The CFO Readiness Questionnaire

You're running — is it ready to scale?

ProjectBits Consulting | projectbits.com | don@projectbits.com

A. Data Inventory

• The books are current (reconciled through last month, not last quarter)
• Bank and credit-card accounts reconcile to the penny
• There is *one* source of truth for financial data (not three spreadsheets and a shoebox)
• Receipts/documents are captured and attached to transactions
• The bookkeeper (or the owner) has the *right* access level — not over-permissioned "for convenience"

B. Goals & Plans

• There are written financial goals for the year
• Actuals get compared to a budget or plan (budget-vs-actual actually happens)
• Someone owns the number — it's clear who is accountable for the financial picture
• The plan is revisited when the market gives feedback, not filed and forgotten

C. Cash & Forecasts *(the two questions that matter most)*

• Do you know how much cash you have in the bank right now — and are you in the habit of staying on top of it?
• Do you know how much cash you'll have 30 days from now — and what that lets you do or can't do?
• Receivables are tracked (who owes you, how old is it)
• Payables are tracked (what you owe, when it's due)
• There's a view of runway: how long can the business operate if revenue paused?

D. Automation & Systems

• The routine bookkeeping tasks are systematized (not living in the owner's head)
• The books are structured so a task *could* be handed off — the pre-condition for outsourcing
• Recurring work (invoicing, bill pay, categorization) is at least partly automated
• A follow-up / nurture system exists for leads — *"the fortune is in the follow-up"*

E. KPIs

• A small set of numbers the owner actually watches (not 40 — the 3–5 that matter)
• Gross margin is known and monitored
• Financial statements can be produced on demand and are actually read
• Month-end close happens in a reasonable window (days, not weeks)

F. Controls & Risk

• No single person both approves and pays (or the risk is consciously accepted)
• Large / unusual transactions get a second look
• Accounting data is backed up
• Former employees / stale logins removed promptly
• Insurance and entity structure still fit the size the business has grown to

The Survival Score

*How this rolls up — the same rubric our assessment uses.*

Each area maps to our nine-category assessment (scored to 100). The score tells you which

step of the Financial Maturity Staircase the business is standing on:

Overall readiness (100-point scale):

• 80–100 — Green: Ready. Maintain, monitor, and scale with confidence.
• 50–79 — Yellow: Work needed. Build an improvement plan before adding load.
• 0–49 — Red: High risk. This is the "process debt" that has to be addressed first.

Key Questions

*The handful worth asking any operating owner — the ones that reveal whether there's a system underneath, or just the owner's head.*

1. Could you take a two-week vacation without the business stopping? What would break?
2. Do you know your cash position 30 days out — and what it lets you do?
3. If you wanted to hand off one task tomorrow, is it set up so you *could*?
4. What are the 3 numbers you check every week?
5. When a new lead gives you their contact info — what happens next?
6. Who owns the financial picture when you're not looking at it?
7. What's the one thing you keep meaning to fix in the books "later"?

Resources

• Tax-Ready Books (the foundation that creates clean financial data): https://projectbits.com/taxready/
• The methodology / Financial Maturity Staircase (short video): https://projectbits.com/method/
• Book on business operating systems: https://a.co/d/buTmO0L

*Just starting out? Begin with the Foundation Checklist. · ProjectBits Consulting · projectbits.com · don@projectbits.com*