Finance Manager Job Description for Professional Services Startups Focused on Project Profitability

When to Hire: The Triggers for Your First Finance Leader

Deciding on your first key finance hire often feels tied to revenue, but for professional services firms, operational complexity is a far more accurate indicator. The pain of managing the business on spreadsheets becomes acute long before you hit enterprise scale. A scenario we repeatedly see is that the need for a dedicated finance manager becomes critical when the founder or operations lead can no longer effectively manage the interplay between sales, delivery, and finance.

The most common triggers are clear operational thresholds. It is time to hire when you are:

• Crossing 15-20 billable team members. At this size, manually tracking and forecasting utilization becomes nearly impossible, and small inaccuracies have a major impact on revenue and profitability.
• Managing 5-10+ active, complex projects simultaneously. The more moving parts, the higher the risk of scope creep, budget overruns, and margin erosion that a spreadsheet will not catch in time.
• Approaching $2M-$3M in annual revenue. At this level, cash flow complexity, evolving revenue recognition rules, and the need for accurate forecasting demand a dedicated owner.

These milestones signal that the 'spreadsheet breaking point' has arrived. The risk of making poor staffing and pricing decisions due to a lack of timely, granular data is too high to ignore. Hiring a finance manager is the crucial step you take to build a scalable operational foundation for future growth.

The Specialist You Need: Why a Generalist Finance Manager Falls Short

Hiring a finance lead without professional-services expertise is one of the most common and costly mistakes a services founder can make. Unlike a SaaS business where the unit of value is Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), your business lives and dies by the billable hour and the project margin. A generalist finance manager, accustomed to historical accounting and different business models, often falls short because they lack the forward-looking, commercial mindset required for professional services finance responsibilities.

Your first hire should not be a traditional controller focused solely on backward-looking tasks like bookkeeping and compliance. You need a commercial finance partner who understands the 'three-legged stool' of a services business: the sales pipeline, your team's resource capacity, and overall project profitability. This specialist connects these three areas to provide foresight, not just hindsight.

They grasp the unique financial landscape of your industry. For example, they know that revenue recognition for long-term projects is complex. For US companies, this is governed by ASC 606, while in the UK, the relevant standard is often FRS 102. A specialist understands how to apply these rules to your project milestones, ensuring your financial statements are accurate. They also know that a sustainable billable utilization target is typically 75-85%, a critical KPI for managing team capacity and firm profitability. This industry-specific knowledge is what prevents poor resource allocation and protects your project margins from eroding.

Core Finance Manager Responsibilities: Owning the Project Lifecycle

The finance manager responsibilities in professional services startups revolve around owning the entire financial journey of a project, from initial proposal to final payment. This lifecycle can be broken down into three distinct phases, each requiring a different focus.

1. Pre-Sale: Pipeline Management and Margin AnalysisThis is where profitability is made or lost. The finance manager acts as a commercial partner to the sales and delivery teams, ensuring new business is both strategic and profitable. They are responsible for margin analysis for service businesses, stress-testing proposals before they go to a client. This involves modeling project costs, including loaded staff rates, software, and overhead, to ensure pricing meets target margins.Consider this mini-example of margin analysis: a new proposal is on the table for a $150,000 fixed-fee project. The finance manager works with delivery leads to model the resourcing:
   • 1 Project Lead: 200 hours at a loaded cost of $150/hour = $30,000
   • 2 Senior Consultants: 300 hours each (600 total) at $110/hour = $66,000
   • Project-specific software and expenses: $9,000
   The total projected cost is $105,000, resulting in a project margin of 30% ($45,000). The finance manager can now confirm this deal meets the firm's profitability threshold or advise the sales team on negotiating scope or price.
2. Active Project Control: Utilization and Resource Management
3. Once a project is won, the focus shifts to active management. This is where utilization tracking for agencies and consultancies becomes paramount. Research from the 2023 SPI Professional Services Maturity Benchmark shows that top-performing firms achieve an average of 78% billable utilization. The finance manager owns the system for tracking this, comparing budgeted hours to actuals in real time.
4. They monitor billable versus non-billable hours, flag projects at risk of going over budget, and work with delivery leads on resource allocation in consulting firms. This real-time oversight prevents surprises at the end of a project and allows for proactive course correction, protecting margins throughout delivery.
5. Post-Invoice: Cash Flow and Financial Reporting
6. Delivering the work is only half the battle. The finance manager ensures that project success translates into cash in the bank. They oversee timely and accurate invoicing, manage accounts receivable, and track key cash flow metrics like Days Sales Outstanding (DSO). They also provide crucial management reports on project profitability, client-level performance, and overall firm financial health. Furthermore, they ensure proper tracking of R&D expenses to leverage tax incentives, whether under Section 174 for US R&D tax regulation or the UK's HMRC R&D scheme.

