Scale Suite gives Adelaide businesses senior financial judgement without the full-time salary. Chartered Accountants running your 13-week cashflow, budgets and forecasts, month-end close review, board and lender reporting, margin analysis and the modelling behind decisions you have been putting off.
South Australia's economy runs on long cycles: defence and shipbuilding contracts billed against milestones, wine and agriculture with a season rather than a month, and health and research funding that arrives in tranches. Businesses with lumpy receipts get more out of weekly cashflow discipline than anyone, which is where this service earns its fee.
Our team came through Big 4 firms, venture-backed startups and multinationals, and all senior oversight is CA ANZ qualified. Most businesses under $20 million do not need a CFO five days a week. They need one for ten to twenty hours, working on the four or five decisions that actually move the year. That is what we sell.
A CFO working from someone else's unreconciled ledger is expensive guesswork. Because the bookkeeping, payroll and BAS sit with the same team, every forecast and board pack is built on figures current to the week. When a director asks where a number came from, the answer takes minutes rather than a fortnight.
A full-time CFO costs $140,000 to $160,000 a year including super and leave, plus $20,000 to $30,000 in recruitment and three to six months to fill. Ours runs $3,000 to $6,000 a month, starts in weeks, and carries no lock-in with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
An annual budget built from the drivers that actually determine your result, not last year plus a percentage, then reforecast as the year moves rather than filed in July and forgotten.
Revenue, headcount, capital spend and cash are modelled together, so a hiring decision shows up in all four. Each month the budget appears beside actuals with commentary explaining the gap, which is the mechanism that keeps a budget alive instead of archived.
An annual budget built from the drivers that actually determine your result, not last year plus a percentage, then reforecast as the year moves rather than filed in July and forgotten.
Revenue, headcount, capital spend and cash are modelled together, so a hiring decision shows up in all four. Each month the budget appears beside actuals with commentary explaining the gap, which is the mechanism that keeps a budget alive instead of archived.
Analysis of where money is made and lost across products, services, jobs or sites, followed by a plan for the costs that are not earning their place.
Cutting cost without understanding contribution usually removes the wrong things. We separate what actually scales with activity from what does not, then set approval thresholds and monitoring so the discipline survives past the first quarter.
Models built to answer specific questions: can we afford this hire, what does a delayed contract do to cash, what happens if the season is short, what would a second site cost before it contributes.
The value is knowing the point at which a decision becomes unaffordable before you make it, rather than discovering it two quarters later. Models are handed over live so you can run your own variations between meetings.
A short set of measures that connect to decisions you actually make, reported consistently against a target and a trend rather than as a dashboard nobody opens.
The common failure is tracking too many, or tracking activity instead of outcome. We agree five or six that matter for your model, wire them into the monthly pack, and change them when the business changes rather than because a quarter ended.
Review of the close so the numbers are final rather than indicative, then a reporting pack that explains the result instead of presenting it.
Variances are separated into timing and structural, and volume effects into price and mix, because a number that moved is not information. Where you report to a board, a bank or an investor, the pack goes out in their format on a fixed date with covenant headroom tracked monthly.
A structured look at what you charge, what it costs to deliver, and what the market will carry, including the customers and jobs that are quietly unprofitable at current rates.
Most price increases are set too small and too late because nobody has modelled the volume you could afford to lose. We run that calculation first, then work through sequencing, communication and which segments move.
Adelaide businesses using this service typically gain a cash position they can see thirteen weeks ahead, decisions made against numbers rather than instinct, and senior financial oversight at a fraction of what the equivalent hire would cost in South Australia.Perth SMEs commonly gain weekly cashflow visibility, sharper strategic decisions, and 40–60% lower finance overhead compared to a full-time hire - with senior-level oversight tailored to the resources and growth-focused Perth market.
We provide senior financial oversight to businesses across metropolitan Adelaide and regional South Australia.Our team provides comprehensivestrategic financial support through expert CFO services to businesses across all Perth and Western Australia regions.
Key Adelaide Areas Scale Suite Serves:
Adelaide CBD • North Adelaide • Norwood • Unley • Glenelg • Prospect • Port Adelaide • Mawson Lakes • Modbury • Marion • Mitcham • Burnside • Salisbury • Elizabeth • Gawler • Golden Grove • Henley Beach • Brighton • Campbelltown • Tea Tree GullyPopular
Adelaide Suburbs Served:
Semaphore • Largs Bay • Grange • West Lakes • Woodville • Findon • Fulham • Hindmarsh • Thebarton • Kent Town • Stepney • Kensington • Magill • Rostrevor • Walkerville • Klemzig • Athelstone • Stirling • Hahndorf • Aberfoyle Park • Flagstaff Hill • Seaford • Noarlunga • Christies Beach • Aldinga • Virginia • Two Wells • Munno Para • Blakeview • Craigmore
Our experts will discuss with you your business, strategic finance pain points and services we can offer
We will take your desired solutions and send you a business proposal and pricing options depending on your needs for free
We will schedule a kick off meeting, give access to our online communication and project management tools
We will straight away take over so you can get time back to run your business the way you want!
30 minutes with our team.
We'll review your current finance setup, compare the full cost of an internal hire against our embedded team, and show you exactly what your finance function should cost at your stage of growth.
You'll leave with a clear view of what's working, what's missing, and where you'd save.
No lock-in contracts. 30-day money-back guarantee.
Prefer to book directly? Grab a time here.
No, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. We are headquartered in Sydney and work with South Australian clients through Xero, shared Slack or Teams channels and scheduled video sessions.
In practice the location matters less than the cadence. You get weekly cashflow updates and a named senior contact rather than a quarterly meeting, and South Australia running half an hour behind Sydney means your questions arrive at the start of our day. If in-person presence at a monthly board meeting is essential, say so early and we will tell you honestly whether it works.
Between $3,000 and $6,000 a month depending on complexity: entity count, reporting depth, whether board or lender reporting is involved, and how much modelling the year requires.
Set against that, a full-time CFO costs $140,000 to $160,000 a year including super and leave, plus $20,000 to $30,000 in recruitment fees and a three to six month search. The question is not whether senior finance capability is worth having, it is whether your business needs it forty hours a week. Under $20 million in revenue, it almost never does.
Professional services, technology, e-commerce, hospitality, healthcare and allied health, manufacturing, trades and construction, wholesale, wine and agriculture.
Two South Australian patterns come up repeatedly. Defence and advanced manufacturing suppliers bill against milestones, so cash arrives in steps while wages go out weekly. Wine and agriculture carry a season rather than a month, so a year judged on any single quarter reads wrong. Both are cashflow forecasting problems more than accounting problems.
Yes, and it is the usual arrangement. Your accountant handles the annual return and tax planning. We run the monthly and weekly function underneath: reconciliation, reporting, forecasting and the strategic layer.
Accountants generally prefer it, because the file arrives reconciled and the year-end takes a fraction of the time. If your accountant is currently doing bookkeeping at partner rates to clean up before lodging, this removes that from your bill as well as theirs.
