconstruct one later. That is the difference between running the year and reacting to it.

If you would like the plan built before budget season rather than backfilled, let's talk.

Contact us at KBSCFO.com, or send us a DM here on LinkedIn.

08/28/2026

The two questions I hear most: how much per month, and how many hours does that include.
Here is how I answer both.

On price, entry engagements are often lower and complex companies higher. There is no single number, though, because there are three common structures. A retainer fits steady, ongoing needs. Hourly fits work that is real but hard to predict. Project pricing fits a defined job with a finish line, like a financing round or a system change. Each answers a different need.

On hours, it depends on the depth. A strategic engagement might run about 10 to 20 hours a month. A heavier one might be closer to 40 to 80.

One thing that shifts both: entities. A shop running more than one company under the same roof has more to reconcile, more to report, and more decisions to model. That moves the hours, and it moves the price.

An outsourced CFO should be able to tell you which structure fits your situation before you commit to anything.

Have a pricing question? DM it here and I will give you a straight answer.

08/26/2026

Picture a design-build firm with revenue climbing and profit sitting flat.

More projects, bigger backlog, busier crews, and the bank balance is not showing the difference. It is a frustrating spot, because everything looks like growth.

Flat profit on rising revenue is usually not a sales problem. It is a pricing problem or a cash-timing problem, and those are two very different fixes. If the jobs are priced too thin, more of them just multiplies the leak. If the money is landing later than the work, the business can be profitable on paper and still tight on cash.

A CFO's job here is to tell you which one it is, and when the cash actually lands, so you are managing the real issue instead of chasing revenue that never reaches the bottom line.

That is Anticipatory Accounting: looking through the windshield at what is coming, not the rearview at what already happened.

If revenue is up but profit is not, it is worth a conversation. Send us a DM here on LinkedIn.

08/20/2026

For many distilleries, the best sales year on record is also the tightest cash year on record.

It sounds backward until you remember what a barrel is. When you fill one, cash goes out now for grain, labor, wood, and warehouse space. The spirit does not earn for three, four, or five years.

So a strong sales year is often the same year you are filling the most new barrels for the future. Revenue looks great. The bank account feels thin.

Here is the part worth sitting with. Your inventory number and your cash number are telling two different stories. A warehouse full of maturing whiskey, or any aging spirit, is real value. It is not spendable today.

An annual budget line cannot hold a five-year commitment. A forecast that tracks each vintage as its own cash story can.

If your inventory number and your cash number seem to disagree, that gap is worth a conversation.

We work alongside you to build the forward view. Send us a DM here on LinkedIn, or contact us at KBSCFO.com.

08/18/2026

A budget tells you what you decided in January. A forecast tells you what is actually true in August. They are not the same job.

A budget is a decision you make once. You set your targets, you agree on the plan, and you move on.

A forecast is a living view. Real numbers come in, and you update what you expect next.

Distilleries live in the forecast, because the inputs move too much to freeze. Barrels, excise timing, channel mix, seasonality. A single annual plan cannot hold all of that and stay honest for twelve months.

You do not throw the budget out. You use it as your target, then steer against a forecast that stays current.

It is ADI week, and a lot of owners are starting to think about next year's plan. Before you finalize it, this is worth a read.

We wrote about what businesses (like distilleries) should be reviewing midway through the year, and how to look through the windshield instead of the rearview.

Read it before you lock next year's numbers: https://www.kbscfo.com/mid-year-financial-checkup-growing-businesses/

08/14/2026

A loaded full-time CFO for a company under $25 million often clears about $300,000 all-in. A fractional arrangement covers similar ground for a fraction of that.

The mistake is comparing salary to fee. The real comparison is all-in cost: salary, bonus, benefits, and payroll taxes on one side, a monthly retainer on the other. Once you count everything, the gap is wide.

One market view, often cited, is that a fractional CFO captures roughly 80 to 90 percent of the value at about a quarter to a third of the cost.

For most growth-stage businesses, the strategic decisions do not need a full-time seat behind them. They need the right seat, at the right depth, at a cost that fits the stage you are in.

