Fractional CFO Services in Memphis
Fractional CFO and controller services for Memphis construction, contractors, distribution, manufacturing, and service businesses.
The Market
Memphis runs on freight, and the finance function has to keep up.
The Memphis economy sits on top of one of the busiest cargo airports in the world and one of the densest logistics ecosystems in North America. FedEx's presence anchors a supply-chain and distribution base that touches nearly every business in the metro — either directly, or through the freight, warehousing, and services businesses that grew up around it. Add healthcare through the Baptist Memorial, Methodist, and St. Jude networks, and a substantial manufacturing footprint across agricultural equipment, medical devices, and consumer products, and you have a diversified mid-market operating base that most people underestimate.
The finance-function issues are the ones you'd expect in a distribution-heavy market: inventory understood at a warehouse level but never at a SKU-level P&L level, freight-in that leaks margin without anyone tracking it, customer terms that have quietly extended beyond what was originally agreed. Businesses that got to $30MM or $50MM on operational excellence and never built the finance function that lets them keep growing without stepping on cash.
What we see most:
- Logistics, distribution, and 3PL operators serving the FedEx and rail corridors.
- Manufacturers in agricultural equipment, medical devices, and consumer products.
- Healthcare and healthcare-services businesses across the Baptist and Methodist networks.
- Agricultural supply and specialty food operators serving the Mid-South growing region.
- General contractors and specialty trades building across the metro and the surrounding counties.
- Family-owned businesses across every one of these categories, often multi-generational and preparing for transition.
Industries
Where we work most in Memphis and the Mid-South.
Logistics, distribution, and 3PL
Freight forwarders, warehousing operators, cross-dock businesses, and 3PLs serving the FedEx hub and rail network. Customer contribution after freight, terms, and service load. See our distribution cluster.
Manufacturing and industrial
Agricultural equipment, medical devices, consumer packaging, and specialty industrial manufacturers. Standard cost, inventory accuracy, and gross-margin visibility. See our manufacturing pillar.
Healthcare and healthcare services
Multi-facility healthcare operators, physician groups, and healthcare-adjacent services. Payer mix, provider productivity, and the reporting infrastructure the payer side requires.
Construction and specialty trades
General contractors and specialty trades working across Shelby County and the Mid-South. WIP schedule accuracy, over- and under-billings, retention, and the bonding capacity that gates how much work you can carry. See our construction practice and how cleaner WIP supports larger bonded work.
Family-owned businesses
Multi-generational family operators across distribution, manufacturing, construction, and consumer categories. Governance, succession, inter-company clarity, and the finance function that supports a real ownership transition. See our family-business cluster.
Professional services and agencies
Engineering firms, IT services, consultancies, and marketing agencies serving the regional base. Utilization, realization rate, and engagement-level profitability. More on how we serve professional services firms.
Tennessee Coverage
Fractional CFO and Controller services for Memphis-area businesses.
We staff Memphis engagements with CFOs and Controllers who have run finance functions in the industries that operate here — freight and distribution, industrial manufacturing, healthcare, and the agricultural supply chain — and pull from a vetted national bench when scope demands additional depth.
Memphis is one of the most concentrated logistics economies in the world: FedEx global headquarters, one of the busiest cargo airports on the planet, the Mississippi River corridor, and the rail infrastructure connecting the eastern and western halves of the country. The finance functions of companies here have to speak the language of freight, inventory, and cross-border flows.
How can we help?
What’s going on in your business and where would you like help?
An Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Company for two consecutive years.
Coverage
We cover Memphis.
We serve the Mid-South from our vetted national bench of finance leaders with deep logistics, distribution, and manufacturing experience. Coverage area: Memphis, Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett, Cordova, and the broader Shelby County, West Tennessee, and DeSoto County, Mississippi region.
Call the team
866-324-4473Tennessee Taxes and Compliance
The Memphis metro spans three states. Only Tennessee leaves wages untaxed.
