Fractional CFO vs CPA.

A Certified Public Accountant is a licensed professional in the United States, authorized to prepare tax returns, perform audits and reviews, and sign audit opinions. The core CPA services purchased by growth-stage companies are annual tax filing, quarterly estimates, R&D tax credit studies, sales tax nexus analysis, and (when required) audit or review engagements.

A CPA firm is external to the company. It is engaged, not employed. The relationship is transactional and compliance-driven.

A CFO — fractional or full-time — is an executive inside the business. Responsibilities include financial planning and analysis, capital allocation, board reporting, fundraising, cash management, pricing, and executive representation of the finance function. The CFO is a peer of the CEO and reports to the board.

Tax is a CPA function. A CFO does not prepare tax returns. What the CFO does with tax: sets the strategy (entity structure, R&D credit optimization, state tax planning), manages the relationship with the CPA firm, and reviews returns before they are filed.

The most common mistake growth-stage companies make with tax is treating it entirely as a CPA responsibility. The strategic decisions — where to be incorporated, how to structure equity grants, which tax credits to pursue — are CFO decisions informed by CPA execution.

Ongoing accounting — the monthly close, financial statement preparation, ledger maintenance — is usually not a CPA function. It sits with an internal controller, an internal bookkeeper, or an outsourced accounting firm (which may or may not be a CPA firm).

Where CPA firms do provide ongoing accounting, they typically call it "client accounting services" and price it separately. It is a distinct engagement from tax.

Strategy is a CFO function. Capital allocation, business model decisions, unit economics, pricing, and long-range planning are executive work — informed by financial data, but ultimately decided by the leadership team.

CPAs rarely operate at this level. A tax partner may have views on entity structure; that is not the same as strategic finance.

Annual budgets, rolling forecasts, cash forecasts, and scenario models are CFO functions. Most CPA firms do not offer these services in a serious way; the ones that do are effectively operating a fractional CFO practice under a different brand.

The finance function is represented to the board by the CFO. A CPA firm does not attend board meetings, does not present financial results, and is not accountable to directors for the financial performance of the business.

Every material capital decision — hiring, pricing, M&A, debt, equity, share repurchases — is a CFO decision, informed by financial analysis and made in partnership with the CEO and board. CPAs are not part of these decisions.