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FAQs

The questions founders actually ask

Answered the way they get answered on a call.

The basics

What is a Strategic CFO for eCommerce?

A senior finance leader who sits inside your business part-time and owns the forward view: cash, margin, pricing, inventory funding, reorder decisions, and what the brand is worth. The role reads what drives the business and what your growth stage can carry, then builds the system that makes each decision obvious. In eCommerce that matters more than in other industries, because the decisions that break brands get made at speed on incomplete data.

How is a CFO different from an accountant?

They are two different professions, not the same job at different distances. Your accountant handles tax and compliance and reports what has already happened, and that work is essential and specialised. A CFO is a commercial role: forward-looking, close to the operating decisions, and fluent in what marketing spend is actually doing to your margin.

So tax, returns, BAS, IAS, payroll lodgement, audit and company secretarial all stay with your accountant. Where a decision carries a tax consequence it gets flagged and sent to them, together with the cash flow impact of the timing, because that part is a cash question. You want both professions, each doing the job it was built for, and staying in that lane is why accountants refer work here.

Is this a fractional CFO service?

If that is the phrase you searched for, yes, this is the service you were looking for. The word used here is Strategic CFO, because a lot of part-time CFO work stops at commentary and this does not. The account structure, the forecast, the margin model and the reporting all get built, and then they get run with you.

Why does eCommerce need a specialist?

Because the model breaks the standard playbook. You pay for stock months before you sell it. Revenue sits with payment processors on a rolling settlement. Gross margin is fiction until freight, processing, packaging and returns come out of it. You run several channels with different margin profiles and different working capital demands, and seasonality concentrates a year of cash risk into a quarter. A CFO who has only ever seen service businesses or SaaS can tidy your P&L and still get your reorder wrong.

What does Exit Optional mean? Do I have to want to sell?

No, and many clients have no exit planned. Exit Optional means building to the standard a buyer would demand, because that standard is identical to the standard that makes a brand a pleasure to own. Clean books. Profit you can prove. Cash that behaves. Margins that hold under spend. A business that runs without you holding it together. Sell, and you sell for more. Never sell, and you run on clarity instead of chaos.

Is this me?

Who do you work with?

Founders running eCommerce brands from $3M upwards. One engagement that builds and runs the numbers, at one price. Under $3M, the book is the right starting point. Above $10M, where the work becomes a CFO seat rather than a system, that sits at judithhobdell.com.

How do I know whether I need a CFO or better bookkeeping?

If the books are late, incomplete, or missing channel and processor detail, start with the bookkeeping. Strategy runs on data, and there is no way around that. If the books are accurate and you still cannot answer which SKU earns after ad spend, or whether the next reorder is funded without the credit card, that is CFO work. You usually want both, which is why the books are included here rather than assumed to be someone else's problem.

What are the signs it is time?

Revenue is climbing and profit is invisible. Inventory is being funded on facilities or cards, and you have been calling that temporary for a while. Your own wage is the line that flexes when the month is tight. A soft month triggers a discount, and nobody has priced what the discount costs. You cannot say what a stockout on your best SKU did to the quarter. The reorder is a Friday judgement rather than a model. You are working sixty-hour weeks and still cannot answer basic questions about your own brand.

My books are a mess. Should I fix them first?

No. Fast growth makes messy books, and waiting costs more than starting. The one requirement is that someone is maintaining records, because a forecast cannot be built on a shoebox. If the bookkeeping is the actual problem, that is where we start.

I already have a bookkeeper I like. Does that change?

Not necessarily. A good bookkeeper alongside a CFO is a strong combination, and plenty of engagements run exactly that way. What changes is the standard their output is measured against: channel-level reconciliation, processor fees posted accurately, inventory carried as inventory rather than expensed on purchase, and COGS that ties to landed cost. If they can hit that standard, they stay.

I am not good with numbers. Will I keep up?

Yes, and that is a design requirement rather than a kindness. A system you cannot use without Judith in the room is the wrong system. Simple systems scale. Complex systems fail.

We are under $3M. What should I do?

Read the book and build it yourself. At that stage the constraint is knowing what to build, not having someone build it for you, and $4,000 a month is a serious line on a business your size. Come back when the revenue can carry it. By then you will know exactly what you are buying.

How it runs

What does working together actually look like?

A private Slack channel, because a finance question is urgent when it arrives and useless a week later. Monthly management reports, and the portal for the numbers you need daily. Those reports come with a Loom walking you through them, so you get the read and not just the file.

How long before I see something?

