An interim CFO holds the finance seat full time for a fixed period, typically three or six months, while a permanent search runs. Use one when the seat is empty and the work cannot wait; use a fractional CFO when the work is real but not yet full time.
Interim, fractional or permanent: which one your situation needs
The three get confused, and the confusion costs founders money. An interim CFO is full time in the seat for a fixed period and carries the whole mandate while it lasts. A fractional CFO is senior judgement bought by the hour or the month, ongoing, and never full time. A permanent CFO is the end state. The right one depends less on your stage than on what has just happened.
| What to do | Why | |
|---|---|---|
| Your CFO or head of finance has resigned | Interim now, permanent search in parallel | The seat has live work in it today. Interim holds it so the search can take the time it needs. |
| The permanent search has stalled | Interim, and rework the brief | Three months without the right shortlist usually means the brief, not the market. Cover the seat and fix the brief rather than lower the bar. |
| A raise, audit or deal lands before the hire | Interim with a defined mandate | A time-boxed event needs full-time senior ownership now. Scope the mandate so the interim delivers it and hands over. |
| The work is real but not full time | Fractional, not interim | Paying for a full-time seat you cannot fill with work is the wrong shape. A fractional CFO covers the decisions that need senior input. |
| The role is continuous and the brief is clear | Permanent, straight away | If you know what you need and the business can carry the salary, an interim only delays the hire you are going to make anyway. |
The first two rows are where interim earns its fee. A seat that has just emptied still has a board pack due, payroll to approve and probably a forecast someone was halfway through. Somebody has to hold that while the permanent search is run properly, and the choice is between an interim doing it well or the founder doing it badly.
If the answer is that the work is real but not yet full time, I set out when a fractional CFO works and when you have outgrown it.
What finance leaders do when a senior search stalls
In our Q2 2026 State of the Market report, a poll of more than 350 finance professionals in the Story network, we asked what their breaking point is when a senior finance search is not landing. The chart reads: adjust the brief after three months 38.6%, wait six months or more if needed 32.9%, hire an interim and keep looking 25.7%, and compromise on experience 2.9%.[1]
Almost nobody will lower the bar on experience, and about a quarter bridge the gap with an interim while they hold it. The larger groups either rework the brief or wait.
The same report asked what happens after a finance resignation. Of the finance leaders who answered, 81.8% pause and reassess the role before replacing it, and only 5.1% replace like for like straight away.[2] Interim cover is what makes that pause affordable. The seat is held while you work out whether the next hire should be the same role at all.
Interim and fractional first hires in our study
We also looked at this from the hiring side. Of the 191 funded Australian startups we tracked with a dated finance hire, 8% (16) made a fractional, part-time or interim appointment as their first finance hire, and 5% (46 of 966) of the finance hires we dated carried one of those flags.[3]1
The full study, including what funded Australian startups hired first and what came next, is published separately.
How an interim engagement is structured
There are two clean ways to engage an interim in Australia, and the choice is a trade between flexibility and cost control. The first is an hourly or daily rate, with the person payrolled through the recruiter. It flexes with the work and ends easily, and it costs a little more. The second is a fixed-term contract, which gives you more control over the total spend but usually locks you into blocks of three or six months.[4]
Timing shapes who you can get. A four-month interim contract rarely survives a four-week notice period, because the whole point is that you needed someone last week.[5] So interim candidates come from the people who are available now: experienced CFOs between roles, portfolio operators, and people who have chosen contract work deliberately. That is a smaller pool than the permanent market, and a good interim partner knows who is in it before you call.
Build the handovers in from the start. I recently set up a three month interim engagement with a couple of weeks of overlap with the outgoing person at the start and a couple of weeks with the incoming person at the end, which is the shape I recommend wherever the diary allows it.[6]
What an interim CFO is asked to do
Be explicit about which kind of interim you are buying, because the two briefs look nothing alike. One is caretaking: business as usual, the close on time, the acquisitions already in flight managed, and no new system implementations or restructures while existing and incoming people settle. On a recent two and a half month interim placement that was exactly the client's expectation.[7] The other is a full executive mandate, where the interim leads a systems change, a raise or a restructure. That is a different person at a different rate.
The unwritten part of the job is stability. As one guest put it in a short from The CFO Track, in a difficult environment you have to be persistent and patient, because things will not be as tightly buttoned up as you would like, and the priority is insulating the business from turnover or a rebuild while the permanent answer is found. A good interim leaves the permanent CFO something to build on rather than a mess to unpick.
The trap: the interim who quietly becomes permanent
The most expensive interim outcome is not a bad interim. It is a decent one who stays by default. The search loses urgency because the seat is covered, six months pass, and someone suggests just making it permanent. Sometimes that is right. Often the interim was chosen for availability and steadiness, not for the job the business needs next.
I have seen an interim head of finance described by the client as keeping the lights on in maintenance mode, which is exactly what they had been asked to do, and not at the CFO level the permanent role needed.[8] Converting that person would have filled the seat and left the gap. If you are tempted to convert, assess the interim against the permanent brief exactly as you would an outside candidate, and ideally alongside them.
