Financial Clarity. Strategic Visibility. Confident Decisions.
Most companies don't have a finance function. They have a reporting function.
Sterling Equity Partners is not a typical consulting firm. We drive results, not recommendations. In the first 90 days, we deliver forward cash flow visibility and execute a margin improvement and EBITDA growth plan that turns finance into a profit-driving function. For private and PE-backed companies from $2M to $50M in revenue.
Companies are making critical decisions without forward-looking financial visibility.
Finance functions are reactive, focused on reporting, not driving performance or cash flow. The result: cash flow volatility, margin erosion, and unrealized EBITDA upside.
82%
of businesses under $50M have no CFO or controller.
Source: AICPA Private Company Survey, 2024
60%
of cash flow problems are identifiable 6+ weeks early.
Source: JP Morgan Chase Institute, Cash Flow Analysis
3 to 5x
ROI on financial modeling through better cash timing.
Source: Deloitte CFO Insights, 2023
The real cost of poor financial visibility.
Even well-run companies encounter these scenarios without forward financial visibility. The difference is whether you see them early or react late.
Overhiring Without Cash Visibility
$80K+ emergency cash shortfall
Situation. You hire 3 new techs in March because revenue is up. But you didn't model payroll, equipment, training hitting before the new revenue collects.
Result. You're short $80K in May. Emergency line draw at 12%.
The Project Cash Gap
$150K out-of-pocket float for 6 weeks
Situation. You take on a $2M project but your draw schedule doesn't cover sub payments in weeks 4 to 8.
Result. You're floating $150K out of pocket. One delayed payment from the GC and you're scrambling.
The Bank Surprise
$37K/yr in extra interest
Situation. Your bank asks for covenant compliance. You don't have it. Your controller scrambles for 3 weeks.
Result. The bank gets nervous, and your rate goes up 75bps on a $5M line.
The highest-impact tool for controlling liquidity.
Same business. Better return on every dollar deployed.
- A 13-week cash flow model tracks every dollar of cash inflows and outflows, refreshed weekly.
- It identifies cash shortfalls 6 to 13 weeks before they become crises and unlocks working capital through optimized AR and AP timing.
- No more bank-balance-as-proxy. Real forward visibility. Lender and investor-grade financials.
What your operators see weekly. What your board sees monthly.
Two cadences, one financial system.
Weekly Cash Position
CASH BALANCE
$1.72M
+$78K vs. last week
AR DAYS OUTSTANDING
42 days
-3 days vs. prior month
13-WEEK CASH FLOW FORECAST
Monthly Operating Review
REVENUE
$2.4M
+9.1% vs. budget
GROSS MARGIN
38.2%
-1.8pp vs. budget
P&L SUMMARY, OCT 2025
Key Insights
- ·Gross margin is 1.8 points below budget despite revenue outperforming. The variance traces to COGS running 7.1% over budget, isolated to two service lines with input cost exposure (concrete labor and equipment rental).
- ·EBITDA upside from revenue is being absorbed by OpEx running 5.5% over plan. Earnings cushion is $6K on $2.4M of revenue. Any revenue softness flips the month negative.
- ·The 13-week model projects a liquidity trough in weeks 7-9, bottoming near $1.28M. Trigger event is a $340K AP concentration in week 7 against decelerating AR collections.
Management Actions
What needs to happen this week.
- ·Approve the AR pull-forward plan: offer 1.5% / Net 10 to top 8 customers (~$420K AR exposure) to bridge the week 7 AP concentration.
- ·Pause the two open hires in operations until the August margin rebuild is verified. Revisit at the September board review.
- ·Authorize the revolver draw trigger at $1.0M cash floor. Draw paperwork pre-staged with the bank, ready for same-day execution.
- ·Hold the discretionary marketing spend ($45K committed for Q4) until November margin trend is confirmed.
Senior CFO bandwidth. Without the hire, the firm, or the overhead.
Two engagement models. Scoped to fit.
Pricing is built around the work, not the hour. We scope each engagement to the size, complexity, and stage of the business.
Cash Flow Package
For operators who need forward visibility into liquidity. A 13-week rolling cash flow model, refreshed weekly, with treasury cadence and variance tracking. Delivered live by Week 5.
Full Financial Package
Includes everything in the Cash Flow Package, plus a complete FP&A buildout: budget, rolling forecast, KPI dashboard, board-ready quarterly reporting, monthly close support, and integrated 13-week cash flow model. For companies ready for institutional-grade financial infrastructure. Delivered live by Week 9.
Less than 10% of a full-time hire. Less than 10% of a Big 4 engagement. None of the recruiting fees, ramp-up, junior-staff dilution, or fixed overhead.
