The senior finance capability your business needs — before you are ready to hire it.

Strategic financial leadership for growing businesses.

Most growing businesses reach a point where the traditional accountant relationship is no longer enough. Monthly compliance, annual financials and quarterly BAS lodgements are table stakes — the real questions being asked by directors and investors are about unit economics, capital allocation, pricing strategy, growth funding and the financial architecture needed to scale. A traditional accountant is not positioned to answer these questions; a full-time CFO is often too expensive, too early.

Corson Fiske’s CFO Advisory practice fills that gap. We are the hands-on strategic finance partner directors call when they need a CFO-level advisor genuinely embedded in the business — working alongside management, contributing to board meetings, stress-testing strategic decisions and building the financial capability the business needs to support its next phase of growth.

This is not a compliance service delivered at arm’s length. Our engagements involve partner-level input in real time — reviewing management reporting before it reaches the board, modelling strategic options before capital is committed, and pushing back directly when the numbers do not support what is being proposed. We are the CFO the business cannot yet justify hiring, and our role ends when the business is ready to make that hire permanently.

A hands-on approach — not traditional accounting

Traditional accounting practices are structured around compliance workflows: lodgements, financial statements, BAS, tax returns. These are necessary services, but they are fundamentally backward-looking. The CFO Advisory practice at Corson Fiske is structured around the forward-looking questions that actually drive growth and protect enterprise value. Specifically:

• Strategic financial planning. Three- to five-year integrated financial models linked to operational drivers, capital requirements and realistic growth scenarios — stress-tested against commercial reality rather than presented as aspirational.
• Monthly board packs that inform decisions. Management reporting redesigned around the KPIs that actually matter for the specific business — unit economics, cohort analysis, cash runway, gross margin by segment — not the generic templates that arrive with most accounting software.
• Capital advisory and funding strategy. Assessment of debt, equity, hybrid and alternative funding options, preparation of lender and investor materials, and hands-on support through capital raise processes.
• Cash flow and working capital discipline. Thirteen-week rolling forecasts, receivables and inventory reviews, and the operational interventions needed to free cash tied up unnecessarily in working capital.
• Commercial decision support. Financial analysis of pricing changes, customer acquisition economics, product launches, acquisitions, capex decisions, hiring plans and market entry — delivered within the decision timeframes the business actually operates on.
• Finance team coaching and capability uplift. Working directly with internal finance teams to raise their capability, redesign processes and prepare them to operate at the next level.

How we help directors drive growth

The CFO Advisory engagements we find most rewarding are those where directors are actively trying to build something substantial. These directors know what they want to achieve but often lack a senior finance partner who can translate ambition into a credible financial plan, stress-test it, fund it and measure progress against it. Our role is to be that partner.

We sit in board meetings. We contribute to strategic discussions. We challenge assumptions before capital is committed. We prepare the materials that go to lenders and investors. We negotiate facility terms alongside management. We coach internal finance teams. And where necessary, we provide interim CFO capability during transitions, capital raises, acquisitions or other inflection points. The goal throughout is to make the business genuinely investable and sustainably profitable — not just compliant.

Industries we focus on

Our CFO Advisory practice has particular depth in industries where the financial questions are complex, the growth profile is demanding and the commercial discipline needs to keep pace with the operational ambition. We focus our work in the following sectors:

• Technology and SaaS. Unit economics, cohort analysis, ARR metrics, customer acquisition cost discipline, R&D tax incentive integration, capital raise preparation and cap table management.
• Software and AI. The distinct financial challenges of capital-light, gross-margin-heavy businesses — R&D activity documentation, employee equity plans, international expansion, and the capital intensity that emerges during scale-up.
• NDIS providers. Participant plan revenue management, workforce cost discipline, regulatory compliance reporting and the specific financial viability tests that the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission applies to providers.
• Manufacturing. Direct and indirect cost modelling, capacity utilisation analysis, working capital and inventory optimisation, capex business cases, and the restructuring support often needed in energy-intensive manufacturing.
• Professional services. Utilisation and realisation discipline, partner compensation modelling, working capital management, practice group economics and the succession planning that professional service firms require.
• Transport and logistics. Fleet economics, fuel cost management, working capital in long-cycle receivables, asset finance structuring and the margin discipline the sector demands.
• Wholesale and distribution. Inventory financing, supplier terms, foreign exchange exposure on imports, and the working capital interventions that turn gross profit into actual cash.
• Industrial businesses. Asset-intensive operations, capex-heavy growth, multi-site operations, compliance cost management and the financial architecture needed to support expansion.

These are the sectors where partner-level CFO advisory delivers the most value — because the financial questions are meaningfully harder than generic compliance, and the consequences of getting them wrong are commercially significant.