At some point you may outgrow that and a full-time hire makes sense. Plenty of owners are not there yet.
Not sure which one fits your stage? Send us a DM here on LinkedIn.

08/11/2026

Before you decide a fractional CFO is too expensive, ask what guessing is already costing you.

The instinct is to compare the fee to free, as if doing it yourself carries no price. It usually does. The cost just does not show up on an invoice.

It shows up in a job you underpriced. In receivables that sit too long. In spending nobody is watching closely. Those numbers are real, and they are often larger than the retainer.

So the honest comparison is not a fractional CFO versus free. It is a fractional CFO versus the cost of continuing to guess.

Worth remembering: an outsourced CFO is a month-to-month arrangement, not a full-time salary you are locked into. If it is not earning its place, you change it. That makes it one of the more reversible decisions on your desk.

If you have been guessing on the numbers and want a clearer read, let's talk.
Contact us at KBSCFO.com.

08/06/2026

Most owners are surprised a fractional CFO does not touch the day-to-day records at all.

That is not the job. Your day-to-day accounting stays where it is, and your CPA keeps filing your taxes. An outsourced CFO works alongside both of them.

So what fills the retainer? Forecasting and cash planning. Dashboards built around the few numbers that actually move your business. Board and bank reporting that holds up under questions. Scenario modeling for the decisions in front of you. Margin analysis by job or product line.

The surprise is not the number of reports. It is that the numbers start pointing at decisions.

That is the whole idea behind SMART Reporting: Strategic, Meaningful, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely. Reporting is only worth the fee if it changes what you do next.

We walk through the framework here: https://www.kbscfo.com/smart-reporting-a-framework-for-growth-and-clarity/

08/05/2026

One of the largest wine and spirits distributors in the country has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

For some distilleries, this will be an inconvenience.
For others, it may become a cash flow problem.

The real lesson isn't about one distributor. It's a reminder that every distillery should be stress-testing its business model.

Distribution partners change. Consumer preferences shift. Regulations evolve.

The companies that navigate those changes best aren't necessarily the biggest. They're the ones with visibility into their cash, margins, inventory, and operational risks before they're forced to react.

If one relationship can disrupt your revenue, inventory movement, or collections, your business has more exposure than you may realize.

That's why financial leadership is about more than reporting numbers after the fact. It's about asking the right questions before disruption happens.

What happens if a key distributor disappears?
How much working capital do we need if receivables slow?
How long can inventory sit before cash becomes constrained?
Do we have alternative channels ready?

None of us can predict every market disruption.
But we can build businesses that are prepared for them.

That's the difference between reacting to change and anticipating it.

If you'd like to strengthen that visibility, we're here to help. Contact us at https://www.kbscfo.com/contact-us/ or send us a DM.

Read the whole article on Inc.com here: https://www.inc.com/lucia-auerbach/biggest-liquor-distributors-just-filed-for-bankruptcy-expert-warns-massive-ripple-effect-could-follow/91380927

Facing up to $10 billion in liabilities, the former top-three distributor is officially winding down its operations, leaving major brands in limbo.

08/03/2026

Sometimes a business’s margin can be hiding in plain sight. Here is an illustrative example, not a specific client. A manufacturer thought pricing was fine, until the numbers showed margins running at 28 percent.

Nothing looked broken. Revenue was steady, the floor was busy, the team was good. But the gross margin told a different story than the owner expected.

Seeing it was the first step. The next was acting on it: repricing the jobs that were quietly losing money and letting go of the ones that never paid. Over the following months, margin moved toward 36 percent. Same plant, same crew, better decisions.

Here is the part owners miss. The return on a fractional CFO is often already sitting in your own data. Market ROI for the role is often cited around 3 to 10 times the fee, and a good share of it comes from finding margin you already earned but were not capturing. Results vary by business. Treat that as illustrative, not a promise.

If margin feels like it is leaking somewhere and you cannot point to where, we can help you find it.

Send us a DM here on LinkedIn.