Sterling Equity Partners | Traditional Options | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash Flow Package | Full Financial Package | Full-Time CFO Hire | Big 4 / Tier 1 Consulting | |
| Initial Build | Starts at $3,500 | Starts at $10,000 | $50K to $90K (recruiting fees) | $25,000 to $75,000 |
| Monthly Retainer | Starts at $1,000/mo | Starts at $2,000/mo | $25K to $37K/mo (loaded comp) | $15,000 to $40,000/mo |
| Year 1 Total | From $15,500 | From $34,000 | $300,000 to $450,000 | $205,000 to $480,000 |
| Time to Productive Output | 5 weeks | 9 weeks | 6 to 9 months | 6 to 12 weeks |
| Working Availability | Senior bandwidth, on-call | Senior bandwidth, on-call | 40-50 hrs/wk, minus PTO and meetings | Partner involvement <10% of hours |
| Variable Capacity | Scale up or down | Scale up or down | Fixed overhead | Fixed engagement scope |
| Severance/Exit Risk | None | None | 3 to 6 months base salary | Engagement minimums |
Cash Flow Package
- Initial Build
- Starts at $3,500
- Monthly Retainer
- Starts at $1,000/mo
- Year 1 Total
- From $15,500
- Time to Productive Output
- 5 weeks
- Working Availability
- Senior bandwidth, on-call
- Variable Capacity
- Scale up or down
- Severance/Exit Risk
- None
Full Financial Package
- Initial Build
- Starts at $10,000
- Monthly Retainer
- Starts at $2,000/mo
- Year 1 Total
- From $34,000
- Time to Productive Output
- 9 weeks
- Working Availability
- Senior bandwidth, on-call
- Variable Capacity
- Scale up or down
- Severance/Exit Risk
- None
Full-Time CFO Hire
- Initial Build
- $50K to $90K (recruiting fees)
- Monthly Retainer
- $25K to $37K/mo (loaded comp)
- Year 1 Total
- $300,000 to $450,000
- Time to Productive Output
- 6 to 9 months
- Working Availability
- 40-50 hrs/wk, minus PTO and meetings
- Variable Capacity
- Fixed overhead
- Severance/Exit Risk
- 3 to 6 months base salary
Big 4 / Tier 1 Consulting
- Initial Build
- $25,000 to $75,000
- Monthly Retainer
- $15,000 to $40,000/mo
- Year 1 Total
- $205,000 to $480,000
- Time to Productive Output
- 6 to 12 weeks
- Working Availability
- Partner involvement <10% of hours
- Variable Capacity
- Fixed engagement scope
- Severance/Exit Risk
- Engagement minimums
Engagements scope on a discovery call. Larger companies, more complex businesses, and PE-backed operations price from these baselines.
Why Sterling Equity Partners
M&A-grade financial modeling. Acquisition feasibility, add-on modeling, and integration cost analysis, built by someone who's done $3.5B+ in transaction advisory.
Institutional rigor, fractional cost. Big 4 and top consulting firm expertise without the overhead, the ramp-up time, or the junior staff.
Growth infrastructure. Every expansion decision, new location, add-on acquisition, new hire, modeled and stress-tested before capital is committed.
Additional Capabilities
- Add-on acquisition modeling and feasibility testing
- Post-acquisition integration and reporting buildout
- Debt refinancing and covenant compliance packages
- Growth scenario modeling (new markets, locations, hires)
- Seller-side financial preparation for exit readiness
EBITDA growth. Margin expansion KPIs, cost optimization, revenue enhancement modeling.
Debt paydown. Cash flow-to-debt service mapping, accelerated paydown scenarios.
Multiple expansion. Growth profile improvement, add-on strategy to drive valuation uplift.
Institutional-grade financial infrastructure.
Big-firm expertise. Operator-level execution.
Federico brings institutional-grade M&A, restructuring, and CFO experience, from firms advising on $5B+ in aggregate transaction value.
Experience
Impact Point Co.
Senior Associate, Office of the CFO and Corporate Restructuring
- ·Interim VP of Finance for PE-backed companies ($50M to $500M), stabilized liquidity and drove cash visibility.
- ·Built 13-week cash flow models and 3-statement budgets used by lenders and management to drive decisions.
Ark
Private Equity Investor
- ·Originated ~$2.5B pipeline and built institutional-grade underwriting models.
- ·Scaled portfolio from 3.5K to 5K units through acquisitions and asset optimization.
Berkeley Research Group
Mergers and Acquisitions
- ·Executed diligence on 20+ transactions totaling over ~$3.5B across PE and strategic buyers.
- ·Identified key risks and value drivers impacting pricing and investment decisions.