Memphis companies hire, store and sell in three states without leaving the metro. On the Tennessee side, they pay franchise and excise tax, a business tax on gross receipts and 9.75% sales tax inside the city.
Taxes
Sales tax
9.75% inside Memphis
Memphis adds the full 2.75% local option to Tennessee's 7% state rate. Unincorporated Shelby County is at 9.25%.
Business tax
0.025% to 0.0375% on wholesale receipts
Retail rates run from 0.1% to 0.1875%. Memphis adds the city layer to the state's, as do Arlington, Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Lakeland and Millington, and both layers are paid to the Department of Revenue.
Franchise and excise tax
6.5% excise, 0.25% franchise, apportioned on sales
For tax years ending on or after December 31, 2025, the Tennessee share is set by sales alone, not property or payroll. A company with a Memphis warehouse and customers nationwide apportions by where it sells, not where it stores. Common carriers keep their own formula.
Personal property tax
Equipment assessed at 30%; inventory left off
The Shelby County assessor mails the schedule by February 1, and it is due March 1. Inventory held for sale is not reported, and a business with $10,000 or less of depreciated property can certify it for a fixed value.
Bonus depreciation
40% for 2025, 20% for 2026, then 0%
Tennessee follows the federal bonus phase-down that predates the 2025 law, for assets bought on or after January 1, 2023. Any federal bonus above those percentages comes back as an add-back and is recovered through MACRS instead.
Employers
Minimum wage and leave
$7.25, with no city wage or sick-leave rules
Tennessee has no minimum wage statute, so the federal $7.25 applies. Under a 2013 state law, Memphis can't make private employers pay a higher wage or offer leave beyond what state law requires.
E-Verify
Every new hire at 35 or more employees
The mandate reaches private employers with 35 or more full-time equivalents under one FEIN. A first knowing violation costs $500 plus $500 per unverified worker, and repeat violations up to $2,500 plus $2,500 per worker.
Final paychecks
The later of the next payday or 21 days
The rule is the same whether the employee quits or is let go. Suits for unpaid wages have to be filed within three years.
Unemployment insurance
$7,000 of wages per employee in 2026
New employers other than manufacturers pay 2.7%, and their own claims history sets the rate after 36 months. Tennessee is on its lowest premium table for all of 2026.
Non-competes
No non-compete under $70,000 of pay
From July 1, 2026, Tennessee voids non-competes for anyone earning under $70,000 a year, figured as the hourly rate times 40 times 52. Confidentiality and non-solicitation agreements remain enforceable.
Crossing the state line
Mississippi
4.0% on individual income, 5% corporate
For 2026, Mississippi taxes individual income above the first $10,000 at 4.0%, down from 4.4% in 2025. Corporate income above $10,000 is taxed at 5%.
Arkansas
3.7% top individual rate, 4.3% corporate
Arkansas's 2026 individual brackets run from 0% to 3.7%. Corporate rates are graduated from 1.0% to a 4.3% top rate.
Sales tax across the line
7% in Southaven, 10.5% in West Memphis
Southaven charges Mississippi's 7% state rate with no local general sales tax, plus 1% on restaurant meals. West Memphis stacks 6.5% state, 2.25% city and 1.75% Crittenden County tax.
Questions Memphis owners ask
Does a seller in Mississippi or Arkansas have to collect Tennessee sales tax?
Yes, once its retail sales into Tennessee reach $100,000 in the prior 12 months. Tennessee has no transaction-count test, and sales for resale don't count toward the threshold. A marketplace facilitator registers once it makes or facilitates more than $100,000 of sales.
Can a Memphis company pass the business tax through to customers?
It can show the tax on the invoice, but business tax passed on that way becomes part of the sales-tax base, so sales tax applies to it too. The business tax itself is a privilege tax on the seller, measured by gross receipts, and the seller owes it either way.
Can an owner be personally liable for the company's unpaid sales tax?
Yes. Tennessee can hold owners and other responsible persons personally liable for sales tax the company collected but did not remit, whatever the entity form.
