Fractional CFO for SaaS and software companies: financial leadership for recurring revenue, B2B and B2C
I help SaaS and software companies connect pricing, churn, acquisition cost, billing, and cash into decisions you can act on. My software experience is hands-on: I was CFO of a B2B payroll software and cloud payroll processing business, and co-founded a company that built a B2C software and technical-support product to $35M.
30+ years
as a CFO
MBA
in Marketing
CPA
Georgia State Board of Accountancy License #CPA012637 (inact)
Trusted by leaders at
Recurring revenue hides its problems well
A subscription business can look healthy in a monthly P&L while the underlying economics quietly weaken:
Pricing goes unreviewed for years because nobody wants to unsettle clients.
Churn eats growth from below.
CAC creeps past payback.
Billing, refunds, and chargebacks leak margin at the point of payment.
And the reporting shows MRR going up, which makes everything feel fine.
The fix isn’t another dashboard.
It’s a financial model that reflects how your software business actually acquires, keeps, bills, and serves its customers.
The questions your financial model should answer
01
Is our pricing earning what the product is worth?
Price-adjustment discipline matters as much as the initial price. I’ve seen what a decade without a price review does to a recurring-revenue business - and what a data-driven reset does for it.
02
Which customers create lifetime value - and which consume it?
Move past averages to cohort and customer-level economics: acquisition cost, retention, support load, expansion, and payment behavior.
03
Can we afford our growth?
Connect CAC, payback, churn, and cash so hiring, marketing spend, and platform investment decisions are made from the model, not momentum.
04
Is the billing and payment engine leaking?
Invoicing accuracy, involuntary churn, refunds, chargebacks, and processing cost all hit margin at the last step. In high-volume B2C, they can sink the business; in B2B, they quietly erode it.
05
What should the board and investors see each month?
A concise recurring-revenue package: ARR movement, retention, unit economics, cash runway, and the operating assumptions behind the forecast.
What I can build with you
Pricing and packaging economics, with a client-safe price-adjustment approach.
Cohort, customer, and segment profitability reporting.
CAC, payback, and lifetime-value models tied to the cash forecast.
ARR, retention, and churn reporting owners and investors trust.
Billing, refunds, chargebacks, and payment-operations review.
13-week cash and runway forecasting.
R&D and platform investment decisions with clear economics.
Financing, acquisition, and exit readiness for recurring-revenue businesses.
Recommended starting point
SaaS CFO Decision Diagnostic
In 10 business days after receiving complete data, I develop:
1
A 13-week cash and runway view.
2
A pricing, retention, and unit-economics map using your best available data.
3
A prioritized 90-day action plan for pricing, churn, CAC, reporting, and decision ownership.
Planning investment: $3,000-$5,000, confirmed after a fit call.
Ten years without a price adjustment, then annual profit up 50%
I came in as CFO of CertiPay, a $285M business whose recurring-revenue core was a PEO, an ASO, and a B2B HR software product - cloud-based payroll processing moving about $3.5B of client payroll a year.
Legacy clients had gone 10 years without a price adjustment. Working closely with the CTO, I stood up a Power BI driven FP&A capability and used it to design a new pricing strategy: every client received 24 months of price protection, then a fair-adjustment review every 12 months.
+50%
annual profit after the pricing reset
Under 1%
client attrition through the change
$5.4M+
improvement in client lifetime value
The result: annual profit up 50%, client attrition under 1%, and more than $5.4M of improvement in client lifetime value. A Microsoft Power Platform modernization cut labor costs 17% and delivered the company’s first-ever customer-profitability reporting. In 2022 the PEO, ASO, and software core sold to Vensure, backed by Stone Point Capital - the buyer’s largest and most complex acquisition to that point.
The takeaway: you can raise price without losing clients when you do it with discipline and data. Protection first, then fair reviews on a schedule.
This describes Bob’s role as CFO of CertiPay (2017-2023), not a Fractional CFO client engagement.
B2C software experience
At Baywalk Media, the company I co-founded, we white-labeled European B2C software as part of our technical-support business and built it to $35M in peak revenue at 20% EBITDA. I ran the PCI-compliant, multi-currency payment operation behind 1.2 million consumers - holding processing cost below 4% of gross, refunds below 15%, and chargebacks below 3%. High-volume consumer software lives or dies on those numbers.
“
Bob is a high-level CFO with outstanding technical and motivational skills.
Paul R., CEO - SaaS, Ohio
Is this the right fit?
Best fit
B2B or B2C software, SaaS, or tech-enabled subscription company.
Approximately $5 million to $50 million in revenue.
Founder-led, with no full-time CFO.
Usable accounting records and at least basic subscription or billing data.
A decision involving pricing, churn, acquisition spend, cash, financing, acquisition, or exit.
When it’s not the right fit
When the immediate need is bookkeeping cleanup, tax preparation, or a valuation exercise without reliable revenue data.
Frequently asked questions
Do you only work with payroll or HR software companies?
No. That’s where my deepest B2B software experience sits, but the disciplines - pricing, retention, unit economics, billing, and cash - apply to recurring-revenue software generally. Each engagement starts from your model and your data.
Our metrics live in five different tools. Is that a problem?
Usually not. The first step is to use the exports you already have. At CertiPay we built the FP&A capability from the company’s own data before changing anything else. New tooling comes in only when it solves a defined decision problem.
Can you help us raise prices without losing customers?
That’s exactly what the CertiPay pricing reset did: protection first, then scheduled fair-adjustment reviews, designed from the data. I’ll tell you honestly what your data supports before recommending a move.
Can you support a raise or exit?
Yes. I’ve prepared recurring-revenue businesses for buyers and investors, including a sale that was the buyer’s largest and most complex acquisition to that point. Legal, tax, and valuation specialists keep their disciplines.
Put real economics behind the recurring revenue
Or text me directly at (727) 455-9905.