Fractional CFO Services in Nashville
Fractional CFO and Controller services for Nashville and Middle Tennessee construction, healthcare and distribution companies. East Nashville office.
Southeast Office
Nashville is one of our anchor offices.
Vessel Advisors maintains a Nashville office serving companies across Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and the broader Southeast. We work with healthcare services groups, construction contractors, manufacturers, and the professional service firms behind the region’s sustained growth — family businesses, PE-backed platforms, and owners building toward exit.
No state income tax in Tennessee changes how owners think about distributions, entity structure, and timing. We help you make decisions with that math in front of you, not behind you.
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.
The Market
Nashville is the healthcare and construction story right now.
Nashville is the healthcare services capital of the country. HCA, Brookdale, Amsurg, dozens of multi-location physician groups, and the constellation of supporting service businesses around them — billing, staffing, technology, real estate — make this a market unlike any other for business finance work. PE activity in regional healthcare is intense.
And outside healthcare: a construction market running hard, a manufacturing base spanning automotive, food, and durable goods, and a professional services ecosystem that’s been quietly building for two decades. Many of our clients here are family-owned businesses in their second or third generation, with founders thinking about transition or sale within a five-year window.
What we see most:
- Multi-location healthcare services groups — physician practices, ambulatory care, dental, behavioral health — building toward platform sale or expansion.
- Construction contractors riding the regional growth wave while managing labor, materials, and project-level profitability.
- Manufacturers — automotive parts, food processing, building products — with finance functions that haven’t kept pace with the business.
- Family-owned companies preparing for generational transition or third-party sale.
- PE-backed regional roll-ups where sponsor reporting and integration discipline are the daily work.
Industries
Where we work most in the Southeast.
Healthcare services
Multi-location physician practices, ambulatory surgery centers, dental groups, behavioral health platforms. Roll-up integration, EBITDA quality of earnings, payor mix analysis, and sponsor reporting are where finance leadership has to be senior, not junior.
Construction and the trades
Commercial general contractors, specialty trades, and residential builders. WIP accounting, job-cost discipline, retention tracking, and bonding capacity are recurring themes. Our $110M commercial contractor case study illustrates the work.
Manufacturing and distribution
Family-owned manufacturers and regional distributors across automotive, food, and durable goods. Inventory accuracy, gross margin visibility, and cost-of-goods discipline are common gaps. Our manufacturing case study shows what scaling without finance leadership costs.
Professional and technical services
Engineering, architecture, IT services, and consulting firms with utilization-based economics. Partner compensation, project profitability, and the financial discipline to scale past founder capacity.
Tennessee Taxes and Compliance
Tennessee doesn't tax wages. It taxes the LLC that pays them.
Nashville companies pay franchise and excise tax at the entity level, a business tax with state and Metro layers, and 9.75% sales tax. Employers also hire under a non-compete statute that took effect July 1, 2026.
Taxes
Income tax
None on wages, interest or dividends
The Hall tax on interest and dividends is repealed for tax periods beginning on or after January 1, 2021, and Nashville levies no income, earnings or payroll tax. With no individual income tax, there is no pass-through entity election to make.
Excise tax
6.5% of net earnings above $50,000
Corporations, LLCs, limited partnerships and LLPs pay it, S corporations included. General partnerships and sole proprietorships don't. Excise and franchise tax go on one return, due April 15 for calendar-year companies.
Franchise tax
0.25% of net worth, $100 minimum
The base is book net worth, assets minus liabilities, so the tax is owed in a year without profit. The old property measure is repealed for tax years ending on or after January 1, 2024, and survives only as an annual election.
Sales tax
9.75% since February 1, 2025
A 0.5% Davidson County transit surcharge sits on top of the 7% state rate and 2.25% local rate. Franklin, Brentwood and Murfreesboro charge 9.75% as well.
Business tax
Gross receipts taxed by the state and by Metro
Metro Nashville levies the city layer inside the Urban Services District, as do Franklin, Brentwood and Murfreesboro, and the Department of Revenue collects both layers. A return is due once sales in a jurisdiction reach $100,000.
Interest deduction
Most taxpayers deduct all business interest
For excise tax, Tennessee applies the federal interest limit as it stood before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. For a company carrying acquisition debt, the Tennessee deduction can be larger than the federal one.
Employers
Minimum wage
$7.25, and Metro can't raise it
Tennessee has no minimum wage law, so the federal rate applies, with a $2.13 cash wage for tipped staff. A 2013 state law bars local governments from requiring private employers to pay more.