What it costs
Interim is priced above fractional because it is a full-time commitment from someone senior enough to hold the seat. For the two poles either side of it: solo virtual CFOs charge up to around $210 an hour and firms up to around $270, and a permanent CFO at late Series A runs $275k to $325k base plus equity in my published bands.[9] Interim cover prices between those, and the fixed term or daily structure you choose moves it within that range.
Compare interim against the cost of the wrong permanent hire rather than against salary: the search fee twice, months of drift, and often a rebuild of whatever the wrong person changed. Set against that, a few months of interim cover to protect the quality of the permanent decision is usually the cheaper path. If what you are really pricing is ongoing part-time help rather than full-time cover, the monthly bands are on what a part-time CFO costs in Australia.
Where I fit
About nine in ten of my placements are permanent and about one in ten are interim.[10] So my interest here is plain: I want the permanent hire to be right, and a well-chosen interim is often what makes that possible. My lane is the first finance hire and the first CFO in Australian VC-backed startups and scale-ups. If you are covering a seat now and need the permanent search run properly behind it, that is the conversation to have.
For the permanent side, I set out how CFO recruitment works for Australian startups, from brief to signed contract.
Common questions
What is an interim CFO?
An interim CFO is a senior finance leader who steps into the CFO seat full time for a defined period, typically while a business runs a permanent search or works through a transition. They carry the full mandate for the duration rather than advising from outside. It is different from a fractional CFO, which is ongoing senior finance input bought by the hour or month and never full time.
How common is interim cover during a senior finance search?
In our Q2 2026 State of the Market report, a poll of more than 350 finance professionals in the Story network, 25.7% said they would hire an interim and keep looking when a senior search is not landing, according to the report's chart. 38.6% would adjust the brief after three months, 32.9% would wait six months or more, and 2.9% would compromise on experience. Interim hires are also under-counted in public data, because an interim supplied by a firm usually lists the firm as their employer rather than the startup.
How is an interim CFO engaged in Australia?
Two ways. An hourly or daily rate, with the person payrolled through the recruiter, flexes with the work and ends easily, at a slightly higher cost. A fixed-term contract gives more control over the total spend but usually locks you into blocks of three or six months. Because interims are needed quickly, candidates are usually people available now rather than people serving a four-week notice period.
Should I make my interim CFO permanent?
Only if they win the permanent brief on merit. Interims are usually chosen for availability and steadiness, and a caretaking interim can be exactly right for the gap and wrong for the job the business needs next. Assess them against the permanent brief as you would an outside candidate, ideally alongside outside candidates, rather than converting by default because the seat is covered.
How much does an interim CFO cost?
Interim prices above fractional, because it is a full-time commitment, and it usually sits between two poles: solo virtual CFOs at up to around $210 an hour and firms at up to around $270, and a permanent late Series A CFO at $275k to $325k base plus equity. The right comparison is the cost of the wrong permanent hire, which runs to the search fee twice plus months of drift.
Notes
- Treat these figures as a floor. An interim or fractional CFO supplied through a firm usually lists the firm as their employer, not the startup, so they never appear in a company's public record. The true share is higher than public data can show.
References
- Our Q2 2026 State of the Market report polled more than 350 finance professionals in the Story network and does not publish n per question. The figures here are read from the report's chart. The report's written summary gives different figures for the interim and experience answers that do not match its own chart, so we use the chart values here until that is re-checked.
- From the same Q2 2026 poll: 81.8% of finance leaders said they pause and reassess before replacing a resignation, and 5.1% replace like for like as soon as possible.
- Our finance-hire study tracked 194 funded Australian startups and every dated finance hire on their public records, against 430 twice-confirmed funding rounds. A hire is flagged fractional, part-time or interim from its title or its listed employment type. The frame was built from finance people, so it describes companies that went on to build an internal finance function, and a provider engaged through a firm does not appear. Method and caveats are on when Australian startups make their first finance hire.
- How I set these up with clients: hourly or daily, payrolled through Story Recruitment, is more flexible and slightly dearer; a fixed-term contract gives more cost control but usually runs in three or six month blocks.
- A constraint I hit on interim briefs: for a contract of only four months, a candidate on a four-week notice period is often not workable, because the client needs someone in the seat quickly.
- From my placement work: a recent interim role was structured for three months, including a couple of weeks of handover with the outgoing person at the start and a couple of weeks with the incoming person at the end.
- From a recent interim CFO placement of two and a half months: the client's expectation was to keep business as usual and manage the acquisitions already under way, not to start new system implementations or restructures, with existing and incoming people to protect.
- From a client brief: an interim head of finance was described to me as keeping the lights on in maintenance mode, which was the right job for the gap but not the CFO level the permanent role required.
- The hourly benchmarks and the late Series A band are from my First CFO Hire playbook and First Finance Hire playbook: solo virtual CFOs up to circa $210 an hour, firms up to circa $270, and a late Series A CFO at $275k to $325k plus equity.
- The shape of my own desk: roughly 90% of the roles I fill are permanent and about 10% are interim or contract.
These guides set out how we see it, drawn from the searches we run and the finance leaders we work with. They are general information about the market, not financial, accounting or legal advice, and they are no substitute for advice on your own circumstances.