Looking for a fractional CFO in Houston usually means one thing. Your sales rise and fall, you can feel it in the bank account, and you want a senior person looking at the numbers with you. Steven Palmieri, a Tax CFO, built this side of the practice for owners whose years bend and dip, and who want the bends planned for.
A fractional CFO is part of a senior finance person. You get the thinking of someone who has run the numbers for many businesses, by the month, without taking on a full salary. You are not buying a title. You are buying a regular hour or two with someone whose job is to see what is coming.
The month starts with a close. Your bank, your cards and your loans get matched to the books, which is the same tie-out the IRS tells every business to do each month. If the books are off, we find out why before anything else gets built on them.
Then you get a view of cash for the months ahead. It is a plain page that says what should come in, what has to go out and what is left. We refresh it every time a month closes, and again if a big payment lands early or late.
Then we choose the decisions that belong to the month. A reserve to set aside. A credit line to ask the bank about while your statements look strong. A truck, a lease or a hire that fits better in October than in March. The tax side goes into the same conversation, because estimates and owner pay are cash decisions too.
An even business can get by with a bookkeeper and a return in April. A business with big swings cannot, because the same books say two different things depending on which month you read. A strong spring hides a thin fall. A bad week of weather looks like a bad quarter if nobody has set the plan in advance.
A fractional CFO fixes that by looking ahead as well as back. The past is cleaned up, the present is managed, and the year ahead gets decided before it arrives. When a slow stretch comes, there is already a reserve, a plan for which costs can move, and a conversation with the bank that started months ago. You can read more about how that plan works in cash planning for a year that swings.
Some dates do not care how your month went. Monthly sales tax filers owe a return on the 20th. A payment above one million dollars goes out through the state's electronic system by 8 pm Central the business day before. Houston's sales tax lands at 8.25 percent once the state, the city and the transit authority are added together. Some Houston addresses in Fort Bend County carry an assistance district in place of the transit tax, so the Comptroller's rate locator decides for each address.
We are all Texans, so these are the same dates we keep in Dallas. We put them on your cash plan so a tax payment never arrives as a surprise. The full list, with rates and filers, is on the page about the taxes a Houston business plans cash around.
We are in Dallas. Our meetings with Houston owners happen on video, the books are shared, and a calendar link does the scheduling. We do not pretend to be on your street. What a Houston owner gets is a person who knows Texas money rules, answers quickly and does not need a parking space. If you want the details of how a week goes, read working with a Dallas practice from Houston.
We would rather say it now than on the call. If you need a signed report on your financial statements for a bond or a large lender, a licensed firm does that part, and we can have your books ready for them. If you already have a finance team that forecasts every week, you probably do not need us. If you have no books yet, the first step is a closed month, and we can start there with you.
Tell us how your year moves, and we will sketch the next six months with you on a free Second Look call. There is nothing to sign and nothing to pay. If you have questions first, the answers to the common ones are in the questions page.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.