Fractional CFO.
Part-time, retainer-based executive financial leadership — Mare + Co. brings senior CFO skills to companies that aren't yet ready for a full-time hire.
Forward-looking leadership for businesses ready to grow on purpose, not by accident.
Most small and mid-sized businesses don't have a financial visibility problem. They have a financial foresight problem. Your books are clean, your taxes are filed, your reports are accurate — and yet every big decision still feels like a guess. That's the gap a fractional CFO fills.
Headquartered in New Hampshire, with a reach beyond. Happy to travel, comfortable in hybrid and remote — the right partnership isn't limited by our zip code.
on this page
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Eight topics. Read it in order, or pick the one that's most on your mind.
HOW WE SHOW UP
A partner to the whole team — not a monthly call with the founder.
This isn't a standing monthly call with the founder. We embed ourselves in your organization as a partner and colleague to your leadership team — close enough to understand how the business actually runs, and trusted enough to help steer it.
A CFO in the room. Not a consultant at arm's length.
Two different jobs · both essential
Your back office keeps the business running. A fractional CFO helps decide where it's going.
You likely already have skilled people keeping your finances in order — bookkeepers, accountants, and tax specialists who run payroll, manage AR and AP, maintain a clean chart of accounts, file your taxes, and close the books with precision. Their work is the foundation everything else stands on.
By design, it answers what happened? — accurately, reconciled, and on time.
A CFO doesn't replace your accountant or bookkeeper — and shouldn't. We do the thing none of them were hired to do: look ahead, and help you decide what to do about what we see.
how we work
AI-powered. Human-led.
We lean heavily on AI for the work that used to eat hours — market research and financial modeling chief among them. The technology makes us efficient. The judgment is still ours — and it's still where the value lives.
what we focus on
Five disciplines. One forward-looking practice.
The areas where a fractional CFO moves the most for a business between zero and $20M. Each is its own discipline catered to your business. Each is something we hold to standard.
01
Cash management
Cash is survival before it's strategy — and managing it is about far more than knowing what's coming in. Sufficient reserves, strong banking relationships, and the metrics you need to establish a line of credit before you need to draw on it. We build the visibility and discipline so you're never managing the bank balance by feel.
02
Budget & strategic plan alignment
A real budget is an operational plan for everyone who carries financial responsibility — a comprehensive plan for the year ahead that covers both the day-to-day work and the strategic initiatives in your growth plan. When budget and strategy are built together, every dollar points where you actually want the business to go.
03
Goal setting
Goals live or die by the budget. Every financial goal should align directly to the annual budget process and your strategic plan — and if a goal isn't reflected there, it's meaningless or superfluous. We make targets clear, measurable, and connected to the plan that funds them.
04
Measuring what matters
Not every number deserves your attention. We identify the handful of key performance indicators (KPIs) that genuinely drive your business and make them impossible to ignore.
05
We pressure-test pricing, margins, and spend to find the profit that's already in your business — and the profit you're leaving on the table.
Maximizing profitability
the full toolkit
Part of the partnership. Or a project, on its own.
A fractional CFO engagement flexes to fit what your business needs most. The capabilities below are part of the full partnership — and several can also be scoped as standalone projects if you'd rather start with one specific thing. Where a capability has a page of its own, follow the link. Otherwise, reach out and we'll walk you through it.
01 · Capability
Revenue strategy, on demand
Sometimes the highest-value work isn't financial defense — it's offense. We can scope an engagement around revenue in the spirit of a Chief Revenue Officer: examining how you prospect, sell, set goals, and motivate your team, and looking outward at the new products, services, and markets ready for you to reach.
02 · Capability
Dashboards for every level
The CEO isn't the only one who needs a clear view. Your board, investors, and department heads each need their own — and we design sophisticated-yet-simple dashboards for each audience, with cash and budget-to-actuals front and center.
03 · Capability
Benchmarking
Used well, benchmarking to your peers is a gauge — it tells you whether you're performing at your best and helps you decide what's right for your business. We access and interpret data across industries from hospitality to non-profits to higher education, and we believe in revisiting it at least annually, or whenever the market shifts.
04 · Capability
Financial modeling
Every meaningful decision — hire, expand, raise prices, take on debt — is really a question about the future. We build clear, flexible models that let you see the outcome before you commit to it: scenario planning, forecasting, and decision support that replace “I think” with “here's what the numbers say.”
05 · Capability
Teaching the numbers
Financial literacy is core to what we do. We teach the numbers in plain language, from the top of the organization to the front line — because when your team understands what drives the business, better decisions get made everywhere.
06 · Capability
Building teams that stay
Your people are your largest investment. We help design recruitment and retention strategies grounded in the numbers — evaluating total compensation and benefits, and benchmarking what you offer against the employment market — so you can attract and keep the talent you can't afford to lose.
HOW ENGAGEMENT WORKS
A monthly retainer. The hours are held. The lean-in is yours.
You commit the dollars and the hours, and in return we hold that time for you — embedded, available, ready to dig in. How fully you draw on that investment is yours to decide. The clients who get the most from us are the ones who lean in.
We'll always make the most of the time you give us. How much of it you choose to use is the one part of this partnership that stays in your hands.
An investment, not an expense
A return on what you put in.
Fractional CFO services are an investment in a strategic partnership. There's no guarantee on ROI — no honest advisor could promise one — but the entire intent of the engagement is to deliver a return on what you put in. Everything we do is built to move that needle.
let's work together
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