How Will We Communicate With Our Fractional FD?

Communication is the connective tissue of any fractional FD engagement. Unlike a full-time Finance Director who sits in your building and can be stopped in the corridor, a fractional Finance Director divides their time across several client businesses. The way you communicate — and how clearly you establish a working rhythm at the outset — directly determines how effective the relationship will be. The good news is that modern communication tools have made fractional working highly effective even without daily physical presence.

The Communication Mix in a Typical Fractional FD Engagement

Effective fractional Finance Director relationships generally use a combination of three communication modes, each serving a different purpose:

• Video calls for regular check-ins, management accounts reviews, and strategic discussions
• Email and messaging tools for sharing documents, asking and answering questions, and maintaining a written record of decisions
• In-person attendance for board meetings, senior leadership sessions, and specific events where physical presence adds material value

The weighting between these modes depends on your business's culture, your FD's geographic proximity to your offices, and the nature of the work. Some businesses run almost entirely via video and async communication; others place a high value on in-person presence and build that into the day allocation accordingly.

Video Calls: The Backbone of Remote FD Engagement

Weekly or Fortnightly Check-Ins

Most fractional FD engagements include a regular video call — typically weekly or fortnightly — between the FD and the CEO, MD, or founder. These calls serve as the primary touchpoint for discussing the financial position, raising emerging issues, and keeping the FD aligned with what is happening commercially in the business. A well-run check-in should take no more than 30 to 45 minutes and should follow a consistent agenda so that both parties come prepared.

Management Accounts Reviews

Each month, your fractional FD will typically hold a structured video session to walk through the management accounts with the relevant stakeholders. This session is where variances are explained, forecasts are updated, and financial trends are interpreted in the context of business performance. These sessions often run 60 to 90 minutes and may include the finance team as well as senior management.

Project Calls

When the FD is working on a specific project — building a financial model, supporting a fundraise, reviewing a supplier contract — shorter, more focused calls are used to maintain momentum and gather the business context the FD needs to work effectively between sessions.

In-Person Attendance

The question of in-person versus remote working is one that many businesses wrestle with when they first engage a fractional FD. The honest answer is that the majority of high-value FD work — financial analysis, modelling, reporting, planning — does not require physical presence and is done just as effectively remotely. However, there are specific occasions where in-person attendance genuinely matters:

• Board meetings: Physical presence at the board table carries authority and allows the FD to read the room in ways that a video call cannot replicate. Where geography allows, in-person board attendance is strongly recommended.
• Onboarding sessions: The first one or two working sessions of a new engagement benefit from face-to-face time, as it builds trust, enables more natural conversation, and allows the FD to observe the team dynamics directly.
• Senior leadership offsites or planning days: Strategic planning sessions where the FD is expected to contribute to business direction, not just financial reporting, benefit from in-person presence.
• Investor or lender meetings: When external parties are meeting the financial leadership of the business, having the FD present in the room — rather than joining a video call — carries weight.

In-person time is a finite resource within a fractional engagement. Use it where it genuinely changes the outcome rather than for routine work that can be done just as well remotely.

Asynchronous Communication: Email, Messaging, and Shared Workspaces

Between scheduled calls and in-person sessions, most day-to-day communication happens asynchronously. Email remains the primary channel for document exchange, formal correspondence, and anything that needs a clear written record. Many businesses also invite their fractional FD into Slack or Microsoft Teams, which allows for quicker, less formal exchanges and easy file sharing within the team's existing workflow.

Shared document workspaces — typically Google Drive, SharePoint, or a dedicated financial folder in your accounting software — allow the FD to access and update financial documents without the friction of emailing attachments back and forth. Establishing clean, accessible document structures early in the engagement pays significant dividends over time.

Setting Clear Response Time Expectations

One of the most important conversations to have at the outset of a fractional engagement is around response time expectations. Your FD is not exclusively available to your business at all times — they have other client commitments. Most fractional FDs commit to responding to non-urgent communications within one business day and to urgent matters within four hours during working hours. If a genuine emergency arises outside of those parameters, the escalation process should be agreed in advance as part of the engagement terms. Read more about how this is managed in our article on what happens if your FD is unavailable.

Building a Communication Rhythm That Works

The most successful fractional FD engagements are those where a clear, repeatable communication rhythm has been established from the start. This typically means:

• A fixed weekly or fortnightly video call for progress and issues
• A monthly management accounts review session
• Quarterly in-person board attendance (where applicable)
• A shared document workspace for ongoing financial work
• Agreed response time expectations for email and messaging

Your FractionalFD account manager will help you and your FD agree this communication framework during the onboarding process, so that the structure is in place before the first working session begins.