Bringing a CFO into your dealership can feel a bit like inviting a houseguest who goes through your medicine cabinet, your freezer, and your credit card statements, and then tells you what’s expired, what’s rotting, and why you’re broke. It’s unsettling at first, but if you’re smart, you’ll pour them a cup of coffee and let them keep talking.
Timing is everything. Hire a CFO too soon and you’ll wonder why you’re paying someone to keep you awake at night with spreadsheets. Wait too long and you’ll wake up one morning to discover you need to sell a fleet of trucks at a loss just to cover payroll.
So when is it time?
Start by looking at your thresholds: Are your sales volumes stretching past the comfort zone of your controller? Is your gut telling you your margins should be fatter than they are? Do you find yourself whispering “Where’s all the cash?” into the bathroom mirror more mornings than not?
A CFO doesn’t just add up numbers; they catch the sins that created them.
They help owners step off the daily sales treadmill long enough to see where the money leaks out. They challenge your pet projects, interpret your Financial Statement, and kindly explain why your brother-in-law’s buy-here-pay-here plan is not, in fact, a tax strategy.
In short: If your dealership is serious about sustainable growth, better oversight, and smarter decisions, hiring a CFO isn’t a luxury, it’s a milestone. One you’ll thank yourself for later, after the discomfort wears off and the cash flow stops disappearing like loose change into the sofa cushions.
Why a Controller Title Doesn’t Always Mean Controller Skills
Before we go further, let’s go ahead and define the dealership controller as the accounting manager, the person who manages the accounting office and its personnel. Like most industries, people tend to assume if someone has a controller title, they must know all there is to know about dealership accounting and today, that could not be farther from reality.
A title does not guarantee skills and experience. I’ve noticed a concerning trend: titles are often awarded more freely than the skills and experience they should represent.
So if a title alone doesn’t guarantee the expertise you need, how do you know when it’s time to level up your financial leadership and bring in a true CFO? It starts with understanding your revenue and growth thresholds.
Let’s Talk Revenue and Growth Thresholds
Revenue Benchmarks
Think of the dealership’s revenue like a garden you’ve been tending behind the house. At first, it’s just a few tomato plants and some herbs in mismatched pots; easy enough to manage over a weekend here and there. Around $75 million in annual sales (one or more stores), you’ll want a capable controller – someone who keeps the weeds out, waters on schedule, and makes sure the garden doesn’t quietly choke itself to death.
But when your annual revenue edges toward $200 million and your garden has become a full-blown orchard spanning multiple plots of land, it’s time for a CFO. At that size, you’re no longer just pruning rosebushes – you’re managing irrigation systems, negotiating with neighboring landowners, and making sure no one “accidentally” plants kudzu in your best corner lot. A CFO makes sure the whole operation grows in the right direction—without overrunning your time, your money, or your sanity.
Complexity Over Size
Of course, it’s not just about how big your revenue gets – it’s about how complicated operations (and possibly your life) has become. Maybe you’re buying out your competitor down the street or absorbing Uncle Dennis’s underperforming independent lot because “he’d really like to retire on a boat.” Maybe you’re opening stores faster than you can remember their names. Maybe you’re a first-time dealer who opened three stores at once. That’s when you need a CFO, before the chaos eats your margins for breakfast.
Signs Your Dealership Needs a CFO
Strategic Financial Direction
If your idea of strategy is saying, “We’ll figure it out,” while writing checks you hope clear, it’s time. A CFO can squint into the future, run the models, and translate “gut feeling” into actual forecasts, turning your financial free-for-all into a plan you can live with.
Expansion, Mergers, Acquisition
Buying another store? Merging with the competition? A CFO makes sure you’re not mortgaging the family dog to pay for it. They read the fine print, negotiate like grown-ups, and make sure your ‘big move’ doesn’t backfire three months later.
Financial Oversight and Controls
If you lie awake at night wondering if your parts manager has a secret second life in the Caribbean, you might have a controls problem. A CFO tightens up the books, sniffs out fraud, and sets up processes so you can stop feeling like the paranoid uncle at Thanksgiving.
Overloaded Financial Team
When your accounting department looks like a triage unit during end-of-month – stacks of paper, half-drunk Starbucks cups, and one poor soul crying softly into a 10-key – it’s time for a CFO. They’ll bring order, clarity, and maybe even free up your controller to sleep more than four hours a night.
Board or Lender Demands
If you’ve got a board or a banker raising an eyebrow at your homespun spreadsheets, a CFO can translate your good intentions into financial statements that actually make sense to even the most stiff-necked bean counter.
Lenders relax. Boards stop asking pointed questions. And you get to keep growing without pretending you’re someone you’re not.
The Benefits of Hiring a CFO
Strategic Planning
A good CFO is like a sober friend at the end of a wild night out. They’ll gently pry the keys from your hand, reroute you from the drive-thru, and make sure you get home with your dignity and your wallet intact. Long-term financial planning, resource allocation, growth roadmaps – yes, they handle all that. They make sure your grand ideas don’t bankrupt you by Tuesday.
Risk Management
While you’re busy selling cars and high-fiving your sales manager for moving that leftover lime-green convertible, your CFO is off in a corner worrying about fraud, about compliance, about the way your parts inventory mysteriously shrinks every quarter. They assess risks you never knew you had and plug holes before you fall through them.
Operational Efficiency
Ever notice how your dealership sometimes runs like a three-ring circus with all the clowns missing their cues? A CFO fixes that. They spot waste, kill passion projects that bleed cash, and streamline your ten overlapping processes into one that actually works, boosting profits while you pretend you did it all yourself.
Capital Management
When the time comes to ask the bank for money, your CFO is the person who explains why you deserve it, all without sweaty palms or last-minute fibs. They keep your lenders calm, your investors fed, and your capital investments pointed somewhere sensible, like expanding your service bays instead of buying your nephew a boat.
Alternatives to a Full-Time CFO
Fractional or On-Demand CFO
Maybe you’re not quite ready for someone poking through every dusty corner of your balance sheet five days a week. That’s where a fractional CFO comes in. They bring seasoned insight to your financials, streamline processes, and help you present a more sophisticated, credible operation than you could manage alone. All the benefit of high-level expertise, without the full-time expense.
And the best part? It doesn’t matter if your annual revenue is $2 million or $200 million, any dealership can benefit from on-demand financial leadership that matches its current needs and budget. A fractional Automotive CFO gives you big-company expertise, scaled to fit exactly where you are today.
Start with a Controller
If your dealership is operating in the $10+ million annual revenue range, bringing on a controller is often the right first step. A good controller will manage your daily accounting, catch errors before they become problems, and put reliable systems in place—laying the groundwork for clean, accurate financials. This level of oversight helps you stay organized and builds the foundation you’ll need when the time comes to expand further and bring in a CFO to guide more complex strategy and growth.
I’ll leave you with this
In the end, hiring a dealership CFO isn’t about crossing some magical revenue finish line where confetti falls from the ceiling and a banker hands you a shiny plaque that says Congratulations, You’re Officially Complicated Enough.
It’s about waking up one morning, looking at your sprawling, multi-franchise operation, and realizing you need some experienced automotive financial leadership – someone who can translate your big dreams and gut feelings into numbers that actually add up.
If your dealership is growing faster than you can pronounce “working capital” or if you find yourself needing a strategic voice of reason to rein in the chaos, it might be time to hand over the keys – figuratively, of course – to a CFO. Whether they’re full-time, fractional, or on-call as needed doesn’t matter nearly as much as having a seasoned professional standing guard between your ambitious plans and the next well-intentioned decision that could quietly drain your bottom line.