You went looking for a number and came back with a process page. Here is what their website publishes about fees, quoted from their own pages, and how my own engagement is priced. If you are researching the cost of joining B2B CFO® as a partner, this page is about what a business owner pays for CFO services, not membership; their site has a careers section for that. B2B CFO® is a registered trademark of its owner. This site is an independent price comparison by Steven Palmieri (Palmieri Enterprises) and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by B2B CFO.
Their public pages do not publish a rate card for CFO services. What they do publish is the shape of an engagement, in their own words, plus one dollar figure that sits inside a reprinted news article rather than on a services page. Everything below is quoted or closely paraphrased from their own website, and the pages are listed at the bottom.
According to their website, their engagements are structured on an as-needed basis with estimated fees agreed upon in advance, and they state that owners should never encounter surprises regarding fees or scope of work. They describe their agreements as straightforward, practical and business-owner-friendly, and say an engagement may continue for several months or several years depending on the owner's objectives.
According to their website, their Gap Diagnostic Analysis carries no cost to the owner, no obligation to move forward, and no requirement to sign an engagement agreement. They say they contribute eight to ten hours of their own time, that it takes about forty five minutes of the owner's time and three to four hours of staff time, and that the follow-up meeting includes a complimentary benchmarking report.
Only one dollar figure appears anywhere on their site, inside a Detroit Free Press article reprinted on a partner page and published in March 2020. It says partners set their own hourly rates, that partners nationwide charge on average $175 to $225 an hour, and that partners can work as little as four or five hours a month. That is press coverage of a nationwide average, not a rate card and not a quote from any partner today.
Here is the shape of my pricing so you can hold it next to theirs. It is one monthly engagement rather than an hourly meter, and it is scoped after a 20-minute call, once I have seen how much bookkeeping the business actually carries.
You are not buying hours. We agree on a monthly engagement after the call and write the scope down before anything starts, so no meter runs while you ask me a question. The fee moves only if the scope moves and you agree to it first.
The people doing the books and the person reading them are the same engagement. Transactions get categorized, accounts get reconciled, and the month closes on a schedule, so the numbers behind a decision are numbers I am accountable for producing.
Planning happens during the year, while it can still change the outcome, and it sits inside the monthly engagement instead of arriving as a separate letter in the fall. Return preparation is quoted with the work rather than bolted on during filing season.
The number itself depends on how large the books are and how far behind they have fallen, and on what the business needs each month. That is why you get it on the call, with the scope written next to it, instead of as an invented figure on a web page.
Get the boundary in writing. Ask which activities sit inside the number and which ones raise a separate invoice, and ask what happens in a month that turns out heavier than expected. Hourly and monthly can both be fair; you should know which one you signed.
Ask whether bookkeeping sits inside the engagement or with someone else you pay, then ask the same about tax planning and return preparation. When those live in different places, somebody has to coordinate them, and that somebody is usually you. Ask who owns the monthly close and by what date it is finished.
Ask for the notice period, what it costs to stop, and what you take with you. You should be able to walk out with your ledger, your reconciliations and your workpapers in a form the next provider can use. A firm that answers this calmly expects to keep you on results.
Tell me roughly how big the business is and how far behind the books have fallen. I reply within one business day with a time for the 20-minute call, and you get a scoped monthly number on it.
Firms that customize the work usually do not publish one, and their site effectively says so: engagements are structured on an as-needed basis with estimated fees agreed upon in advance. That is a reasonable way to sell scoped work. It is only a problem while you are trying to budget, which is why the question ends up in a search bar.
Four things, in rough order of weight: how many hours a month the work truly takes, how senior the person doing it is, how wide the scope runs, and whether bookkeeping and tax sit inside the fee or outside it. Two quotes can look far apart and land on the same money once you add back what one of them leaves out.
Yes, for your business, once I have seen the size of the books. Twenty minutes is enough to understand the volume, the state of the ledger and what you need each month, and to give you a monthly figure with the scope that belongs to it. If it is not a fit, you will hear that instead.
Then carry the questions above into that conversation and get their number in writing next to their scope. Their partners are experienced people and their process is published on their own site. This page exists so you can compare two shapes of pricing honestly, not so you pick mine by default.