COME TO THE MEETINGS. IF IT IS NOT PAYING, THAT MONTH IS .
QUICK ANSWER
Attend every scheduled meeting in a month. If you don't see a return that month, ask, and that month's CFO service fee is refunded. Every tier, no exceptions to the tiers and no argument about it. Attendance. The refund is conditional on you being at the meetings the engagement schedules, in full.
Most firms in this category ask for a signature and a monthly charge with nothing tying the fee to whether the engagement is working. This ties it to one condition, on every tier, and Josh's reason for extending it to every tier rather than the biggest one is that it keeps the firm hungry.
EVERY TIER, SAME PROMISE
ALL 3, NOT JUST THE BIG ONE.
The tiers differ in what SPM does. They don't differ in this. Pricing starts at $1,900 amonth and the guarantee is the same sentence at every level.
CORE · YOU STOP GUESSING.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
YOUR BOOKKEEPER KEEPS DOING THE BOOKS.GUARANTEE: THAT MONTH'S CFO FEE, IF YOU ATTENDED
EXECUTIVE · YOU STOP TOUCHING THE BOOKS.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
WE DO THE BOOKS. NO PAYROLL.GUARANTEE: THAT MONTH'S CFO FEE, IF YOU ATTENDED
STRATEGIC · EVERY JOB SHOWS ITS MARGIN WHILE IT'S STILL RUNNING.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
WE DO THE JOB COSTING.GUARANTEE: THAT MONTH'S CFO FEE, IF YOU ATTENDED
THE ONE CONDITION
ATTENDANCE. NOTHING ELSE.
A fractional CFO engagement produces nothing on its own. The month's work turns into decisions in a meeting, and a meeting the owner doesn't attend is a report nobody acted on. So the one condition is the one thing SPM can't do for you.
There's no minimum engagement length attached to the guarantee, no requirement to have implemented anything, and no test you have to pass. Turn up to the meetings the engagement schedules, in full, and the month is either worth what you paid or it's refunded. You're the one who decides which.
WHAT IS REFUNDED, AND WHAT IS NOT
THE CFO FEE. SAID PLAINLY.
What comes back is that month's cfo service fee. The guarantee applies to the month in question. It's not a retroactive claim on an engagement that has been running, and it's not a rolling credit.
NOT REFUNDED · BOOKKEEPING ALREADY PERFORMED
Work delivered that month is work delivered. On Executive and Strategic the books were closed, the coding was done and the reconciliations were run, and none of that unhappens because the month didn't produce a decision you valued.
NOT REFUNDED · CONTROLQORE SOFTWARE FEES
ControlQore is a third party platform, licensed and billed separately from the engagement. SPM can't refund a licence it doesn't own, and it has never been billed as an SPM line item.
NOT REFUNDED · TRAVEL, WHERE A DEAL INCLUDES IT
Flights and hotels are spent when they're spent. This only applies where travel is written into a specific engagement.
HOW TO CLAIM IT
THREE STEPS, AND NO RETENTION CALL.
01. ASK, IN THE MONTH OR SHORTLY AFTER IT
Email Josh directly. There's no form, no committee and no retention call: the policy exists to be used, and making it awkward to claim would defeat the point of having it.
02. SAY WHAT WAS MISSING
Not as a hurdle. If the month didn't produce a return, that's information about the engagement, and a firm that collects the fee and never hears why has learned nothing.
03. IT GETS REFUNDED
That month's CFO service fee, back. The engagement continues unless you say otherwise, and asking once doesn't put you on any list.
A guarantee is only worth reading if it says where it stops. These three are the limits, and stating them is what makes the rest of the page believable.
A specific dollar outcome. Nobody can promise what a business will earn, and a firm that does is telling you something about itself. What's guaranteed is that a month you paid for and turned up to has to be worth it, judged by you.
A timeline you didn't agree to. Onboarding runs 60 days and that's a commitment. Beyond it, the outcome is guaranteed rather than the calendar: the work takes as long as the company takes, and the price doesn't move while it does.
Tax, audit or payroll work. SPM doesn't do those on any tier, so there's nothing there to guarantee. Your CPA keeps the tax and compliance work.
Onboarding runs 60 days and books are closed by the 10th of the month. Those are commitments rather than guarantees, which is a real distinction: they describe what SPM does on a schedule, and the guarantee describes what happens when a month doesn't pay.
Termination, notice and the term are in the Master Services Agreement rather than on this page. That's deliberate. Those clauses are what a contract is for and a web page paraphrasing them would create two documents that can be held up side by side, which helps nobody. Ask for the agreement before signing anything and read that one.
$10.7M+
Client AR Recovered Since 2023
48
Active Trade Specializations
60 DAYS
Average Onboarding Time
COMMON QUESTIONS
THE GUARANTEE, ANSWERED.
Attend every scheduled meeting in a month. If you don't see a return that month, ask, and that month's CFO service fee is refunded. Every tier, no exceptions to the tiers and no argument about it. Attendance. The refund is conditional on you being at the meetings the engagement schedules, in full. What gets refunded is that month's cfo service fee.
Yes, all 3: Core, Executive, and Strategic. Josh's reason for that, in his words, is that it keeps the firm hungry. A guarantee that only covers the largest engagement is a guarantee that protects the firm on most of its revenue, and that's the opposite of the point.
Bookkeeping already performed, ControlQore software fees, Travel, where a deal includes it. Work delivered that month is work delivered. On Executive and Strategic the books were closed, the coding was done and the reconciliations were run, and none of that unhappens because the month didn't produce a decision you valued. ControlQore is a third party platform, licensed and billed separately from the engagement. SPM can't refund a licence it doesn't own, and it has never been billed as an SPM line item.
A fractional CFO engagement produces nothing on its own. The month's work turns into decisions in a meeting, and a meeting the owner doesn't attend is a report nobody acted on. So the one condition is the one thing SPM can't do for you.
Email Josh directly. There's no form, no committee and no retention call: the policy exists to be used, and making it awkward to claim would defeat the point of having it. That month's CFO service fee, back. The engagement continues unless you say otherwise, and asking once doesn't put you on any list.
Nobody can promise what a business will earn, and a firm that does is telling you something about itself. What's guaranteed is that a month you paid for and turned up to has to be worth it, judged by you. Onboarding runs 60 days and that's a commitment. Beyond it, the outcome is guaranteed rather than the calendar: the work takes as long as the company takes, and the price doesn't move while it does.
In the Master Services Agreement, along with the term and any notice period. This page covers the guarantee and the refund, which are the two things a contractor wants to know before he signs. The agreement governs everything else and it's the document to read rather than this one.
Former commercial project manager and master electrician: 150+ projects worth $2.1B combined, from $50,000 to $300M. Now fractional CFO to commercial subcontractors.
