Part time is a schedule, and a schedule can be written down. Ask for it in writing before you commit to anything, from us or from anybody.
Tipalti's own worked example, forty hours a month, is the most useful engagement fact published anywhere in this category, and it is roughly right for a full seat. A close and read engagement runs well under it. A month with a lender file or a decision that needs three versions runs over it, and that is the month the cadence matters.
Source. Tipalti, What Is a Fractional CFO, tipalti.com, read 27 September 2026.
Hours are the wrong thing to buy, though, because the good months are the cheap ones. What you are actually buying is that four things happen on their dates whether the month was busy or not.
A part time seat has a single point of failure by design, so the answer has to exist before it is needed. In practice that means a second person who already has access, a written handover of the open list, and a close calendar that does not depend on one inbox. If a firm cannot answer this question in one sentence, that is the answer.
A part time seat does not carry daily approvals, does not sit in your accounting software all day, and does not replace whoever is entering the transactions. It reads, decides and files. Most engagements that go wrong went wrong because the day to day work was assumed into a part time seat and nobody said so out loud.
Owners come to this page wanting to know how many hours they are buying and leave asking a better question, which is what happens on the tenth of every month no matter what else is going on.
What gets handed over is the closed month and the October number, and the return is prepared at the same desk. The whole cadence runs on a screen you already open.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.