Finance health check: Is your finance team keeping score or steering the business?

Paul Nagpal, president and chief operating officer (COO) of CFO Centre in Canada, shared a story during Employment Hero’s Finance Health Check webinar that captures the whole session. A fractional chief financial officer (CFO) walked into a client’s office with a rolling cash flow forecast and some unwelcome news. Based on seasonality, revenue and the timing of money coming in and going out, the business would run short of cash in six months. The chief executive officer (CEO) started laughing. The CFO was baffled until the CEO explained that he usually got a different kind of visit, from someone saying they couldn’t make payroll tomorrow. Six months meant time to plan. He called it the difference between having a CFO and relying on a bookkeeper.

Many organizations focus on driving revenue and rarely look closely at their finance function itself. Paul wanted attendees to ask three questions about their own team. Is it working? Is it doing the right things? And is it helping the business grow sustainably, beyond closing the month on time?

What separates a scorekeeper from a business partner?

Paul described finance teams in three stages. A scorekeeper closes the books, processes payroll, files taxes and manages payables and receivables. That work produces the monthly financial statements, and it’s the baseline the team exists to deliver. Paul estimated that roughly half of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are still at this stage.

A navigator looks forward. This team builds rolling cash flow forecasts, analyzes margin by product, client, department or geography, runs scenarios and writes monthly reports that explain what the numbers mean and what to do next. You’ll know a team has reached this stage when finance flags risks early and the CEO trusts the numbers more than gut instinct.

A business partner sits at the leadership table. Finance owns the financial model, shapes the strategic plan and challenges the numbers behind major decisions. Paul offered a practical test: in the last 90 days, how many times did finance bring an insight the leadership team didn’t already have?

Paul said most CEOs he speaks with describe their finance function as a navigator. Dig a little deeper, and many teams are still keeping score. That gap between perception and reality is where most of the opportunity sits.

What the live poll revealed

A live poll gave a useful snapshot of the room. About 20% described their business as startup stage, 40% as growth and roughly 36% as mature. Asked who was the most senior finance person, 37% said controller, 26% said director or VP, 18% said CFO and 20% said bookkeeper. On monthly management reporting, 20% had reports out within a week, another 25% within two weeks, 44% took three to four weeks and 11% took more than four weeks. Figures are rounded.

Paul’s benchmark was clear. Three to four days is best in class, two weeks is roughly the norm and three to four weeks means work that needs doing. The poll was self-selected, so read it as a snapshot of this room and nothing more.

Curious which stage your finance team sits in, and how Paul would score it?

Why compliance belongs in the foundation

Paul’s 12-box framework, built by CFO Centre, sorts financial success into three layers. The base layer covers compliance, tax and legal, outsourcing and a strong banking relationship. The operational layer covers systems and controls, key performance indicator (KPI) reporting, profit and cash flow. The strategic layer covers a three- to five-year plan that gets refreshed regularly, preparing for a sale or succession, managing risk and securing the right funding.

Compliance is the work most teams can’t skip. Scorekeepers process payroll, file taxes and keep the business compliant with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Paul pointed to the external accountant’s role in the same area: putting together the balance sheet and income statement as of a given date, so the business meets its CRA obligations and filings. The trouble starts when that work becomes the whole finance function. A business can meet every filing deadline and still be stuck in the scorekeeper stage.

Prefer to hear the five dimensions from Paul directly, at your own pace?

How to run a finance health check on your team

Paul walked through five performance dimensions, each scored from one to five: reporting and visibility, cash and working capital, business partnering, scalability and strategic contribution.

Reporting and visibility asks how timely and trustworthy your numbers are. A low score fits a team whose financials arrive three or more weeks after month end, or whose numbers get questioned regularly. A high score means near real-time dashboards and a team that trusts the data. Ask yourself when you last made a major decision with real confidence in the numbers behind it.

Cash and working capital asks whether you can see where cash is heading. Checking the bank balance is the wrong tool, because surprises tend to arrive late. A high score means a rolling 13-week forecast, updated weekly or even daily, with scenarios built in. The question to answer is what your cash position will be in 90 days under two different revenue scenarios.

Business partnering asks whether finance surfaces insights or simply responds to requests, and whether it’s in the room when decisions get made. Scalability asks whether the team could handle twice the revenue with minimal added headcount, and what would happen if the key finance person left this month. Strategic contribution asks whether finance had real input into your last major strategic decision, and whether it challenged the numbers or simply agreed.

Where finance time quietly leaks away

Paul named three places where inefficiency hides. The first is what he calls the historian problem. Finance keeps looking backward. Reporting arrives weeks or months late, and by the time the numbers land, the decision has already passed. The second is the spreadsheet problem. Many finance functions were built when revenue was a fraction of today’s, and the same manual processes now run at a larger scale. Adding junior headcount adds capacity without improving speed, quality or partnering.

The third is the bottleneck. When one person holds all the knowledge, work stops whenever that person is unavailable, and their departure becomes a crisis. Lenders and investors flag that risk, and so do buyers when a business is prepared for sale. Paul’s warning was blunt: key person risk can turn into a valuation discount.

These problems compound. Decisions get delayed, corrections cost more and leadership time gets pulled into firefighting. The pressure shows up in payroll too. In Employment Hero’s 2026 survey with Focaldata, 62% of Canadian businesses reported payroll errors that needed manual correction in the past 12 months.

Who should own finance at each stage?

A controller manages transactions and the month-end close. An external accountant focuses on historical financials, tax compliance and filings. A CFO looks forward, shaping cash, margins, capital and growth plans. Relying on an outside accountant and a bookkeeper for forecasts is probably not enough.

Paul offered rough rules of thumb and called them starting points. Around $5 million to $10 million in revenue, a strong bookkeeper and a fractional CFO working about a day a week can cover cash flow, reporting and forecasting. Between $10 million and $100 million, a controller runs the transactional side while a CFO, one or two days a week, focuses on financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and board reporting. Above $100 million, a full-time CFO, a controller and a full FP&A team usually come into play, along with treasury and capital structure work.

Complexity is the other signal. More products, more geographies, outside funding and new risks such as tariffs or inflation all raise the bar for finance leadership. Paul also suggested leaders treat finance like every other department and ask what it costs not to have a strong one.

Where should you start?

Paul’s advice was to start small, with quick wins that have the biggest impact. He suggested four. Accelerate the month-end close. Set up a weekly cash review built from your rolling 13-week forecast, which gives you at least 90 days of visibility. Identify your top three margin drivers, because improvements of one or two percent add up quickly to the bottom line. Assess your key person finance risk and document the processes that currently live in one person’s head.

Three questions every CEO should be able to answer

The first asks for your cash position in 90 days under two revenue scenarios. Cash surprises do the most damage, so scenarios matter more than a single forecast. The second asks for your three highest-margin revenue streams and what sits at the other end of the scale. Paul’s team often helps clients remove the lowest-margin work and redirect effort toward better opportunities. The third asks what breaks first if revenue doubles this year. The answer covers the whole organization, finance included, and it shows whether the infrastructure can scale cost-effectively. Nobody can afford to double headcount in preparation for growth.

Where to go from here

Most CEOs think their finance function sits further along than it does, and the fix starts with an honest score. Choose the one or two changes with the biggest payoff, then build from there. Teams usually make the shift one process at a time: a documented month-end calendar, a forecast the CEO actually uses and a finance lead invited into the strategy meeting.

Score your own team alongside the full session, whenever suits you.