Three jobs, often confused, sometimes done by the same firm and occasionally by the same person. Getting the split wrong is expensive in both directions: a CFO doing bookkeeping is wasted money, a bookkeeper doing tax planning is a liability. Here is what each one does, what it costs, and which one your business needs next.
In one line each
- A bookkeeper records what happened. Transactions coded, bank reconciled, BAS prepared.
- An accountant reports and advises on what happened. Financial statements, tax returns, tax planning, structure, ATO.
- A virtual CFO decides what should happen next. Forecasts, margins, pricing, funding, the numbers behind every big decision.
Side by side
| Bookkeeper | Accountant | Virtual CFO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Looks at | This week and this month | This year and last year | The next 12 to 36 months |
| Produces | Reconciled Xero, clean coding, BAS data | Financials, tax returns, tax plan, structure advice | Forecast, management reports, KPIs, board pack |
| Cadence | Weekly or monthly | Quarterly and annually, plus planning | Monthly, with a standing meeting |
| Typical cost (business doing $1M+) | $6,000 to $20,000 a year | $5,000 to $30,000 a year | $25,000 to $90,000 a year |
| Must be registered | BAS agent to lodge BAS | Tax agent to lodge returns | No registration; judgement and experience |
| Replaces | You doing it at 10pm | Compliance risk and bill shock | A $250K+ in-house CFO you cannot yet justify |
The bookkeeper
Everything else is built on the bookkeeping. If the books are late or wrong, the tax return is wrong, the forecast is fiction and the BAS is a guess. A good bookkeeper keeps Xero reconciled to the bank every week, codes transactions consistently, and prepares BAS from real numbers. (Payroll is a separate job; at New Wave it sits with your payroll software or provider, and the bookkeeper reconciles to it.) A great one spots the things that look wrong before they become a problem.
You need one as soon as you stop having time to do it properly yourself, which for most founders is somewhere around $300K of revenue.
The accountant
The accountant takes the reconciled books and turns them into financial statements and tax returns, makes sure the right entities pay the right tax, and plans tax before the year ends rather than reporting it after. They are the one who tells you your structure is wrong, that the loan from the company is a Division 7A problem, or that you should be putting more into super this year.
Every business with a trading entity needs one. The question is whether yours only lodges, or also advises. A firm that does your bookkeeping and your accounting removes the handover between the two, which is where most errors and most delays live.
The virtual CFO
A CFO is forward-looking. They own the forecast, know the margin by product, customer and site, tell you what a new hire or a new location does to cash, and sit in the room when you are deciding whether to buy, borrow, expand or sell. A virtual CFO gives a business between roughly $2M and $20M of revenue that capability for a fraction of a full-time salary, usually a day or two a month of senior time backed by a team.
You need one when decisions are getting bigger than your gut, when a bank or investor is asking for numbers you cannot produce, or when profit is not keeping up with revenue and nobody can tell you why.
Which one do you need next?
- Books are behind, BAS is stressful, you do not trust the Xero numbers: bookkeeping first. Nothing else works until this does.
- Books are fine but tax is a surprise, nobody has mentioned structure, and you only hear from the firm at lodgement: you need a better accountant, not a CFO.
- Compliance is sorted, the business is growing, and the decisions are getting bigger than the information you have: virtual CFO.
One team or three suppliers?
Three separate providers means three handovers, three sets of assumptions and three people who each know a third of the business. The model we run puts bookkeeping, accounting and CFO work in one designated team on one client file, with each task done by the right person. You get one conversation, one fee, and advice that agrees with itself.