Non-competes
Void below $70,000 a year
Tennessee's new statute voids non-competes with employees paid under $70,000. Above that line, courts presume two years or less reasonable and anything longer unreasonable. It covers agreements made, renewed or amended on or after July 1, 2026.
E-Verify
Mandatory at 35 or more employees
Private employers with 35 or more full-time-equivalent employees under one FEIN must check new hires through E-Verify. Employers with 6 to 34 can keep copies of identity and work-authorization documents instead.
Parental leave
Up to four months at 100 or more employees
Employers with 100 or more full-time employees at a job site owe up to four months of leave for adoption, pregnancy, childbirth and nursing. The employer chooses whether it is paid, and employees qualify after 12 consecutive months of full-time work.
Not required in Tennessee
No paid sick leave, leave fund or retirement mandate
Tennessee has no paid sick leave law for private employers, no state family leave or disability program, no state retirement-plan mandate and no pay-range posting law. State law also stops Nashville from adding a sick-leave rule of its own.
Questions Nashville owners ask
Does a Nashville medical practice pay the business tax?
Not on its medical services. Tennessee's business tax exempts medical and dental services, along with legal, accounting, engineering and architecture services. A practice organized as a corporation or LLC still pays franchise and excise tax.
Can a Tennessee practice enforce a physician's non-compete?
Yes, within limits that a separate statute sets for licensed health care providers. A restriction is reasonable at two years or less if it reaches no further than 10 miles from the practice or the practice's county, whichever is larger, or only the facilities where the provider worked. Emergency physicians are excluded.
Does a Nashville IT or consulting firm charge sales tax?
Not on professional services, which Tennessee does not tax. Software that customers use remotely from Tennessee is taxable, as is repair or installation of software. A customer with users outside the state can apportion the price.
Do Nashville physicians and CPAs still owe the professional privilege tax?
No. The $400 tax, due June 1 each year, now applies only to attorneys, securities agents, broker-dealers, investment advisers and lobbyists. Someone licensed in more than one of those pays it once.
How much retainage can a Nashville project owner hold?
No more than 5% of the contract on public and private jobs alike, released within 90 days after the work is complete or substantially complete, whichever comes first. When the prime contract is $500,000 or more, retainage on it and its subcontracts has to sit in a separate interest-bearing escrow account with a third party. A private holder who fails to deposit it owes $300 a day, and the escrow rule can't be waived by contract. More on our fractional controller work for contractors.
Can an unlicensed contractor file a lien in Tennessee?
No. A lien exists only if the claimant complied with the contractor-licensing law, and a license is required before bidding or pricing a job of $25,000 or more as prime contractor or construction manager. From July 1, 2026, a surety bond of at least 50% of the requested limit can replace the reviewed or audited financial statement in a license application.
What tax exposure comes with buying a Nashville company?
Unpaid sales tax and business tax can follow the business. The buyer withholds enough of the price to cover them until the seller produces a Department of Revenue receipt or a certificate that no tax is due, or becomes personally liable up to the purchase money paid. The seller files a final business tax return within 15 days of closing. See how we support a newly acquired business.
Does a single-member LLC pay franchise and excise tax?
Yes, when an individual owns it. Tennessee taxes it as its own entity even though the federal return disregards it. An LLC whose single member is a corporation is not taxed separately.
Figures verified October 2026 against the Tennessee Code, the Tennessee Department of Revenue, the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the Tennessee Secretary of State, the Tennessee Board for Licensing Contractors and the U.S. Department of Labor. This is general information, not tax or legal advice.
Nashville Finance Talent
Nashville's top finance salaries run above the national 90th percentile.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 7,400 financial managers in the Nashville metro, the category that covers controllers and finance directors. Median pay is $156,860, below the national median of $166,570. The top tenth earns $330,000 or more, against $323,270 nationally.
The metro has 3,333 business locations with 50 to 499 employees, and the top of that 7,400-person pool is paid above the national top tenth. A company that needs CFO judgment can have it without bidding against that market for a full-time hire.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin 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?
Visit Us
Find us in East Nashville.
Our Nashville office serves Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and the broader Southeast region.
Local Office
Vessel Advisors — Nashville
901 Woodland Street
Nashville, TN 37206
866-324-4473
Headquarters
Vessel Advisors
2211 Michelson Drive, Suite 900
Irvine, CA 92612
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