What does an outsourced CFO cost in Australia?

In Australia, an outsourced CFO costs between $2,000 and $10,000 a month, and most advisory-only monthly retainers that providers actually publish sit between $2,400 and $4,000. Here is what sits at each rung, the three pricing models you will meet, what $4,000 a month should buy you, and how it compares with hiring.

The short answer

The range is wide because “outsourced CFO” covers everything from a few hours of monthly oversight to a near-embedded finance leader. It narrows quickly once you look at what providers put on their own pricing pages.

As at September 2026, Australian firms that sell CFO advisory on its own mostly publish two tiers. The first is $2,400 to $3,000 a month for a monthly pack plus a monthly meeting. The second is $4,000 to $6,000 a month for weekly contact or more hours. Firms that bundle the whole finance function (bookkeeping, BAS, payroll, tax and a CFO layer on top) publish anything from $1,500 to $6,000 a month. Few publish an hourly rate, and the big-name firms publish nothing at all, which is why so many owners have no idea what the going rate is.

Those figures come from providers’ own pricing pages and they move, so treat them as a guide to the rungs rather than a quote.

The three pricing models

Hourly ($200 to $400 an hour). Common with independent consultants. The upside is you only pay for time used. The downside is real: it is unpredictable, and it quietly penalises you for engaging. Every question has a meter running, so you end up rationing the advice you are paying for.

Monthly retainer for a block of hours. A fixed fee buys you, say, 20 hours a month. Better than pure hourly, but you are still buying time, and you will watch the clock. Scope creep and “we’ve used your hours” conversations are common.

Fixed monthly fee for an outcome. You pay a set fee for a defined deliverable, whether that is a monthly board pack, a forecast or an advisory call, regardless of hours. The advisor is aligned with the result, not the time. You always know the cost, and you never ration questions.

We use the third model deliberately. Our pricing is $2,500 a month for Reporting, $4,000 a month for Advisory, or $8,000 a quarter for a quarterly cadence. Fixed, no hourly billing, no upsells.

What $4,000 a month should get you

At $4,000 a month you are at the top of the advisory-only rung and the bottom of the weekly-contact rung. For that money you should expect:

• A monthly management or board pack built from your ledger, not a restatement of your accountant’s P&L.
• A cash flow forecast that is updated every month, not built once and left.
• A monthly meeting or call with the person who prepared the pack, and a way to reach them between cycles.
• Someone senior who puts their name to the numbers.

Two questions sort the offers. First, who prepares the pack and who signs it? If the answer is a junior with a template and nobody signs, the fee is buying a report, not a CFO. Second, does the fee include bookkeeping, BAS and tax? If it does, work out how much of the $4,000 is really the CFO layer. In most bundles it is a small part, and the pack is a by-product of the compliance work rather than the point of it.

At Fahy Advisory, $4,000 a month is the Advisory tier: the signed monthly board pack, the client portal, the Decision Ledger, a 60-minute monthly review call and a quarterly strategic check-in. It does not include bookkeeping or tax. Those stay with your bookkeeper and accountant, who we work alongside.

How it compares to hiring

The reason a part-time arrangement works is the maths against a full-time hire:

Role	Typical Australian cost (loaded)
Full-time CFO	$200,000+ a year
Financial controller	$120,000 to $160,000 a year
Part-time CFO	$30,000 to $48,000 a year

A full-time CFO only makes sense when the role is genuinely full-time, which is usually well into eight-figure revenue. Below that, you would be paying a six-figure salary for a part-time need. A strategic CFO gives you the same seniority for the slice of it you actually use.

What you should actually be comparing

Cost is only half the equation. The other half is what the role returns. On a $15M business, one targeted move typically covers the annual fee many times over: getting invoices paid ten days sooner, lifting margin a single point, or catching overhead creep early. The question worth asking is what the gap between having numbers and using them is worth to your business, and the fee only matters against that.

A good CFO should be able to size that for your numbers in the first month. If they can’t, that tells you something too.

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Fahy Advisory is a fixed-fee strategic CFO service for SME owners in Brisbane, Queensland and across Australia. Most people search for it as an outsourced CFO. We call it a strategic CFO because the value is the decisions, not the part-time arrangement. No hourly billing, no surprises. See our pricing or book a discovery call.