Building Your Finance Team

Building Your Finance Team

A practical guide to structuring finance functions for growth businesses.

As businesses grow, their finance requirements change.

What starts as bookkeeping, payroll and producing annual accounts can quickly develop into a need for management information, forecasting, cash flow planning, commercial analysis and strategic financial leadership.

But one of the most common mistakes we see is businesses thinking about finance hires in isolation.

The better question isn't simply "Who do we hire next?" It's "What should our finance function look like for the next stage of growth?"

Start with what the business needs from finance

There isn't a perfect finance team structure based purely on turnover or headcount.

Two businesses of the same size can require very different finance functions.

A relatively straightforward service business may operate effectively with a small team, while a manufacturing, multi-entity, international or investor-backed business of a similar size could require significantly more finance capability.

Before deciding who to hire, consider what the business actually needs finance to deliver.

Is the priority accurate transactional processing and reporting?

Better management information?

Cash flow and working capital management?

Forecasting and commercial analysis?

Support with fundraising, acquisitions or an exit?

The answer should determine the structure.

Build from the foundations

Every good finance function needs strong foundations.

That means accurate bookkeeping, effective accounts payable and receivable processes, reconciliations, payroll, controls and reliable financial data.

As businesses grow quickly, these fundamentals can sometimes be overlooked in favour of hiring more senior people.

But there's little value in employing an experienced Finance Director to provide strategic insight if they're spending significant amounts of time fixing transactional problems or producing basic management accounts.

Your senior finance people should be doing senior finance work.

Getting the underlying structure right allows them to do that.

Know when you need a Financial Controller

For many growing businesses, the Financial Controller is one of the most important hires they will make.

A good FC creates financial discipline.

They take ownership of areas such as month-end reporting, controls, balance sheet integrity, audit, budgeting and the day-to-day management of the finance team.

They're often the person who turns an entrepreneurial finance function into a scalable one.

For some businesses, a strong Financial Controller may be all the senior finance capability they need internally at that stage.

For others, the FC provides the platform that allows a Finance Director or CFO to concentrate on more strategic and commercial priorities.

Understand the difference between an FD and a CFO

Titles vary enormously between businesses, so focus on the work rather than the label.

Generally, as a business becomes more complex, senior finance leadership moves beyond reporting what has happened and towards helping determine what happens next.

That can include strategy, fundraising, banking relationships, acquisitions, investor reporting, commercial decision-making, scenario planning and supporting the CEO and board.

But not every growing business needs that capability five days a week.

This is where Fractional finance leadership can become particularly effective.

A business might employ a strong Financial Controller permanently while using an experienced Fractional FD or CFO one or two days per week.

That combination can provide both day-to-day financial control and senior strategic expertise without the cost of another full-time senior hire.

Don't overlook commercial finance

As businesses scale, finance increasingly needs to look forward rather than simply report backwards.

That's where FP&A and commercial finance capability becomes important.

Better forecasting, KPI reporting, scenario modelling, margin analysis and business partnering can transform the finance function from a reporting department into a genuine decision-making partner.

The right time to introduce this capability is often when management starts asking questions that the existing reporting can't easily answer.

Why are margins changing?

Where are we making money?

What happens to cash if we grow by 20%?

Which customers, products or divisions are actually driving profitability?

If those questions are becoming increasingly important, your next finance hire may need to be more commercially focused.

Think about systems before adding headcount

Not every finance problem requires another person.

Sometimes the constraint is the systems and processes around the team.

Manual spreadsheets, disconnected systems, duplicated data and inefficient reporting can consume huge amounts of finance time.

Before adding headcount, consider whether better systems, automation, reporting tools or processes could remove some of the workload.

Increasingly, the best finance teams combine strong people with technology that allows those people to spend less time processing information and more time interpreting it.

Permanent isn't the only answer

A growing business doesn't necessarily need to build its entire future finance team immediately.

There are times when Permanent, Interim and Fractional resource can work together.

An Interim Financial Controller might stabilise a finance function while a permanent hire is recruited.

A Fractional CFO might support an existing finance team through a period of growth or prepare the business for investment.

A specialist interim might lead an ERP implementation or finance transformation project without adding permanent headcount.

The important thing is to match the resource to the requirement.

Build for where you're going, not just where you are

Perhaps the most important consideration when structuring a finance team is what the business will need next.

Hiring someone who can comfortably manage today's requirements but will be outgrown within 12 months can become expensive.

Equally, hiring significantly ahead of the business and paying for capability that won't be utilised can be just as costly.

The aim should be to build a finance function that is one step ahead of the business, rather than several steps ahead or one step behind.

That means understanding what the next phase of growth will demand and putting the right capability in place at the right time.

There is no standard finance team structure

The right finance function depends on the complexity of the business, its growth plans, ownership structure, systems, sector and management team.

For one business, the right structure might be a Finance Manager supported by a small transactional team.

For another, it could be a Financial Controller with a Fractional CFO.

For a larger or more complex organisation, it may require a full-time FD or CFO supported by Financial Control, FP&A and specialist finance teams.

The important thing is not to start with the organisational chart.

Start with what the business needs finance to achieve, then build the team around it.

At Matter Talent, we recruit across Permanent, Interim and Fractional finance roles, helping businesses not only find the right people but consider the right structure for their finance function.

Whether you're making your first senior finance hire, strengthening an existing team or preparing the finance function for the next stage of growth, getting the structure right can be just as important as getting the hire right.