A full-time CFO in Texas runs $200,000 to $350,000 a year before you add the payroll clerk and the HR manager the role quietly assumes. Most companies between 50 and 300 employees respond by hiring nobody — the owner keeps the spreadsheet, the office manager runs payroll at night, and compliance is whatever survives. There is a middle path, and the market has noticed.
The half that needs judgment
Some finance work genuinely needs an executive: funding decisions, pricing strategy, the banking relationship, reading a bad quarter honestly. If you buy outside help for this half, you are buying hours of judgment — and the fastest-growing buyers are no longer venture startups but ordinary companies with $2M–$50M in revenue that outgrew a bookkeeper. Providers report their number-one obstacle isn't competition; it's that buyers don't know the option exists.
The half that needs discipline
The other half is not judgment — it is discipline on a calendar. Payroll that closes clean every period. 401(k) contributions calculated, remitted and reconciled — the first thing the Department of Labor checks. ACA forms 1094-C and 1095-C filed correctly, with variable-hour employees measured the way the IRS requires. Onboarding and terminations processed while the details are fresh. None of this needs a $250,000 executive. All of it punishes you when it slips: a late 1095-C is $340, both copies is $680, per employee.
How we split it
Our CFO & Payroll Services engagement puts a working team on the discipline half — payroll operated on ADP, Paycor, Insperity or whatever you already run, remittance, ACA filings, an HR desk your managers can call — with CFO-level review sitting on top, monthly. Salary data is handled outside your building, which owners privately count as half the value. And because the same firm holds your benefits and 401(k), it all lives in one plan record instead of three vendors pointing at each other. Engagements are scoped to the work — typically a fraction of one executive hire.
Three questions to ask any provider (including us)
Who actually pushes the payroll button — a named person, or "the platform"? Who signs the 1094-C work, and have they heard of look-back measurement? And when the DOL or the IRS writes, does the provider stand in the room with you, or hand you a report? If the answers are vague, you are buying a subscription, not a function.
Start where the risk is. The free ACA audit shows in three minutes whether the discipline half is already costing you.
Run the free ACA audit See CFO & Payroll ServicesSources & notes: U.S. fractional CFO market sizing and CAGR ranges from published industry analyses (2026); provider pricing and client-mix surveys; IRS 2026 information-return penalty schedule; CFO salary ranges from market compensation data. Educational only — not investment, tax or legal advice.