Startup CFO: when you need one, and what to hire first

Your commercialista files the annual accounts and the tax returns. Your investors want something else: a forecast, a cash number every month and someone who can defend both across a board table. That second job is what a startup CFO does. If nobody has that title yet, the job falls to you, along with everything else on your plate.

So when should that change, and who do you hire first? We start with the five finance roles people tend to confuse and the duties an Italian SRL already has by law. Then it gets practical: when startups usually add a finance lead, and what a fractional CFO charges if you’d rather not hire full time. The last part covers what investors expect from your numbers, from seed up to a Series A round. New to fundraising? The beginner’s map from zero to a first round is the better place to start.

What does a startup CFO do? CFO, controller, bookkeeper and commercialista

Five roles get mixed up, and in a small company one person may well cover two. Here’s how they split.

Role	What they do	When it appears
Bookkeeper (contabile)	Records transactions and keeps the books current: the scorekeeping that reports what already happened	Clean bookkeeping from seed (CRV)
Commercialista	Registered professional (D.Lgs. 139/2005): accounting, tax and payroll books, tax returns, valuations, tax litigation, statutory audit roles	From incorporation, because an SRL’s books are a legal duty
Controller	Owns the month-end close	Once there’s a monthly close to own
Head or VP of finance	Budgeting and forecasting (FP&A)	Usually at Series A (CRV)
CFO	Capital allocation, strategy, fundraising and M&A; manages investors and lenders	Fractional at seed, full time from Series B (CRV)

The commercialista row is the Italian twist. The decree that governs the profession credits its members with expertise in business economics and company law, and lists keeping accounting, tax and payroll books and preparing tax returns among their activities. So your commercialista guards the statutory numbers, the ones you’ve already earned. A CFO works on the ones you haven’t.

What an Italian SRL must already do by law

Know the floor before you hire anyone. The Civil Code asks a commercial business to keep a libro giornale (the journal) and a libro degli inventari (the inventory book), plus whatever other records its size and activity require, and to keep the invoices and letters it receives and copies of those it sends. The accounts follow the accrual principle: income and costs count in the year they belong to, ‘regardless of the date of collection or payment’.

Then the calendar. The directors present the annual accounts (bilancio) to the partners within the term in the articles, no later than 120 days after year end; 180 days are allowed only for companies that consolidate or have particular needs, which the directors must explain. Within 30 days of approval the accounts go to the Registro delle Imprese. For a year ending on 31 December, that’s approval by 30 April and filing within 30 days of it.

File late and the directors face a fine of €103 to €1,032, cut to a third within 30 days of the deadline and raised by a third when it’s the annual accounts. Small money. Still, it’s exactly the sort of thing a due diligence review, the investor’s check before signing, turns up.

Two thresholds come later. An SRL must appoint a statutory auditor or control body once it exceeds, for two years running, any one of €4 million of assets, €4 million of revenue or 20 employees on average. Abridged accounts, with no cash flow statement, stay available below two of three higher limits: €5.5 million of assets, €11 million of revenue, 50 employees. A seed company with a handful of people is well below both.

What does the floor cost? Fiscozen, an Italian tax platform, quotes €200 to €400 a month online for a simple SRL, or €3,000 to €6,000 a year and more at a traditional firm, for a base package of ordinary accounting, VAT, direct taxes and abridged accounts. Payroll, audits and extraordinary deals cost extra, and payroll arrives with your first hire: our guide to hiring your first employee in Italy prices one at full employer cost. None of it buys you a forecast.

When to hire a CFO: what VCs and advisers say

No law tells you, so you’re left with practice. The clearest recent guidance comes from CRV, a US venture firm, in July 2026: ‘A seed stage company can manage with clean bookkeeping and a fractional CFO.’ At Series A its answer is a VP or head of finance. The first full-time CFO waits until Series B, when there are several entities and the books need to be ready for an audit. Its shorthand would fit on a sticky note: leave the full-time seat empty until finance is a job someone does every day.

One older tip still holds. In 2016 Kruze Consulting, a US accounting firm for startups, advised bringing in a part-time CFO at least three months before a new fundraising round. Planning to open the round in March? Then you want that person working with you by December.

Both sources write for American venture-backed companies, and we found no comparable published guidance for Italy. Read the stages as a reference. An Italian SRL already pays a commercialista for the statutory layer, so the real question is who builds the forward-looking one, and when it stops fitting in a founder’s evenings.

Fractional CFO for startups: how it works and what it costs

A fractional CFO works for you part time, usually alongside other clients, on a monthly retainer or by the hour. In Italy you’ll also hear ‘CFO in outsourcing’ or ‘CFO a tempo parziale’. Same idea.

Published prices are mostly in dollars. Take Go Fractional’s 2026 State of Fractional Work report, updated in June. It draws on data from the company’s job platform and a survey of 213 fractional professionals, and it puts fractional CFO roles at $191 an hour on average. Typical retainers? $3,000 to $10,000 a month. Converting those dollars into euros won’t tell you what one charges in Turin or Bari. We found no published survey of Italian fractional CFO fees, so ask for written quotes and compare scope, not just price.

Scope is where these engagements go wrong. Before you sign, write down which reports you get and by which day of the month, how many hours that buys, who owns the model file, and what happens during the weeks of a round.

What investors expect from finance, seed to Series A

At seed the bar is modest but monthly. Visible, which makes investor-reporting software, advises monthly updates during pre-seed and seed and quarterly ones from Series A, built on three numbers: cash on hand, monthly burn rate (the net cash used last month) and runway (cash divided by burn). Our investor update template has the format, and our guide on how to calculate burn rate and runway the arithmetic.

By Series A the bar becomes a routine. Rho, a US business-banking firm, suggests in an August 2026 checklist that ten business days is a reasonable early goal for the monthly close, and five achievable once bank, card, payables and payroll feed the ledger automatically. Its recurring package? Cash position, burn and runway, revenue, budget against actual. CRV adds the warning that matters most: diligence exposes weak models when you have the least time to fix them.

That’s the real output of whoever does the job, at any level. A startup financial model you can defend, a use of funds that matches it, and numbers that survive an investor’s due diligence. Then the board pack: our guide to the startup board meeting covers it. Would you rather build the model with someone across the table? That’s what our financial model service is for.

Red flags investors notice in a startup’s finances

• Annual accounts approved late or never filed: a fine for the directors and an awkward question in diligence.
• A model whose opening cash doesn’t match the bank statement.
• Burn reported without runway, or runway without the assumptions behind it.
• Bad news that surfaces at the quarterly call instead of in the monthly update. Visible’s line is blunt: investors tolerate failure, not inaction.
• A cap table that doesn’t match the legal documents, one of the audit-readiness habits Rho asks you to keep.
• A full-time CFO hired at seed with no raise, debt or second entity to fill the week.

Checklist: your first-year finance stack

1. A commercialista engaged from incorporation, with the scope in writing: ordinary accounting, VAT, taxes, annual accounts.
2. A business bank account and card that export cleanly to the books.
3. Close the books on the same day every month. Ten business days is fine at first, then work down to five.
4. Cash, burn and runway in every monthly report. Other metrics may come and go, but these three stay.
5. A single financial model with a named owner, who compares it with the real figures once a quarter.
6. The legal dates in the calendar: accounts approved within 120 days, filed within 30 days of approval.
7. A fractional CFO or adviser booked at least three months before the next round.
8. A monthly investor update that leads with the bad news.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or accounting advice. Deadlines and thresholds can change: check the Civil Code and ask your commercialista before you rely on them.