Fractional FP&A

FD Capital places fractional FP&A professionals for UK businesses — experienced financial planning and analysis specialists who work across multiple businesses simultaneously on a day-rate basis, typically committing one to two days per week to each client. The fractional FP&A model gives growing businesses access to senior FP&A capability — robust financial modelling, structured budgeting and forecasting, and commercial finance analysis — at a cost proportionate to the business’s current scale.

Adrian Lawrence FCA
, founder of FD Capital and a Fellow of the ICAEW, leads our senior finance recruitment practice.

Adrian Lawrence FCA — Founder, FD Capital
Fellow of the ICAEW | ICAEW-Registered Practice | Fractional and permanent finance placements since 2018

The fractional FP&A model works best when a business has clear, recurring FP&A requirements — a monthly forecasting cycle, a quarterly reforecast, an annual budget process — but not enough volume to justify employing a dedicated FP&A professional. The fractional professional builds the model, runs the process and delivers the output on their allocated days, providing senior‑level analytical rigour without the overhead of a permanent headcount addition.

For businesses that need someone employed on a reduced‑hours basis rather than working across multiple clients, our Part‑Time FP&A service is the better fit.

The fractional FP&A professional builds and owns the business’s financial model — the integrated three‑statement model or the driver‑based planning model that the business uses for its annual budget, rolling forecast and scenario analysis. Many growing businesses have financial models that were built by the founder, the CFO or an external accountant as a one‑off exercise and have never been properly structured, documented or maintained.

The fractional FP&A professional’s first priority is typically to assess the existing model, redesign it if necessary, and bring it to a standard that the business can rely on for decision‑making and for presenting to investors or lenders.

The fractional FP&A professional runs the recurring forecasting cycle — updating the model with actuals each month, refreshing the forward assumptions with the management team, producing a revised full‑year forecast and presenting the variance analysis and forward outlook to the CFO or CEO. In businesses with a monthly management accounts cycle, the fractional FP&A professional works alongside the finance team to ensure the management accounts feed cleanly into the forecast model rather than requiring manual rekeying.

Running an annual budget process is a significant exercise that typically involves coordinating inputs from multiple departments, building the consolidated financial plan, stress‑testing assumptions and producing a board‑ready budget pack. A fractional FP&A professional with experience of running budget processes in businesses of a similar scale handles this systematically — bringing a structured approach that the business’s finance function may not have had previously.

For PE‑backed businesses, the budget process also involves preparing the financial plan in the format the sponsor requires and aligning it with the investment case targets agreed at the time of the deal.

Beyond the core planning cycle, the fractional FP&A professional provides commercial finance analysis on request — investment appraisals, pricing models, unit economics analysis, acquisition modelling and the financial input into strategic decisions. For businesses with investor reporting obligations, the fractional FP&A professional prepares the financial sections of the investor or board pack, ensures the KPI reporting is consistent and accurate, and provides the narrative analysis that translates the numbers into a clear strategic picture.

The distinction matters practically and structurally. A fractional FP&A professional works across two or three…