Startup Q&A
When to Hire an in-House Accounting/Finance Team: the Cost Benefit Break Down
CEO and Founder of Kruze Consulting
Table of contents
Congrats! You raised your Series B :) You scraped to find Product/Market fit in your Seed Stage, then came market penetration in your Series A.
Now you’re thinking about scaling up and hiring a ton of people. Great! Just make sure that you hire the right people: those that are core to your product. 90% of the time you really don’t need to hire in-house accountants, but I have seen exceptions. The most common pitfall that we see is hiring a “VP of Finance”, “Controller” or “CFO” way too early.
The ideal accounting/finance team should have 3 levels:
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Staff Accountant ($60K pp salary)
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Bookkeeping
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Payroll
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Benefits
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Controller ($120-150K pp salary)
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VC/Board Financials
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Tax Compliance
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System Infrastructure
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CFO/CPA ($200K pp salary)
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Advisory & Expertise
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Valuation
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Financial Modeling
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You have two options:
1. HIRE AN ENTIRE ACCOUNTING/FINANCE TEAM
Pros:
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Achieves Breadth & Depth of service
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Accountability: Multiple levels of review
Cons:
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It’s expensive!!!: $400K per year
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Poor utilization: people will be sitting idle.
2. HIRE JUST A CONTROLLER OR STAFF ACCOUNTANT… maybe a CFO later?
You’re next thought might be to hire just one of those levels :)
Pros:
- Uh, none.
Cons:
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You wont get the breadth and depth of service that you need.
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Poor quality work / that person will be overworked.
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Its deceptively cheap: you’ll still need to outsource for tax or CFO advisory.
In sum, don’t bring accounting/finance in-house until your Outsourced Accounting/Finance team bills you more that $33K per month ($400K/12 months).
We have a number of outsourced CFOs who help our clients with recurring finance tasks, and our accounting team is comprised of leaders in the finance as a service industry. Talk to us about helping you scale your business!
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