One of the most common questions growing companies face is whether to hire someone in-house to manage their finances or bring on a fractional partner.

At first glance, the decision feels like a simple tradeoff between cost and commitment. But it’s not that simple. The real difference isn’t in how much you pay—it’s in how much progress you actually make.

The truth is, most businesses don’t need a full-time hire (if they can even find one). They need visibility. Clean numbers. Someone who can tell them what’s happening and what to do next. And that’s often where the in-house model starts to break down, if the in-house model even exists.

The problem with hiring in-house too early

Hiring a full-time finance person feels like a milestone. There’s someone on the team to “own” the numbers, report on performance, and build a plan. But unless your business is already large or highly complex, hiring in-house usually introduces more gaps than it fills.

Founders often end up hiring a generalist - someone who’s good at a few things, but can’t go deep anywhere. Maybe they’re great at accounting, but not comfortable building a model. Or they can run payroll, but can’t help you prepare for a board meeting. Suddenly, you’re paying a full-time salary but still doing most of the strategic work yourself.

Other times, companies try to solve this by hiring someone more senior. But that creates a different problem: you’ve hired a strategic leader to do tactical execution. They’re building your reporting cadence from scratch, untangling messy historicals, and chasing invoices—none of which they’re optimized (or motivated) to do.

And in both cases, you’re still missing key pieces. There’s no tax support. No real analytics. No one reviewing your margins across product lines. You’ve made a hire, but you haven’t built a finance function.

Why fractional finance actually works

Fractional finance isn’t about outsourcing - it’s about getting the right depth of expertise without having to build a team from scratch.

Instead of hiring one person to do everything, you plug into a team that already has the range. You get a senior finance partner who can help you understand the story behind your numbers, plus the specialists who can handle the accounting, tax prep, reporting, and tooling that bring it all to life.

This model works especially well for companies in motion. If you’re scaling quickly, raising a round, or tightening up operations after a rough quarter, the last thing you need is to wait 6 weeks to hire someone and another 3 months for them to get up to speed. Fractional support gives you leverage from day one - without the risk of overhiring before you’re ready.

Matching the model to the moment

There’s absolutely a time to bring finance in-house. For later-stage companies with more complexity, or for businesses where finance is truly core to operations, it makes sense to invest in a full team. But early on, the most important thing is having access to people who know what they’re doing and can help you make better decisions, faster.

If you’re spending time guessing your margins, explaining your numbers to investors, or manually stitching together data across systems, that’s not a sign you need to hire. It’s a sign you need support. And fractional finance can get you there without the ramp, the cost, or the pressure to “make the hire work.”

What your business actually needs

The goal isn’t to check a box on your org chart - it’s to build a finance function that moves with your business. One that can help you plan, adapt, and grow with clarity.

That might be one great in-house hire. It might be a team of fractional experts. What matters is that you’re solving for capability, not titles.

Because getting your financial house in order isn’t about who’s in the seat. It’s about whether the work is getting done - and whether it’s driving real decisions.

About the Author

Catherine Smith Licari is the founder of Cash Flow for Creatives and The Small Business Planner, a resource designed to help entrepreneurs bridge the gap between creativity and financial literacy. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, Forbes, Women’s Wear Daily and by Nasdaq. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and lives in New York City.