Do uncashed vendor checks count as unclaimed property in Tennessee?
Yes. Business-to-business property is not exempt, and vendor checks are presumed abandoned after three years. Reports covering property presumed abandoned as of June 30 are due November 1, and due-diligence letters go out 60 to 180 days before filing for items of $50 or more.
If we buy a Memphis distributor, can its unpaid sales tax follow us?
Yes. A buyer of a business or its stock of goods must hold back enough of the price to cover the seller's unpaid sales tax until the seller shows a receipt or no-tax-due certificate from the Department of Revenue. Skipping the holdback makes the buyer personally liable, capped at the purchase money paid. Mailing the department a seller affidavit of taxes owed caps the exposure unless the department answers with a different figure within 15 days.
How fast does a Tennessee owner have to pay a contractor?
On private work, within 30 days after a timely payment application, and a prime contractor pays its subcontractors within 30 days after their timely applications, subject to any pay-if-paid clause. Late payments carry the contract's interest rate, or 1.5% a month if it names none. Retainage is capped at 5% and released within 90 days of completion or substantial completion, whichever comes first.
What does a subcontractor on a Memphis commercial job send to protect lien rights?
It serves a notice of nonpayment on the owner and the prime contractor within 90 days after the last day of each month with unpaid work. Missing it loses lien rights for that month's work, except retainage. Jobs on one- to four-family homes are excluded.
Does a Memphis contractor charge sales tax on its jobs?
No. A contractor is the consumer of the materials it builds into real property, so it pays sales or use tax when it buys them and can't bill the customer for sales tax, even on jobs for tax-exempt owners, with narrow exceptions. Labor on real property isn't taxed, and the business tax on contracting is 0.1% of gross receipts. More on how we work with contractors.
Figures verified October 2026 against the Tennessee Code, the Tennessee Department of Revenue, the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury, the Tennessee Department of Treasury, the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Mississippi Department of Revenue and the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration. This is general information, not tax or legal advice.
Memphis Finance Talent
Memphis pays its financial managers a median $143,880 and its accountants $76,960.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 2,750 financial managers across the three-state Memphis metro, the category that covers controllers and finance directors. Median pay is $143,880, against $166,570 nationally. The top tenth earns $273,740 or more, where the national 90th percentile is $323,270.
The metro has 1,923 business locations with 50 to 499 employees drawing on those 2,750 people. A distributor or manufacturer that needs CFO judgment for a sale, a refinancing or a new facility doesn't have to add to that competition for a full-time seat.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, Memphis, TN-MS-AR MSA. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 and Vintage 2025 population estimates.
How we engage.
When It's Broken
Put out the fire.
Interim CFO & Controller. At the loss of a key employee. When things crash or break. We deploy interim professionals — repairing what's broken and keeping the system running while you decide what's next.
When You're Building & Exiting
Advise and serve.
CFO, Controller & Accounting Team. Right-sized financial leadership — and the team to execute. Embedded for the long run. The CFO Power Team: right roles, right cost.
When You Don't Know What You Don't Know
Assessment services.
Financial Discovery Assessment. A structured deep-dive that reveals where your finance function stands today — and what it needs to support where you're going.
Transaction Readiness Assessment. Will the books and reporting tell the right story to a buyer or investor — and do the systems and processes support merger or acquisition activities?
Our Proprietary Diagnostic
The Financial Discovery Assessment shows you what’s working, what’s missing, and the plan to get where the business needs to go.
Every Assessment applies the same structured examination — accounting systems and technology, processes and procedures, team members and team structure, and team-member will-skill — refined across hundreds of engagements in businesses that look like yours.
The output is the Financial Heat Map System: dollarized findings, hidden inefficiencies, and a sequenced plan. It’s presented at the Executive Action Meeting, where your stakeholders review findings and recommendations in non-clinical, non-technical language they can act on.
We’ve walked into hundreds of businesses at the stage yours is in now. We know where to look. We know how to fix what we find.
Prefer to call? 866-324-4473