Fractional CFO
and COO
I'm John Ashley. Fractional CFO, two to four days a week, answering to the CEO and the Board, for UK businesses somewhere between £10m and £100m. Thirteen years of my career was Amazon and Amazon Web Services, the last stretch running operations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Then I built a finance function from scratch for a startup, which is the part of my CV most of my clients actually need. Numbers are usually where you notice a problem. Finding it normally means going somewhere else in the business.
Situations
Mandate
They need someone who has carried the number before. Someone who can sit in the Board meeting and own the forecast on Tuesday, then be in the billing system on Thursday afternoon working out why the cash didn't land. A consultant would hand you the analysis and go. I stay and do what it says.
That's the whole of it. One operator, two to four days a week, accountable to the CEO and the Board for the finance function and, where the numbers turn out to be an operations problem, for the operation behind it. No bench, no handovers, no junior delivery team learning your business at your expense.
The limit is the same thing as the appeal. One person is not a finance department, and I won't pretend otherwise: I lead the function, build what is missing, and hire or borrow the rest. Where the honest answer is a full-time CFO, I'll say so on the first call and help you write the brief.
Engagements
Diagnostic sprint
A review of the forecast, the controls and the finance team, run by the person who would go on to fix them. You get a written assessment and a prioritised plan. Most engagements start here. A few finish here too, and that's fine by me.
2–6 weeks
Fractional CFO
Forecasting, cash, Board reporting, planning and analysis, banking and audit. The finance leadership a business this size needs and can't yet justify hiring outright.
6–24 months
CFO with embedded COO
For when the finance problem is really an operations problem: order to cash, supply chain, pricing, and the systems underneath all three. I have run both functions, which is the only good reason to buy them from one person.
12–24 months
Value-creation programme
Sponsor-facing. A value bridge with named owners and dates against it, quarterly reporting the sponsor can lift straight into their own pack, and Board material an investment committee will accept without a rewrite.
18–24 months
Fit
| Revenue | £10m – £100m |
|---|---|
| Ownership | PE-backed, VC-backed or founder-led |
| Stage | Either side of a round, refinancing or sale |
| Sectors | Cloud, software, e-commerce, retail, FMCG |
| Commitment | 2–4 days per week |
| Reporting to | CEO, Board or sponsor |
Not a fit: pre-revenue businesses, anything already in a formal insolvency process, and anyone who actually needs a part-time financial controller rather than a CFO. Tell me early and I'll point you at someone better. It costs us both less than finding out in month three.
Evidence
Years at Amazon and Amazon Web Services, from 2013 to 2025
Interim lead of the Amazon operations team for eleven months in 2024
First close of a £5m round for an early-stage cloud business, Series A next
Governance policies drafted and taken through to Board approval
Readiness score
They fall over because the paperwork can't survive a buyer's diligence team, and nobody finds that out until week six. The assessment runs to twenty questions across records, contracts, people and numbers. Three minutes. You get a score and the gaps behind it, not a call from me.
Papers
Paper 01 · Diligence
The documents requested in the opening fortnight of a diligence process, in the order they arrive, what each one is really testing, and a note on what is usually missing.
Request a paperPaper 02 · Board reporting
What a private equity sponsor turns to in the first ninety days, why the order matters more than the content, and the four exhibits that stop the questions before they start.
Request a paperPaper 03 · Cash
The controls that survive a diligence process and the ones that quietly don't, with the thirteen-week cash model that sits behind them as a working template.
Request a paperPrincipal
I spent thirteen years at Amazon and Amazon Web Services, the last of them running operations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa on an interim basis. Before that, finance director roles at Arcadia Group, RHM and Dawson Group: retail, food manufacturing and plant hire, which is a more useful spread than it sounds.
What I took from it is narrower than it sounds. How a big profit and loss account behaves when it comes under pressure, what a Board actually needs in front of it before it can decide anything, and how often a finance problem turns out to be sitting in the operation, two departments away. I'd rather send you a two-page note than a forty-slide deck.
ACMA · CGMA, Chartered Institute of Management Accountants
Enquire
No deck and no discovery framework. Tell me where the business is, what's coming in the next twelve months and what's already going wrong. I'll tell you whether it's a mandate I'd take, and if it isn't, who I'd call instead.