Building Your Job Description: A Template to Attract Specialists

To attract the right candidate, your job description must speak their language. It should focus on commercial partnership and forward-looking analysis, not just accounting tasks. Avoid generic descriptions and instead highlight the unique challenges and opportunities of a professional services environment.

Role Summary: Frame the position as a strategic partner to the founding team, responsible for building the financial infrastructure that drives profitable growth. Emphasize their ownership of the financial model connecting sales, resourcing, and project delivery.

Key Responsibilities: Use action-oriented language tied to the project lifecycle:

• Develop and own the company's financial model for forecasting revenue, profitability, and cash flow.
• Partner with the sales team to conduct margin analysis on new business proposals and pricing strategies.
• Manage and report on key services metrics, including team utilization, project margin, and billable vs. non-billable hours.
• Oversee project accounting, including revenue recognition in accordance with US GAAP (ASC 606) or UK standards (FRS 102).
• Manage core accounting functions using QuickBooks or Xero, including invoicing, A/R, A/P, and month-end close.

Qualifications: Be specific about the experience you need:

• Proven experience in a finance role at a professional services firm (e.g., agency, consultancy, IT services).
• Hands-on experience with project-based revenue recognition and utilization tracking.
• Advanced spreadsheet skills and experience building financial models from scratch.
• Familiarity with professional services automation (PSA) tools and integrations between systems like Harvest, Forecast, HubSpot, Salesforce, QuickBooks, and Xero.

This targeted approach signals that you understand what makes the role unique, attracting specialists who can make an immediate impact.

Setting Your Finance Manager Up for Success: The First 90 Days

For your first strategic finance hire, the initial three months are critical for establishing a foundation for long-term success. Your goal should be to move them from understanding the past to shaping the future. A structured 90-day plan is essential for finance leaders.

First 30 Days: Audit and Understand

The primary goal is discovery. Your new finance manager should immerse themselves in your current processes, however manual they may be. This means reviewing all active projects, understanding your sales pipeline, and mapping the flow of data between your systems, from a CRM like HubSpot, to time tracking in Harvest, to accounting in QuickBooks or Xero. Their objective is to identify the gaps, risks, and inconsistencies that need to be addressed first.

First 60 Days: Build the Financial Model

With a clear understanding of the business, they will begin to build the core financial infrastructure. This typically involves creating the first version of an integrated financial model that connects the sales pipeline to resource capacity and project financials. They will establish the key dashboards and KPIs for the business, such as utilization rate, project margin, and DSO, providing a single source of truth for performance.

First 90 Days: Drive Strategic Insights

By the end of the first quarter, the finance manager should transition from building to advising. They will start to provide forward-looking insights based on the data and models they have developed. This includes flagging potentially unprofitable deals in the pipeline, identifying team members who are over or under-utilized, and providing the leadership team with a reliable cash flow forecast to inform strategic decisions about hiring and investment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the main difference between a Finance Manager and a Controller for a startup?

A: A Controller is typically backward-looking, focused on historical accuracy, compliance, and closing the books. A strategic Finance Manager in a services startup is forward-looking, acting as a commercial partner who analyzes data to forecast profitability, manage resources, and guide pricing decisions to drive growth.

Q: Should our first finance hire be full-time or fractional?

A: For firms crossing the operational triggers (15+ people, $2M+ revenue), a full-time hire is often necessary to own the complex interplay of sales, resourcing, and finance. Smaller firms might start with a fractional expert to build the initial systems, but a dedicated owner becomes essential as complexity grows.

Q: What tools are most important for this role?

A: This role requires proficiency with accounting software like QuickBooks or Xero, advanced spreadsheet skills for financial modeling, and experience with tools that manage the project lifecycle. This includes CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce), time tracking software (Harvest), and resource management platforms (Forecast, Kantata).

Practical Takeaways for Hiring Your First Finance Leader

When hiring your first finance manager in a professional services startup, you are not just filling an accounting role; you are hiring a commercial co-pilot. The right person will transform your financial operations from a reactive, historical function into a proactive, forward-looking engine for profitable growth. Focus your search on candidates with direct experience in project-based businesses who can speak fluently about utilization, margin analysis, and resource planning. Remember that the triggers for hiring are operational, not just financial, based on the growing complexity of your team and projects. By defining the role around owning the entire project financial lifecycle, you attract a specialist who can provide the clarity and control needed to scale your firm sustainably. Explore sequencing and trade-offs at our Building Your Finance Team hub.