Inside ninety days, expect the profit leaks named and quantified, cash separated by purpose with a forecast running, and at least one pricing or SKU decision reversed on evidence. Cleanup timelines depend on the state of the books. Structural change to a cash position shows across four to six months, because the inventory cycle sets that pace rather than effort, and that is exactly why the engagement runs six months minimum.

Who does the work?

The reporting, the commentary and the monthly read are Judith. Bookkeeping delivery runs through her team to a standard she sets and checks.

Is this done for me or done with me?

Both, and the balance shifts. Early on it leans done-for-you, because the structure does not exist yet. As the system beds in it becomes done-with-you, and the goal is your own team running it. Still needing Judith for the day-to-day at month eighteen would count as a failure.

Does this replace my internal finance person?

No. The work designs around them, and often makes the case for hiring one. The usual sequence is a bookkeeper, then a finance manager, then a controller, and a full-time CFO rarely earns its cost until well past $70M. Buying that seat at $15M is an expensive way to solve a problem a system solves better.

What do you need from me to start?

Read access to the accounting file, the sales channels, the processors and the ad accounts. A conversation about what you actually want from the business, because the architecture follows the founder's goal rather than a template. And a willingness to act on what the numbers show, which is the one requirement there is no way around.

Can you work with my systems?

Shopify plus Xero is the cleanest stack and the fastest to work in. Amazon, eBay, TikTok Shop, wholesale and retail all fold in. QuickBooks works. Multi-entity and multi-currency are normal rather than an exception. If a stack genuinely will not carry the work, you will hear that on the call rather than three months in.

The numbers

Which metrics actually matter in eCommerce?

Contribution margin by SKU after ad spend, returns and freight. True CAC rather than platform-reported CAC. Blended MER alongside channel ROAS. LTV by cohort rather than one blended lifetime figure. Inventory days on hand and the cash conversion cycle. Repeat revenue as a share of fixed costs. Everything else is interesting. These are the ones decisions hang off.

Do you offer Profit First?

No, not as a service, and it is worth being clear about that. I am a former Certified Profit First Professional and I credit the influence openly, because allocating cash by purpose before it gets spent is a sound idea and Mike Michalowicz did the work of making founders believe it.

What runs in client businesses is my own system, Owner-First Financial Architecture. Allocations are set from your actual cash flow data rather than fixed formulas. Sales tax and inventory are ring-fenced as first-class accounts rather than afterthoughts. And the whole thing is executed weekly by a role I created for it, the Cash Flow Coordinator. The original method was not written for a business that pre-pays stock months ahead and waits on processor settlements. This one was.

How do you fix cash flow?

Separate cash by purpose so it stops being one number driving every decision. Map the inventory-to-cash cycle so you know how many days your money sits in stock and where that compresses. Build a 13-week rolling position you can read without opening the bank. Model the ad scenario before the spend commits. Build reserves so the reorder is a decision rather than a gamble. Then attack the cycle itself: supplier terms, freight mode, reorder points, dead stock.

Why does my P&L not match my bank account?

They measure different things and always will. The P&L recognises a sale when it happens. The bank sees money when the processor settles, minus fees, and that balance also holds sales tax that was never yours, deposits already committed to stock, and payroll that is due. A profitable month and a tight bank week are not a contradiction. They are the normal state of an inventory business, and the fix is architecture rather than more revenue.

My gross margin looks fine. Why is it wrong?

Because platform gross margin is revenue minus a cost field, and that field is usually the unit price the supplier quoted. It does not carry freight, duty, inbound handling, processing fees, packaging, pick and pack, returns or the cost of winning the customer. Contribution margin carries all of it. The gap between the two runs twenty to thirty points, and that gap is what the ad spend has been scaling against.

Do my books need to be on accrual?

For a brand carrying inventory, yes. Cash-basis accounts on an inventory business report a loss in the month you buy stock and a windfall in the month you sell it, and the average carries no information. Moving to accrual and completing a proper stocktake is one of the first moves in a lot of engagements, and it frequently shows the business is materially more profitable than the founder believed.

How do you help with inventory decisions?

By turning them into arithmetic instead of instinct. Reorder points modelled off lead time, sell-through and the cash available on the reorder date. Dead stock identified and priced for exit rather than left to age. The cost of a stockout on a hero SKU quantified, so over-ordering and under-ordering both have a number attached. And supplier terms treated as a financing lever, because thirty days of terms is often cheaper than any facility you can get.

The service and the portal

Can I get the bookkeeping on its own?

Why not just use an analytics platform?

Use one if it helps. Several are good, and they will show you attribution and creative performance that sits outside what I do.

