A chief financial officer owns the money side of a home service business: cash, budgets, monthly financial statements, banking, taxes and financial risk. The CFO tells the CEO what the company can afford, keeps lenders informed, and builds the controls that stop cash, payroll and job costs from slipping.
Chief Financial Officer · Any home service business · Word (.docx) · No email needed.
Chief Financial Officer job description template
Free to copy. Replace the highlighted fields, delete anything you don’t offer, and set your pay range before you post.
[Company name] · [City, State]
Chief Financial Officer
[Full-time / part-time] · [Base pay range and pay period] · Reports to [chief executive officer or owner]
Position summary
As chief financial officer of [Company name], you'll own our cash, budgets, financial reporting, banking, taxes and financial risk. You close the books each month, tell leadership what the numbers mean and what we can afford, manage our lenders, and lead the [controller, bookkeeper and billing] team.
What you’ll do
Close the books each month and deliver a profit and loss statement by [branch, department or service line] within [number] days.
Build the yearly budget and a rolling cash forecast, and update both with the CEO and COO as results come in.
Manage banking: the line of credit, equipment and vehicle loans, loan covenants and reports to lenders.
Oversee payroll, payroll tax deposits, sales and use tax, and income tax filings with [your outside CPA firm].
Set financial controls for billing, collections, purchasing, job costing and who can approve and send payments.
Manage financial risk, including insurance renewals, customer credit and contracts with long payment terms.
Build the financial case for big decisions, such as a new location, a fleet purchase or buying another company.
A typical day
Check cash, deposits and what's due to vendors and payroll this week.
Review receivables and follow up on large unpaid invoices with the billing team.
Approve payments and purchases above [your approval limit].
Answer cost, pricing and margin questions from the CEO, COO and department managers.
Work on the close, the budget or a lender report with the [controller or bookkeeper].
What you need
[8+] years in finance or accounting, including [3+] years leading finance for a company with more than one location or service line.
Has built budgets, cash forecasts and monthly financial statements that owners used to make decisions.
Experience with bank lending, loan covenants and lender reporting.
Strong with [your accounting software] and spreadsheet models.
Bachelor's degree in accounting, finance or a related field.
Nice to have
CPA license.
Finance experience in a home service or construction company, including job costing.
Has led the financial review of a company before the business bought it.
Has set up financial reporting from [your field service software] or switched accounting systems.
Physical requirements
Desk and computer work for most of the day.
Occasional visits to branches, the shop and lender meetings.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
Schedule and work environment
Works from the main office in [city][, with hybrid days if your policy allows].
Longer hours at month-end, year-end, audits and budget season.
Occasional travel to branches, lenders and [investor or board meetings].
Pay and benefits
Base pay: [range and hourly or salary basis]. Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when eligibility starts].
How to apply
Apply at [application link]. Our process is [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
How the chief financial officer role changes by industry
Every CFO closes the books, plans cash and manages lenders. What changes by industry is how the money comes in: insurance claims in restoration, inventory on the shelves in retail, Medicare and Medicaid in home health and hospitals. Each industry's Role Blueprint stresses the payment rules and reports that CFO has to know cold.
Tracks job costs on every restoration project, keeps cash steady through post-disaster recovery, and watches the risks tied to contracts and insurance claims.
Turns POS, payroll and invoice data into a profit and loss statement for each restaurant, and sets controls on cash, comps, voids and inventory counts.
Agree on these with the CEO before the first close, and tie each target to your history and lender terms.
Monthly close finished on time: [your target].
Cash forecast accuracy over [time frame]: [your target].
Days sales outstanding: [your target].
Days cash on hand: [your target].
Budget variance by department: [your target].
Gross margin by service line: [your target].
Before you hire a chief financial officer
Decide if you need a CFO or a controller. If your monthly close is late or wrong, fix that first with a controller. A CFO can't plan cash or borrowing from numbers nobody trusts.
