Manufacturing CFO services
A fractional CFO for founder-led manufacturers.
Saorsa embeds in your business on retainer and covers the strategy side of the numbers — the long-term financial model, the margin decisions, the bank relationship — and works through them with you every week.
Tell us what you make and what's squeezing you. Duncan replies within one business day.
What gets built in the first 90 days
Four problems every founder-led shop knows by heart
None of them show up on a services P&L. All of them show up in yours.
Cash trapped between deposit and delivery
You put the deposit down on material months before the finished job invoices. In between sit the next PO to fund, a lead time you don't control, and payroll every other Friday. The order book says you're growing. The bank account says you can't afford to.
Equipment decisions made on gut
The quote for the next machine is sitting in your inbox. Buy, finance, or wait — and no one has modeled what the payment does to your line, what the added capacity does to job margin, or what the lender will say. So the call gets made on instinct, and instinct is expensive at six figures.
Margin fog
Blended gross margin looks fine. But nothing is costed at the job level, so specific jobs and SKUs quietly lose money on every run while the winners cover for them. Quoting inherits the same blind spot, and the losing work keeps getting won.
Bank pressure
A covenant calculation due, a borrowing base certificate to file, a line that hasn't grown since two revenue levels ago — or a flat no. Either way, you're negotiating with a lender who reads your financials more fluently than anyone on your team.
Fit check
Who this is for. Who it isn't.
This practice is built around how a shop makes and loses money. If that's not your business, the advice won't fit and we'd rather tell you now.
For
- Job shops and contract manufacturers
- Fabricators, CNC and machine shops
- Consumer product brands with in-house or hybrid production
- Founder-led, roughly $2–20MM in revenue
Not for
- Agencies and services firms
- Software companies
- Pure resellers and dropshippers
If you don't make physical product, the main practice covers founder-led businesses more broadly.
How the work runs
An embedded partner on retainer, not a report vendor
You don't get a deck and a follow-up email. You get working artifacts, built in your business, and a partner who sits in the numbers with you every week. Here is what exists by day 90.
A long-term financial model you actually use
Scenario-based and built around your real cash cycle — deposits out, lead times, progress billings in. You see what the next machine, the next hire, or a price change does to the business before you commit, not after.
A job- and SKU-level margin view
Built from the books you already have — we don't touch your accounting. You see what each job and each SKU actually earns, the losing work gets named, and quoting gets a floor.
A banking package or equipment-financing memo, when one is needed
If there's a renewal, a covenant conversation, or a machine to finance, we build the document a credit committee underwrites against — the model, the downside case, the collateral story.
A weekly working cadence with you
A standing session on the real decisions: the hire, the machine, the price increase, the customer whose terms are quietly killing you. Not a monthly report. A partner in the numbers, every week.
We run a shop too
This isn't theory. Saorsa's principal is an owner-operator in manufacturing.
Crosslinked Components is a dirt bike protection brand with in-house production. Duncan entered through a partner buyout structured with a seller's note — no outside capital, no fire sale — then built the forecasting, margin strategy, and supplier structure behind the growth. Two years in: revenue up 3.7x, profit up 7.8x.
The deposits, the lead times, the tooling decisions, the supplier negotiations — we carry the same line items you do. That's the finance partner you're hiring.
Read the Crosslinked case study3.7x
Revenue growth in two years
7.8x
Profit growth in two years
Seller's note
Partner buyout closed without outside capital
Relevant reading
Not ready to talk? Read how we think first.
Three pieces from our Insights letter that manufacturers keep forwarding to each other.
Start here
Tell us what you make. Get a straight read back.
Duncan reads every submission himself and replies within one business day with an honest take on where your finance function stands — whether or not we end up working together.
- A human reply within one business day
- An honest read on the squeeze you named — cash, margins, the machine, the bank
- No pitch, no list, nothing to unsubscribe from
Start a conversation
FAQ
Questions shop owners ask first
Straight answers on cost, fit, and how the work actually runs.
What does this cost compared to a full-time CFO?
A full-time manufacturing CFO is a mid-six-figure salary plus benefits, and at $2–20MM in revenue you don't need forty hours a week of one. You need the decisions covered. We work on a monthly retainer that costs a fraction of a full-time hire, sized to the work: the financial model, the margin strategy, the bank relationship, and a weekly session with you.
We already have a bookkeeper and a CPA. Isn't this redundant?
No, and you should keep both — we're not accountants and we don't touch your books or your taxes. A bookkeeper records what happened and a CPA keeps you compliant with the IRS. Neither models whether to finance the next machine, prices the job that's quietly losing money, or builds the package your bank underwrites against. That's strategy and decision support, a different job entirely. We work alongside your bookkeeper and CPA, not in place of them.
How much of my time does this take?
One working session a week, usually under an hour, plus decisions as they come up. We do the modeling, the analysis, and the bank prep between sessions. The point is to give you back the hours you currently spend rebuilding spreadsheets at night — not to add a meeting.
Do you work remote or on-site?
Mostly remote, and it works because the artifacts are shared and live: the financial model, the margin view, the bank package. When walking the floor matters — a lender visit, a major equipment decision, a hard look at how jobs really run — we show up. Distance has never been the constraint; cadence is.
Do you only work with manufacturers?
This practice does, yes — that's the point of it. WIP, deposits, lead times, machine capacity, and a borrowing base behave nothing like a services P&L, and advice that ignores that is worth what it costs. Saorsa's principal runs a manufacturing business himself. If you don't make physical product, this isn't your page, and we'd rather say so here than waste your call.
Tell us what you make. Get a straight read back.
Two minutes to fill out. One business day to a reply.
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