Virtual CFO Martin Place | Sydney Virtual CFO
A virtual CFO for Martin Place legal and consulting principals: lockup, utilisation, and revenue per fee earner for partner-model firms in the CBD core.
Martin Place and the surrounding CBD core is dense with law firms and consulting practices, and the principals running them face a finance problem that has nothing to do with startups. Their cash is tied up in lockup, their margin turns on utilisation, and the partnership P&L hides as much as it shows. A virtual CFO engagement here is built for the managing partner, not the founder with a pitch deck.
Published: July 2026
The businesses clustered around Martin Place are professional partnerships and boutique firms: legal practices, consultancies, advisory boutiques. They are profitable, established, and run by principals who bill their own time as well as manage the firm. The economics are utilisation-driven and cash is shaped by the long gap between doing the work and being paid for it.
This page speaks to that reader in their own register. There is no startup vocabulary here, and no talk of runway or burn. The questions are lockup, realised rates, and what each fee earner actually contributes, the numbers that decide whether a busy firm is also a profitable one.
Lockup is the first and largest. The combination of work in progress (done but unbilled) and debtor days (billed but unpaid) measures how many days of fees sit outside the firm’s bank account, and in a growing firm it quietly consumes cash. Reducing lockup is usually a bigger and faster cash lever than winning new work.
The second is utilisation and realised rate: how much of each fee earner’s available time is billed, and at what proportion of standard rate it actually collects after write-downs. The third is revenue per fee earner, the honest per-head productivity number that tells a principal whether the firm’s economics are strengthening or quietly eroding as it grows.
For a Martin Place principal the natural deliverable is a partnership reporting pack that puts lockup, utilisation, realised rate, and revenue per fee earner in front of the partners each period, or a 13-week cashflow forecast built around the billing and collection cycle. Take a firm at $9M in fees carrying, say, 100 days of lockup: the analysis shows that trimming lockup by ten days releases roughly $250,000 of cash without a single new matter, and that one practice group’s realised rate is dragging the blended margin. Both are decisions the partners can act on. This is a fixed 90-Day Number engagement at $17,850 plus GST, yours to run. The economics are covered in depth for law firms and consulting firms, and the capacity side connects to capacity modelling for services firms.
Scoped, fixed, finite: one deliverable across ninety days, handed over with a working session, no retainer or auto-renewal. The same approach serves principals nearby in the Sydney CBD and Barangaroo.
A useful virtual CFO engagement in this postcode does not end with a thicker reporting pack. It ends with one artefact the founder can run without us: usually a 13-week cashflow tied to real pipeline and payroll, a unit economics or margin view that changes pricing or hiring, a fundraise-ready model if a raise is inside a year, or a board pack that replaces slide theatre with two or three decisions. The commercial wrapper is fixed: the 90-Day Number is $17,850 plus GST, paid in three instalments, one named deliverable by day 90. No open-ended retainer required to get a finished tool.
If you already have a bookkeeper, keep them. This work sits on top of clean actuals; it does not replace bank reconciliation. If your actuals are not trustworthy, fix the ledger first, then build the decision layer. Nearby founders in linked suburbs face the same shape of problem with different industry textures, use the internal links in this article to compare, then choose the deliverable that answers the question that is actually expensive right now.
Sydney Virtual CFO’s front-door product is the 90-Day Number: one named deliverable in ninety days for $17,850 plus GST, typically paid as three instalments of $5,950. That is deliberately different from the common Australian virtual CFO retainer band often quoted around $3,000-$8,000+ per month open-ended. Project pricing fits founders who need a finished cashflow, model, unit-economics build or board pack they can run, not an indefinite meeting cadence. If you need ongoing fractional CFO after day 90, that is a separate, scoped decision, not an automatic rollover. If you only need bookkeeping, this is the wrong product; keep a bookkeeper and use virtual CFO work for decisions on top of clean actuals.
“We will fix the books after the busy season.” Busy seasons are when bad books cost the most: wrong roster cost, wrong stock margin, wrong tax cash. Fix the system during the busy period in a light-touch way (weekly recs, payroll checks), or the backlog becomes the next crisis.
“Our accountant already does this.” Accountants and bookkeepers do different jobs. Year-end accounts and tax advice are not the same as weekly operational bookkeeping, payroll, and decision-ready monthly packs. Many businesses need both, coordinated.
“We are not big enough.” Payday Super, BAS, GST and employee entitlements do not wait for a headcount milestone. Complexity arrives with staff, inventory, contractors or multiple channels, not with a round number of revenue.
“We tried outsourcing and it was slow.” That is a provider design problem, not a category law. Fixed-scope work, named response standards, and a single owner for your file are the antidote to outsourced silence.
What is lockup and why does it dominate a professional firm’s cash?
Lockup is work in progress days plus debtor days: the fees earned but not yet banked because the work is unbilled or the invoice is unpaid. It scales with growth, so a firm can win more work and feel tighter on cash. Reducing lockup by even a few days releases significant cash, usually faster than winning new matters.
How much cash can reducing lockup release?
On $9M of fees, trimming ten days of lockup releases roughly $250,000, with no new work required. The cash comes from faster billing and tighter collection. For most firms carrying 100-plus days of lockup, this is the single largest and quickest cash lever available.
What is realised rate?
The proportion of your standard rate you actually collect after write-downs and discounts. A firm can have high standard rates and thin margins if realised rates are low. Measuring it by practice group or fee earner shows where value is leaking between the time recorded and the fee banked.
Is this different from startup CFO work?
Entirely. There is no runway or burn here. The work is lockup, utilisation, realised rate, and revenue per fee earner, the partnership economics of an established firm. The register and the deliverables are built for a managing partner, not a scaling founder.
Do you handle our trust accounting?
No. Trust accounting is a regulated compliance function handled by your bookkeeper, practice manager, and auditor. A virtual CFO works on the decision economics: lockup, utilisation, and the partnership P&L. The two are separate and complementary.
What does it cost?
A fixed $17,850 plus GST for one named deliverable by day 90, no retainer. The common Australian alternative is an open-ended monthly retainer at $3,000 to $8,000; the project-based model is deliberately different and rare in this market.
What happens after ninety days?
You keep the reporting pack or forecast and run it each period yourself. There is no default roll-on; a further deliverable, if needed, is scoped separately.
Sydney Virtual CFO is a Sydney-based virtual CFO service for founders running $2M to $15M businesses across SaaS, ecommerce, professional services, construction, and other low-volume, high-value industries. We deliver fixed-scope CFO engagements with a named deliverable on day 90: a 13-week cashflow forecast, a fundraise-ready financial model, a unit economics build, or a board reporting pack you can run on your own.
Our front-door product, the 90-Day Number, is fixed scope at $17,850 plus GST. We are one of the few project-based virtual CFOs in Australia, in a market built almost entirely on monthly retainers. No retainers without a deliverable. No 80-page reports. No theatre.
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This content is general information only, written for Australian founders running businesses in the $2M to $15M revenue range. It does not constitute tax, financial product, investment, or legal advice and should not be relied on as such. The work referenced is led by a Chartered Accountant (CA ANZ), but Sydney Virtual CFO is not a licensed tax agent, not a licensed financial adviser, and not authorised to provide personal financial advice. Tax obligations, accounting treatments, fundraise terms, and statutory requirements depend on your individual circumstances. For advice specific to your business, contact the team directly or consult a registered tax agent, licensed financial adviser, or qualified lawyer. Information was current at the time of publication and may change without notice. We review and update guides periodically.
