WHEN DO YOU ACTUALLY NEED A CFO?
Most construction companies need CFO-level financial leadership once they cross $1M in revenue, or sooner if AR is aging past 60 days, overhead has never been checked against real financials, or there's been a near miss on payroll.
There's no single revenue number that triggers the need for a CFO. It's more about whether the business has outgrown informal financial management, a spreadsheet, gut instinct, and a bookkeeper who reconciles but doesn't forecast. Once revenue crosses roughly $1M, most subcontractors are running multiple jobs simultaneously, each with its own billing cycle and cost structure, which is exactly the complexity that breaks informal tracking. The warning signs usually show up before the revenue number does.
SIGNS YOU NEED IT NOW, NOT LATER.
THE PROBLEMS GET MORE EXPENSIVE TO FIX.
The businesses that wait longest to bring in CFO-level financial leadership usually pay for it in a specific way: MCA debt taken on to cover a gap that traces back to overhead, or a job that closes out losing money because the WIP schedule was overstating earned revenue for months. Fixing those problems after the fact is possible, but it's almost always more expensive and more stressful than catching them early.
