Fractional CFO support for Mission equipment-based businesses

Mission CFO work starts from $2,750 a month. The year-end covers the T2 with Schedule 1 and Schedule 50, the CCA schedule, the small business deduction, T4 or T5 slips for the owner’s pay, and the instalments for the year ahead.

Fractional CFO services for a Mission equipment-based business run by the month, remotely, with the fractional controller tracking utilization and cost per operating hour before the CFO half decides on the next machine.

Utilization: the metric that decides the year

A machine earns only when it is working. Every hour it spends waiting on a permit, a part, an operator or the weather still carries its financing, insurance and depreciation. Utilization — productive hours as a share of available hours — most directly decides whether the fleet earns its cost, yet few owner-managed businesses track it.

Tracked by unit, it usually surprises. An acceptable fleet average often hides one machine at eighty percent and another at thirty, kept because it was needed twice last year. That may be defensible, but it looks different once its annual cost is stated.

Cost per operating hour

A fully loaded hourly cost for each unit adds fuel burn, wear parts and consumables, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, the operator, insurance and licensing, and the financing or depreciation charge. Divide by realistic annual productive hours. It is simple and rarely done.

Its value is immediate. Every quote bets that the rate covers that cost with something left over. Quoting from what the market seems to pay, rather than what your own machines cost, leaves no way to know which jobs to chase. The figure also settles whether to run an older machine or replace it, since maintenance creep shows in hourly cost long before a breakdown.

Lease versus buy, modelled properly

Most compare on the monthly payment, the least informative element. A sound model compares each option’s full after-tax cash profile over the period you will hold the machine: deposit, payments, deduction timing, residual or purchase option, and balance sheet effect.

That last effect matters more than owners expect. A capitalized lease adds both an asset and debt, which changes leverage and can move a covenant; an operating lease does not. Near a covenant threshold, or before new borrowing, the structure of an equipment deal can limit what else the business can do. The year-end statements in Mission page covers how the classification appears.

A replacement plan instead of a replacement crisis

Machines bought together tend to wear out together, and a fleet acquired during one good year produces a capital requirement concentrated into one later year. That is avoidable with a rolling plan that maps each unit’s expected replacement point against hours and maintenance cost, then deliberately staggers the purchases.

The plan also converts equipment buying from an opportunistic activity into a budgeted one. Knowing eighteen months ahead that a unit is due lets the business time the purchase to a strong season, arrange financing calmly and judge a trade-in on its merits. Unplanned replacement almost always costs more, usually mid-job.

Pricing work from machine cost, not from habit

Once utilization and hourly cost are known, bid pricing becomes arithmetic rather than instinct. A day rate has to recover the machine, the operator, mobilization, the overhead the business carries whether or not the job runs, and a margin. Rates that were set years ago and adjusted by feel rarely still do all five.

The related discipline is comparing estimated hours against actual hours after each job. That loop improves the next estimate; without it a business can be busy all season and still wonder where the money went. Neither needs new systems, only consistency.

When this is not the right spend

If job costing is not in place, if hours are not being recorded per machine, or if the books are behind, that work comes first. Every calculation here depends on operational data that must exist first, and a confident model from unreliable inputs is worse than none.

Part-time CFO support becomes worthwhile when a decision carries a large number. That might be a major equipment purchase, a financing arrangement, a move into a new type of work, or a busy season that lost money for reasons nobody can name. Otherwise, the money is better spent on the underlying records. See what a fractional CFO does.

How it works

Engagements run remotely, with scope and cadence agreed in writing before work begins.

This suits incorporated logging and forestry contractors, excavation and site-services businesses, equipment rental operations and heavy trades. Because the same CPA prepares the year end and the corporate return, the analysis starts from reconciled figures. Related pages: Mission equipment business accounting and the equipment CCA classes guide.

Remote CFO support

EverStone is a sole practitioner CPA firm, and Mission clients are served online. There is no Mission office and no local staff. We meet by video or phone and exchange documents by secure email and e-signature, so no visit is required. Hourly machine costs and the T2 come from the same books.

The moment there are employees, payroll in Mission becomes the recurring obligation.

Strategic decisions run on figures that arrive in time to use, which is the monthly pack behind those decisions.

Where hours per machine and a timely close are what is missing, a fractional controller instead is the lighter, cheaper start.

The companion page on Mission GST filing covers that side of the work.

For tax preparation in Mission and Mission corporate returns, the scope and the fixed-fee approach are the same.