Turnaround CFO
Transforming distressed businesses with expertise and strategies that stabilize the business. Regain clarity and control the business' future.
A Turnaround Requires Knowing What's Wrong Before You Can Fix It.
Most businesses in distress know something is wrong. What they usually don't know is exactly what — because the accounting and finance function that should be surfacing the problem is part of the problem. The books are behind. The cash flow visibility is poor. The reporting doesn't tell leadership what they need to know to make the right decisions under pressure.
A turnaround without an accurate financial picture is guesswork. You can't cut the right costs if you don't know which costs are actually driving the problem. You can't protect cash if you don't know where it's going. You can't stabilize a business if the accounting and finance function is generating noise instead of signal.
We deploy into turnaround situations quickly. Our first job is to establish an accurate financial picture — cash position, burn rate, which parts of the business are generating margin and which aren't. From there we help leadership make the decisions that move the business toward stability, and we build the accounting and finance infrastructure that supports the recovery.
Where We Focus
Stabilize First. Then Build.
In a turnaround, the sequence matters as much as the substance. We work in the order the situation requires.
Cash Position & Immediate Liquidity
The first question in a turnaround is always cash — how much there is, how long it lasts, and what the immediate obligations are. We establish an accurate cash position immediately, build a 13-week cash flow forecast, and identify the obligations that have to be managed in the near term. Everything else follows from knowing where you stand on cash.
Profitability Triage
Not all parts of a distressed business are distressed equally. Some product lines, customer relationships, or business units may be generating margin while others are destroying it. We do the profitability triage quickly — identifying what's working, what's not, and where the cuts or changes will have the greatest impact on stabilizing the business's financial position.
Cost Structure Analysis
Turnarounds require making hard decisions about costs — and making them quickly. We analyze the cost structure to distinguish fixed from variable, necessary from discretionary, and temporary from structural. The goal is to give leadership a clear picture of what can be reduced, what needs to be eliminated, and what has to be preserved to keep the business operating.
Creditor & Lender Management
In a turnaround, relationships with lenders and key creditors are often at their most fragile — and the quality of the financial information the company provides has a direct impact on those relationships. We produce the financial reporting that gives creditors and lenders confidence that leadership has an accurate picture of the situation and a credible plan to address it.
Operational Accounting Stabilization
In distressed businesses, the accounting function is often behind — on the close, on reconciliations, on accounts payable and receivable. Getting the accounting current and accurate is a prerequisite for making good decisions. We stabilize the accounting function, get it current, and put in place the processes that keep it running reliably under difficult conditions.
Recovery Planning & Finance Build
Once the business is stabilized, the focus shifts to recovery — and to building the accounting and finance function that supports it. A business coming out of a turnaround needs a finance function that's strong enough to prevent the same problems from recurring. We build what's needed for the recovery phase, right-sized for where the business is and what it needs to grow from here.
Don't Wait
The Sooner You Have an Accurate Financial Picture, the More Options You Have.
We deploy the Financial Discovery Assessment™ in turnaround mode — faster, triage-first, focused on cash and immediate stabilization. The roadmap it produces tells you what to fix and in what order. In a turnaround, that clarity is the difference between options and no options.
Work With Us
Tell Us What's Happening.
Tell us about the business, the situation, and how quickly you need to move. We respond the same day and can deploy within the week.
Schedule a Discovery Call
How can we help? No pitch, no pressure — just a real conversation.