Fractional CFO
Ongoing senior finance on a monthly retainer, typically two to seven days a month, with no end date.
Flexible financial leadership for startups and growing technology companies
Numminen Advisory is a CFO practice in Helsinki, working with investor-backed, internationally focused technology companies. We provide fractional CFO support on a monthly retainer, interim CFO cover for a defined period, and fixed-scope projects on group consolidation, funding readiness, audit readiness and transfer pricing.
FI KPL3
IFRS2
US GAAP1
Services
Three ways to work with us
Interim CFO
Cover for the seat over a defined period, at a higher intensity, with a handover built into the scope.
Fixed-scope projects and diagnostics
A defined problem with an end date and a fixed fee, ending in a written findings memo with a ranked remediation list.
Every engagement starts the same way: a call of about forty-five minutes discussing what is unclear, what is urgent, and whether we are the right answer at all. Sometimes the honest conclusion is that you need a financial controller rather than a CFO, and we will say so.
AI in finance
How AI changes CFO work
AI now does much of the preparation in CFO work, from pulling ledgers to drafting board commentary. Numminen Advisory builds these systems into client finance functions, and Joanna Numminen runs them in her own daily operations. The time saved goes to judgement and decisions, and nothing is posted to a ledger until the CFO approves it.
| Finance task | What AI does now | What stays with the CFO |
|---|---|---|
| Month-end close | Ties bank and sub-ledgers to the general ledger every morning and lists the breaks. | Judgement on accruals and estimates, and sign-off of the close. |
| Group consolidation | Matches intercompany lines across entities and prepares elimination entries for review. | Approval of every elimination and the policy behind it. |
| Investor and audit requests | Checks each request against the data room or the PBC list and drafts a first answer. | What is released, and the conversation with investors and auditors. |
| Board reporting | Assembles the board pack and drafts first-pass variance commentary. | The story the numbers tell, and accountability for them. |
How we run it
- Joanna built the workspace we use in every engagement: one project per client, with its own context, skills and integrations.
- Connections to NetSuite, Procountor and Netvisor are read only by default.
- Every run is logged, so a figure in a board pack can be traced back to its source.
Solutions
Where we go deep
Most finance problems in growing companies are not accounting problems. They are structural ones that were solved for a smaller company and never revisited as the company expands internationally. A second entity appears, then a third. Investors want IFRS or US GAAP while the parent reports under local rules. Public funding arrives with cost eligibility rules nobody has read properly. Then a round, an audit or an acquirer’s diligence exposes all of it at once.
Group consolidation and multi-entity reporting
The chart of accounts, the intercompany model, the elimination logic, and a group close that runs monthly.
Funding and diligence readiness
The data room, its structure, the numbers underneath it, and the story an investor or an acquirer will test.
Audit readiness
Preparing the company for a fast and efficient audit process, while there is still time to do something about what an auditor will find.
Transfer pricing and intercompany
What each entity does for the other, on what basis, written down before the first invoice.
When companies engage a CFO service like Numminen Advisory
Most startups engage an external CFO service when they are starting to show the signs of a high-growth business, but are too small to need a full-time, experienced finance leader.
A round is coming.
Twelve months out, and the reporting an institutional investor will expect does not exist yet. The due diligence material is spread across several data sources.
The group has outgrown its bookkeeping.
A foreign subsidiary arrived, and consolidation is now a spreadsheet one person maintains.
The finance director has left.
Reporting still has to land and the board still meets, while recruitment runs three to five months.
Diligence has started and something is wrong.
Remediation at pace, with a transaction live and the numbers pulling apart under scrutiny.
Who we work with
Investor-backed technology companies, usually before or after a funding round, whose finance function has to carry more complexity than the company’s size suggests: several legal entities, more than one accounting framework running at once, and capital arriving from investors and public funding at the same time.
These are patterns rather than requirements. The useful question is whether a competent in-house controller would be out of their depth in your situation.
The pattern we see most often
EntitiesTwo or more, usually across borders
FrameworksIFRS or US GAAP running alongside local reporting
CapitalInvestor money and public funding at the same time
TimingBefore or after a funding round
About
Behind the practice
Numminen Advisory is founded and run by Joanna Numminen. Fifteen years in finance inside international technology companies, from audit at Deloitte through controller and finance director roles to a CFO seat.
ACCAQualified since 2017Member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
MScInternational Accounting and FinanceBayes Business School, City, University of London
MAEconomics and Financial ControllingKraków University of Economics