What they have in common is that they read whatever data you already have. They connect, they normalise, they visualise. None of them does your bookkeeping, and none of them questions the ledger. So if inventory is expensed on purchase and COGS does not carry landed cost, the platform reports a number that is confidently wrong, and you trust it more than you trusted the spreadsheet, because it looks like it knows.

The pricing is worth doing honestly too. These platforms are not the cheap option. Published plans are banded by your sales volume, and at $10M a year the serious ones run into the thousands a month for the software on its own. You then still need someone keeping the books and someone senior reading the output. This is $4,000 a month with both of those included.

Do you do marketing attribution?

No. Attribution, creative testing and channel-level ad reporting are genuinely useful, and there are platforms built properly for them. My lane is what happens to the money: whether the margin survives the spend, whether the reorder is funded, and whether the growth is real once freight, returns and processing come out. If you run both, they complement each other, and I am happy to read their numbers with you.

Do you run group calls or a community?

No. Both tiers are one to one. A group programme is a different business to the one being run here, and running it would take time away from the brands on the books.

What is the portal?

One place showing your cash position, your margin by SKU and your reorder point, live against your own numbers, instead of three spreadsheets and a dashboard nobody opens.

Is the portal live?

Not yet, it is in build. Today the same system runs in a working file built and maintained for each brand, and founders run on it daily. There are real screenshots of it on the home page. When the portal ships, clients move across first and nothing already set up gets lost.

Investment and scope

What does it cost?

$4,000 a month, USD, on a six month minimum and then month to month. One price, no tiers. Full inclusions sit on the home page.

Is that expensive?

Compared to what. A full-time CFO in the United States costs $250,000 to $450,000 in base salary before bonus, and few brands need one before $70M. The engagement should return more than it costs, and the recovery usually comes from three places: margin you were not charging for, working capital sitting in slow stock, and financing you did not need. If the arithmetic does not work for your business, you will hear that on the call rather than be sold a tier.

What currency are you priced in?

USD, priced and invoiced. The company is a US LLC and the client base is global, so one currency keeps it simple for everyone.

Is there a minimum term?

Six months on every tier, then month to month.

Two reasons, and both of them are about you getting the thing you paid for. The first months are the build rather than the service: account architecture in, channels reconciled individually, landed cost rebuilt so COGS ties to what you actually paid, cash separated by purpose, and the forecast stood up and then corrected against a real month. That work does not compress into thirty days.

The second reason belongs to your inventory. A cash position moves at the speed of your stock cycle, so a supplier paid in month one returns cash in month four or five. Six months is the shortest window in which a change is trustworthy rather than a month that happened to go well.

What is not included at any tier?

Payroll processing, BAS and IAS lodgement, tax returns, audit, company secretarial and legal all stay with your accountant and your adviser.

Do you do tax?

No. Not tax advice, not tax planning, not tax structuring, not returns. Where a decision carries a tax consequence it gets flagged and sent to your tax professional, along with the cash flow impact of the timing, because that part is a cash question. The tax question itself is theirs, and they are the right people for it.

Is my financial data safe?

Read-only bank feeds. Bank-level encryption. Signed NDAs as standard. Access limited to what the work requires and revoked when it ends.

Do you work internationally?

Yes, and global is the default here rather than an accommodation. The company is a US LLC, pricing is in USD, and the founders on the books are spread across the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Multi-currency and multi-entity accounts are normal work rather than an exception.

Do you take equity or performance fees?

No. Fixed fee, so the advice is never conflicted by a position in the outcome.

Judith

What is your background?

In finance since 2006, starting in actuarial science advising pension trustees on liabilities decades out. In eCommerce since 2013. Four brands co-founded, the first of which started as pick and pack in a garage before Shopify existed. Owned a digital marketing agency, which is where reading ad-platform economics against a P&L became second nature. Former Certified Profit First Professional. A2X integration expert. Over 300 founders served.

What makes this different from other eCommerce CFOs?

The order it was learned in. Brands first, finance second, and the marketing side in between. Founders make marketing decisions without financial clarity and finance decisions without marketing context, and holding both at once is rare. That intersection took twenty years to build and it cannot be shortcut.

What is your working style?

Trusted. Direct. Empowering. A broken margin gets named in the first meeting, along with what to do about it. DISC profile D/C, Myers-Briggs INTJ-A, which is a formal way of saying the thinking happens before the conversation.

What are your values?

Communication. Accuracy. Simplicity. Integrity. Transparency. Evolve.

What is the first step?

Apply. Bring your P&L and your current inventory position to the call. Thirty minutes, and you leave knowing where the money goes and what it takes to fix it.

Make your exit optional

Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Clarity is the edge.

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