Built for the work that ends up in front of an external auditor, a board chair, or a diligence team. Seal every material approval, every period-close sign-off, every model version, with named, identity-verified acknowledgment that holds up after the stakeholders change and the questions start.
Independently verifiable by anyone, with nothing reliant on us. Structured to drop straight into PBC lists, control-testing evidence packages, and SOC 2 audit binders. The independent timestamp is the backstop, not the pitch.
Most consulting deliverables get a soft review and move on. A fractional CFO’s work: period-close approvals, material accrual decisions, board packages, financial models, segregation of duties matrices: gets a hard review, often years later, by external auditors, diligence teams, regulators, or successor finance leadership.
Internal-control frameworks (the COSO framework that backs both PCAOB ICFR audits for public companies and the AICPA’s attest standards for private companies) ask auditors to test whether a control actually operated: not just whether it existed on paper. A material management approval that lives only as a Slack “OK” or a verbal sign-off cannot be tested. Audit-procedure terminology calls this a documentation gap; from the auditor’s perspective, an untestable control is functionally indistinguishable from one that didn’t happen. Pactbound captures the evidence at the moment of the decision: so the auditor never has to ask whether the approval existed, or reconstruct it from email a year later.
For a fractional CFO billing $250–$450/hr with a typical engagement value north of $50k, the math on a $99-and-up Pactbound plan is: one avoided malpractice claim, one cleaner audit, or one faster diligence response pays for the tool for the rest of your career.
Six exposures eliminated
Heard repeatedly from fractional CFOs and boutique advisory practices.
When the external auditor arrives, the board hires an interim, or the company gets diligenced for a Series B, every journal entry, accrual decision, and approval you touched gets reviewed. A sealed sign-off at the moment of each material decision turns that review from a scramble into a one-link reply.
PCAOB and SSARS 21 frameworks treat undocumented approvals as a control deficiency. Pactbound captures the approver (named, identity-verified), the approval scope, the supporting analysis, and the timestamp: the four things any management-letter review wants to see.
You handed the board the FP&A model in October. By December a department head has edited assumptions and is presenting different numbers as yours. The sealed bundle hashes every cell of the original workbook: the version you delivered is provably distinct from the version they're showing now.
A new board chair arrives, questions an accrual decision from a prior quarter, asks why the CFO signed off. The sealed acknowledgment from the original CEO, dated and externally timestamped, settles it without re-opening the audit work.
If your clients are pursuing SOC 2 or ISO 27001, their auditors will ask for evidence of CFO-approved controls (segregation of duties, journal-entry approval workflows, vendor payment authorization). A Pactbound receipt drops directly into the control-testing evidence package.
Fractional means “not all of it.” When the founder treats you as the full finance team and the engagement-letter scope quietly expands, sealed monthly sign-offs documenting exactly what you owned that period are the difference between a clean wind-down and a malpractice exposure.
A real diligence story
Elena had wrapped an 18-month fractional CFO engagement with a Series A SaaS company in February. In October the company entered a Series B process. The lead investor's diligence team flagged a revenue recognition policy change she'd implemented eight months earlier, and wanted to know who approved it and whether the board had been told.
Elena had sealed that policy change as a Pactbound bundle: the analysis, the technical memo, and the board chair's named acknowledgment, timestamped the day the board packet went out. The diligence team got a single link.
The policy was still questioned, but the review took two hours instead of two weeks. Her engagement had ended months earlier, and she didn't reconstruct anything from memory or email. The sealed record answered every question they had about who approved it and what they saw.
The Series B closed. The following month the founder referred Elena to two other portfolio companies.
Where the receipt earns its keep
Common questions
Custom plan
Includes everything in Team plus unlimited sign-offs, role-based access for engagement teams, data retention set to your policy, and dedicated support.
Pricing depends on engagement count, retention requirements, and whether your clients require specific compliance attestations.