For fractional CFOs
You're running the numbers for three, four, five companies at once — and it's easy to lose the thread between them. Retainer keeps every client's context, stakeholders, and retainer status in one place, so nothing falls through the cracks between engagements.
No credit card required · Free during beta
Why fractional CFOs outgrow generic CRMs
Financial calendars, board dates, and reporting deadlines rarely line up across three, four, five clients. Keeping them straight is a full-time job on top of the actual work.
The CEO at one client, the controller at another, board members at a third — knowing who cares about what, at which company, gets harder every time you add a client.
What did you promise in last month's financial review? What did the board flag last quarter? Without a system, you're re-deriving it from memory or old email threads every time.
Most fractional CFOs cap out around 6–8 clients before quality slips — not from lack of demand, but because the hours stop fitting the month. Without something tracking commitments across your whole book, you find that line by blowing past it.
Built for your workflow
A single, live view of every client's retainer status — active, renewal due, or at risk. Most tools built for fractional CFOs stop at reporting on one client at a time; Retainer shows your whole book at once.
Map the CEO, controller, board members, and investors at every client — what each one cares about, who signs off on what. The org chart for every engagement, without the guesswork.
Retainer joins your monthly financial reviews and board prep calls, transcribes them, and carries context forward automatically — what you promised, what's outstanding, what the board flagged last time.
Log hours against each retainer and see instantly whether you're over- or under-delivering relative to what's billed. Renewal dates surface automatically, so nothing catches you off guard.
Early feedback
"I'm running six client books at once. Losing track of who asked for what, and when the next board update is due, was becoming a real risk — not just an inconvenience."
James Torres
Fractional CFO, 6 active clients
"Every retainer runs on a different clock — monthly close for one client, quarterly board prep for another. This is the first tool that's kept all of that straight without me building my own tracker."
Amara Kessler
Fractional CFO & Advisor
"Stakeholder mapping alone would have saved me from re-asking a controller something the CEO had already told me the quarter before. That mix-up has actually happened to me."
Ravi Patel
Fractional CFO, Boutique Advisory
Common questions
A fractional CFO provides part-time, senior finance leadership — typically one or two days a week — to multiple client companies at once, rather than working full-time in-house at a single company. It's a common model for experienced finance leaders who want to serve several growing businesses in parallel instead of one employer.
Generic CRMs are built around leads and deals moving through a sales funnel. Retainer is built around a small number of ongoing client engagements — the vocabulary (engagements, retainers, stakeholders) and workflow match how a fractional CFO actually manages a book of clients, not a sales pipeline.
Yes — that's the core of the product. The engagement pipeline is built to hold every active retainer at once, so you always know each client's status without switching between spreadsheets or tools.
No — and that's by design. QuickBooks, Fathom, and tools like them already do the numbers well; Retainer's job is different. It's the layer that holds the relationship context around those numbers — the engagements, stakeholders, and meeting history a ledger or reporting tool was never built to track. Run it alongside whatever you already use for the numbers, not instead of it.
Retainer connects to your calendar (Google or Outlook) to detect client and board meetings automatically. It deliberately doesn't connect to your accounting stack — that's not the layer Retainer is built to own. Your books stay in QuickBooks, Xero, or Fathom; Retainer holds the relationship and engagement context around them.
Retainer is currently in a free, pre-launch beta — no credit card required to join the waitlist. Paid plans (Solo, Practice, and Firm tiers) will be announced closer to launch.
Both. It works for a solo fractional CFO managing their own book of clients, and for boutique advisory firms where a small team needs shared visibility across client relationships.
Join the waitlist. Free during beta. No credit card required.