WHAT DO A CPA AND CFO ACTUALLY DO?

I’ve had the conversation time and again… “My CPA isn’t doing what I need them to do.”

When I ask, they’re typically looking for more than a financial filing from a CPA. Tax season comes, a return gets filed, and everyone goes back to their day jobs.

Then, I talk to people about being a CFO. “So you are like an accountant but more?” Yes… but no. And that $5 million revenue business with the CFO? You’re likely overpaying someone to code transactions and reconcile bank feeds.

What is very clear from all the conversations I’ve had: no one knows what a CPA or CFO actually does.

So over the next few weeks, I’m going to dig into what each role does.

We’ll have an expanded version of this series on the youtube channel, so if you want to go deeper, go watch the intro video and subscribe to follow along over the next 8 weeks:

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Today, I’m going to map the five types of roles in a small-business finance org, what each one actually owns, and the hiring order that keeps $100/hour brains on $100/hour problems.

THE FIVE SEATS

As a golfer, I can relate almost anything back to golf and your golf clubs… To an outsider, the game may look simple: hit the ball in the hole. But underneath are dozens of clubs, each designed for a different shot. Use the wrong one and the outcome changes completely.

Finance is the same way. On the surface: enter transactions, run reports, done. Underneath: a system of specialized players, each critical in their own role.

Here are the five seats:

1. CFO: Strategy & Story. Sets direction, allocates capital, and tells the financial story to banks, investors, and your team. Not the person closing the books.
2. Controller: Accuracy & Compliance. Builds the accounting machine: policies, close, and reliable financials you can trust.
3. Management: Oversight & Controls. Accounting Managers and Senior Accountants. They keep checklists moving, review work, and solve problems before they hit leadership.
4. Operational Staff: Execution & Speed. Bookkeepers, clerks, and staff accountants turn activity into clean data via transaction coding, account reconciliation, and process compliance. Then, as you grow specialized staff is added take care of a need that arises. In all 50 states? Get a tax or sales tax accountant. Complicated inventory or product? Get a cost accountant.
5. External CPA: Assurance & Tax. Tax returns, audits/reviews, and specialized compliance. A critical partner, but not your internal financial leader.

This may be surprising to some of you, right? A CPA is generally not an essential role for a small business. Next week, we’re going to go deeper on what the role of the CPA is. So hold tight until then.

The easiest way to understand each role is by the decisions they own:

• CFO: Capital allocation, pricing/terms strategy, bank/investor narrative, “when to hire” vs. overtime, covenant risk.
• Controller: Close calendar, policy exceptions, revenue recognition, sign-off on financials.
• Manager/Senior: Reconciliations on time, error resolution, checklist adherence, escalations.
• Ops Staff: Invoice accuracy, receipt compliance, AR cadence, vendor setup hygiene.
• CPA: Tax positions, filing calendar, audit opinion scope, state/local registrations.

When you see the decisions clearly, the org chart makes sense. You stop expecting the wrong things from the wrong people.

WHEN DO I HIRE EACH?

You don’t need all five seats on day one. So when do I make these hires? I’m going to completely overgeneralize here, but this will give you a general sense of what a build out could look like based on revenue bands.

• $0–1M: External bookkeeper + CPA doing taxes
• $1-5M: Add a few hours/month of a Fractional CFO to drive strategy and help you make decisions.
• $5–10M: Replace the external bookkeeper with a Staff Accountant. You might even have clerks or a few specialists, though this can often be done by receptionists or other office staff. Keep the FCFO, but as you grow you may add a Senior Accountant or add an Accounting Manager as transaction volume rises. The FCFO can often mentor an up-and-comer here.
• $10–20M: Add a Controller. Keep the FCFO for strategic needs such as financing, pricing shifts, M&A exploration.
• $20M+: Start considering bringing a CFO in house and building out a layer of specialists and more accountant roles.

Notice the pattern: start with transaction hygiene, then add oversight, then add strategy. Get it out of order and you end up with leaders doing clerical work.

We want to avoid the two most common problems I see when I talk to business owners about their accounting department and CPA:

1. Title inflation: A “CFO” doing reconciliations is a $200k band-aid on a $60k problem. You’re paying leadership wages for entry-level work. The result? You get half of the big-picture brain you thought you hired, because the other half is buried in QuickBooks.
2. Misplaced expectations: A CPA’s superpower is tax and assurance which is episodic, external, regulated. Daily decision support lives inside your business. When you expect your CPA to be a growth strategist, you’ll end up frustrated (and overbilled). The same goes for entry level staff: you can’t expect them to provide strategic insights or high-level financial modeling. Make sure you understand these roles and hire the right person for the right seat.

Building your finance function isn’t about titles. It’s about matching outcomes to the right level of talent and paying for what you actually need.

When the right people are in the right seats, your business runs cleaner, faster, and with less stress. When they’re not, you pay CFO prices for clerk work and expect CPA-level strategy from a tax return.

Stop expecting the wrong things from the wrong people. Get the structure right, and you’ll get your time, and strategy, back.

Next week we’ll talk about what your CPA actually does, what they don’t do, and how to optimize what you get from that relationship.

In two weeks, we’ll talk about the CFO role… both Fractional CFOs and the full time role. What should they do, what they don’t do, and how to get the best outcomes.

If you have questions, reply here and I’d love to answer them.

And as a reminder: this will only be the next 2 weeks here. To go deeper, subscribe to the youtube channel.

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