Ask for a cash forecast. Give finalists a simple set of sample numbers and ask for a short-term cash forecast. Listen for the questions they ask about slow seasons, payroll weeks and large jobs that pay late.
Check how they explain numbers. Ask them to walk a manager with no finance training through a profit and loss line that went wrong. If your COO and managers can't follow the CFO, the numbers won't change how they spend.
Probe for controls. Ask who could approve and send a vendor payment at their last company, and what they changed. Splitting those jobs between people is basic fraud protection, and a strong candidate brings it up without prompting.
Say what's coming. Put planned events in the ad: a new credit line, a first audit, an acquisition or a sale. They decide which kind of CFO you need.
When applications come in, Iris interviews applicants by phone using your requirements. Your team reviews the answers and decides who to meet.
Chief Financial Officer interview questions
Two of the 10 questions in our chief financial officer interview guide, and what a strong answer sounds like.
Situational · Cash and banking
At quarter-end you see the company will miss its fixed charge coverage covenant by a small margin. The CEO wants to wait until the compliance certificate is due before telling the bank. What do you do?
A strong answer: Works out the exact shortfall under the loan agreement's own definitions and notice rules, shows the CEO why the bank should hear early, and calls the banker before the certificate is due with the cause, a fix and a waiver request. Adds a covenant forecast to the monthly package.
Behavioral · Close and reporting
Walk me through each finance job you've held, starting with the earliest. For each one, what shape were the books in when you arrived, and when you left?
A strong answer: Each job has a clear starting point and a measured result: close cut from [weeks] to [days], audit findings cleared, a forecast the owner used weekly. Owns a mistake. Exits make sense and match what bosses will say.
A CFO manages the company's money and the reports about it. For a home service company, the job covers closing the books each month, forecasting cash through busy and slow seasons, managing the bank and credit line, overseeing payroll and tax filings, and showing the CEO what each big decision will cost.
What is the difference between a CFO, a controller and a bookkeeper?
A bookkeeper records transactions: bills, deposits, invoices and payroll entries. A controller checks that the records are right and closes each month on time. A CFO uses those numbers to plan ahead, with cash forecasts, budgets, borrowing and the financial case for big decisions.
Does a home service business need a full-time CFO?
Not always. A part-time or fractional CFO can build the forecast, handle lender talks and set up reporting while working for you only part of each month. A full-time CFO is worth the cost when you're borrowing to grow, buying companies, facing an audit or getting ready to sell.
How much does a chief financial officer make?
There is no separate BLS pay figure for CFOs. The BLS guide to top executives names CFOs as one kind of chief executive, and O*NET lists the title in that group. The May 2025 BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey put U.S. median pay for chief executives at $213,990 a year, or $102.88 an hour. That number spans every industry, not only home service businesses, so compare it with what companies your size offer.
Who is responsible if payroll taxes go unpaid?
The IRS can charge a trust fund recovery penalty to a responsible person who willfully fails to collect or pay over the income tax and the employee's share of Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from paychecks. The penalty equals the unpaid balance of that tax. A responsible person is anyone with the duty and power to direct those payments, which can include a company's officers and employees, and the IRS can collect from their personal assets. A CFO should confirm every payroll tax deposit is made on time.
What should a chief financial officer job description include?
Your revenue range, number of locations and legal entities, who is on the finance team today, and which accounting and field service software you use. Say who prepares your taxes now, whether an outside CPA reviews or audits the books, and how the CFO's bonus is set.
Is the HireBus Role Blueprint free?
Yes, all of it. The template here costs nothing to copy, and the Word file downloads without an email address. The industry versions listed on this page follow the same format.
HireBus Role Blueprints: 76 industry versions of the chief financial officer job description, reviewed for publication on October 20, 2026.
Pay and outlook figures cover all chief executives, CFOs among them, in every industry rather than home service businesses alone. O*NET groups CFOs with chief executives: 291,600 employed in 2025, average projected growth (3% to 4%), and about 19,100 openings a year, on average, from 2025 to 2035.
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