Fractional leadership · CFO
Fractional CFO for med spas and aesthetics practices.
A bookkeeper records what happened. A fractional CFO helps you decide what happens next — which device to finance, when a second location pays back, what each injector really costs per hour, and how much the practice can safely distribute. Balance Partners provides fractional CFO services to med spas and aesthetics practices nationwide, delivered personally by Jenny Gao, CPA, EA, on top of books that are closed every month.
Who this is for
What to do next — decided from numbers you can trust.
Best fit: med spas past roughly $1 million in annual revenue, with two or more locations, or with an MSO alongside a professional entity — and owners who want a finance leader in the room without a full-time hire.
Not a fit for pre-revenue startups, practices that only want a tax return filed, or owners shopping on price alone. Those needs are better served by Med Spa Core or by a local preparer.
What you receive
Deliverables, not hours.
Monthly CFO meeting with a written agenda
Sixty to ninety minutes a month on what moved, why, and the three decisions in front of you — followed by a one-page summary of what was decided.
13-week cash forecast
Rolling weekly view of cash, payroll, product orders, device payments, tax deposits and distributions, updated with the close. The number most owners never see until it is a problem.
Annual budget and quarterly reforecast
A budget built from provider capacity, treatment mix and pricing — not last year plus 5% — and reforecast each quarter against actuals.
KPI dashboard by service line and provider
Gross margin by service line, cost per treatment, revenue per provider hour, package and membership redemption liability, retail attach rate and EBITDA after a normalized owner salary.
Provider compensation modeling
What a proposed commission plan, base-plus-bonus or hourly structure does to margin and to the injector's take-home before you offer it.
Device, pricing and second-location models
Payback and margin models for a $150,000 laser, a membership price change or a new location, with the tax effect of Section 179 and bonus depreciation built in.
Bank- and buyer-ready financials
Projections and historical packages formatted for an SBA lender, an equipment lessor or a buyer's quality-of-earnings review.
Exit-readiness review
Twelve to twenty-four months before a sale: what a buyer will adjust, what to fix now, and what the deal structure means for the owner's after-tax proceeds.
In practice
What a fractional CFO engagement looks like in practice
An illustration, not a client: a two-location practice doing $2.6 million a year wants to add a body-contouring device at $185,000 and open a third room for a new injector. The CFO work is to model both against the same month's close: treatment capacity by provider hour, the device's payback at realistic utilization (not the vendor's), the Section 179 and bonus-depreciation effect on this year's estimates, the loan's weekly cash draw in the 13-week forecast, and the injector's compensation plan priced against her expected production. The owner gets one page: do the device in Q1, defer the hire to Q2, and move $40,000 of distributions to the following quarter to keep the cash floor. That page is the deliverable; the dashboard and forecast are how we get there.
How it starts
Diagnostic first, then a written scope.
Fit call
Twenty minutes on locations, entities, providers, systems and the decisions in front of you.
Diagnostic
We read the QuickBooks file, POS exports, payroll and prior returns and tell you in writing what has to be fixed before leadership-level work is worth paying for.
Written scope and flat fee
Deliverables, cadence, what you provide, and one monthly fee. Month-to-month after onboarding, thirty days' written notice.
Cadence
Close by the tenth business day, then the monthly or quarterly meeting with a one-page summary of what was decided and what happens next.
How pricing works
Scoped after a diagnostic. One flat monthly fee.
We do not publish a price for fractional leadership work because the fee depends on entities, locations, states, inventory and the cadence you want. Every engagement gets a written scope and a flat monthly fee before work starts, month-to-month after onboarding with thirty days' written notice. The foundation tier, Med Spa Core, starts at $1,500 a month; see how pricing works.
Questions
Common questions
What does a fractional CFO do for a med spa that a bookkeeper or CPA does not?
A bookkeeper records transactions and a tax CPA files returns. A fractional CFO owns the forward view: cash forecast, budget, KPI targets, pricing and compensation decisions, financing and growth models, and the monthly conversation about what to do next. At Balance Partners the same person who reviews the close leads the CFO meeting, so the forecast is built from books that reconcile.
How much does a fractional CFO for a med spa cost?
We scope each fractional CFO engagement after a diagnostic of your books, systems and entity structure, then quote a flat monthly fee under a written scope. We do not publish a price because the fee depends on locations, entities and the cadence you want. Med Spa Core, the bookkeeping-plus-tax tier, starts at $1,500 a month and is the foundation the CFO work sits on.
Do I need fractional CFO services, or is bookkeeping plus tax enough?
If you are a single location under about $1 million with one or two providers, Med Spa Core with its KPI sheet usually answers the questions you have. The CFO tier earns its fee when decisions get bigger: a second location, a device purchase, a new comp plan, an MSO structure, outside financing or a sale within two years.
Is the fractional CFO work done by Jenny Gao personally?
Yes. Jenny Gao, CPA, EA, leads every CFO engagement, runs the monthly meeting and signs off on every model. There is no handoff to a junior analyst you have never met.
What do you need from us each month?
Your point-of-sale exports (sales by service and product, package and membership balances, provider production), bank and card access through the accounting software, payroll reports and a thirty-minute conversation about what changed. If the close is already with us under Med Spa Core, most of that is already flowing.
Can we start with CFO work only and keep our current bookkeeper?
We can, after a diagnostic confirms the books are reliable enough to forecast from. In most med spa files they are not — packages are booked as revenue and inventory is expensed — so the first ninety days usually include fixing the close. Forecasting from wrong numbers is worse than not forecasting.
The other two roles
Fractional leadership, three ways.
Each role can be engaged alone or together as a single med spa finance office — controller, CFO and tax director under one fee, with Med Spa Core as the base.
From the library
Guides that go with this work
Request a fit call
Twenty minutes on your practice and the decisions ahead of it. If the leadership tier is more than you need, we will say so and point you to Med Spa Core.
Request a 20-Minute Fit Call →