Changebridge Growth Partners
Search Fund Advisor
- ·Built LBO models and screened acquisition targets for ETA strategy.
- ·Assessed revenue quality, working capital, and concentration risks.
Education
- Georgetown University, M.S. Finance, Merit Scholar.
- Bentley University, B.S. Finance, Capital Markets; Minor in CS, Cum Laude.
- Fluent in English and Spanish.
Institutional-Grade Financial Infrastructure
Granular visibility. See where cash is going and where margin is leaking, at the line-item level.
Smarter growth decisions. Acquisitions, new locations, new hires, every decision modeled before it's made.
Controlled expansion. Growth without the cash crunches. Know your runway before you commit capital.
Lender and investor confidence. Institutional-quality financials, not a QuickBooks printout.
Federico Nannini
Managing Partner
What operators ask before engaging.
Direct answers to the questions that matter before the call.
How do you bill?
Fixed monthly retainers, scoped to the engagement. We do not bill hourly. Hourly billing punishes efficiency and turns financial advisory into a cost line item to be minimized. Pricing reflects the work and the outcomes, not the clock.
My books are not current or fully organized. Can you still help?
Yes. Many engagements start here, and how this gets handled is one of the things that separates Sterling Equity Partners from typical fractional CFO services. Most firms will either turn you away until your books are clean, or quietly absorb the cleanup into a bloated monthly retainer. We do neither. In Week 1, we assess the state of your books directly. If catch-up work is needed, we either scope a short Financial Foundation engagement (typically 4 to 6 weeks, priced separately and transparently) to bring the financials to the standard CFO work requires, or we coordinate with a qualified bookkeeping partner to handle it in parallel while we begin the strategic work. You do not need to solve this on your own before reaching out, and you do not pay for cleanup hidden inside an advisory fee.
How do engagements typically begin?
One 45-minute call. We review your situation, I show you exactly what we would build, what it costs, and what the first 9 weeks look like. By the end of the call, you have a clear answer on whether to engage and what package fits. Most operators decide on the call. If we move forward, the Cash Flow Package delivers a live 13-week model by Week 5. The Full Financial Package delivers a complete FP&A suite by Week 9.
Will I work directly with you, or with an analyst?
Directly with Federico Nannini. There are no analyst handoffs and no junior staff buffer. The work is delivered by the same person who scoped the engagement and signed the agreement.
How many clients do you serve at once?
Capacity is intentionally limited. Sterling Equity Partners maintains a small active client roster to ensure each engagement receives senior-level attention without dilution. When capacity is full, we maintain a waitlist.
Who do we work with on your team day to day?
Typically your bookkeeper, who we treat as a working partner. Their context on transactions, classifications, and historical decisions is essential to the work, and the strongest engagements treat the bookkeeper as embedded in the process, not bypassed. If you do not have a bookkeeper, we work directly with your controller, finance lead, or the operator. We require read-only access to your accounting system (QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero, Sage Intacct), bank accounts (via Plaid or direct download), and AR/AP detail. We do not require write access.
What is the minimum engagement length, and why not just hire a CFO?
Three months minimum on the Cash Flow Package, six months on the Full Financial Package. After the minimum, engagements are month-to-month. We do not lock clients into annual contracts. If the work is not delivering value, you should be free to leave. The deeper question is what you actually get for the cost. A full-time CFO hire is one person's experience, instincts, and bandwidth, scoped to your business and limited by it. Sterling Equity Partners brings a productized methodology built on $3.5B+ of M&A advisory, dozens of 13-week cash flow models built across industries, and pattern recognition that cannot be replicated by a single in-house hire. The implementation roadmap is defined, the deliverables are quantified, and the insights have been pressure-tested against businesses operating at far greater complexity than most middle-market companies face. The result is a level of financial visibility and decision support that a typical CFO hire would take 12 to 18 months to build internally, delivered for less than 10% of the cost.
Do you serve Spanish-speaking businesses and family offices?
Yes. Federico is bilingual in English and Spanish. Engagements with Latin American operators, family offices, and bilingual leadership teams are conducted in either language as needed. Reporting deliverables can be produced in English, Spanish, or both.
What working together looks like.
Forward-looking financial visibility that transforms how you manage cash, evaluate growth, and communicate with stakeholders.
Assessment (Week 1)
We review your current financial infrastructure and identify where visibility will have the biggest impact on decision-making.
Build and Deliver (Weeks 2-5)
We mobilize immediately. Cash flow model delivered by Week 5. Full FP&A suite, 3-statement model, reporting, budget, and KPI dashboard, by Week 9.
Ongoing Partnership (Week 6+)
Continuous financial visibility, monthly reporting, and strategic decision support as your business evolves.