A virtual assistant for a CFO takes on the administrative work that fills a finance leader's week: scheduling, inbox management, board and audit preparation, building presentations, expense and invoice follow-up, travel, and the chasing that keeps each of those moving. The exact list is different for every CFO, and it grows as the assistant learns how you work. This page covers what to hand off, what to keep, how AI fits into the work, and what to check before you choose a provider.
TL;DR
- The highest-value handoffs for a CFO are the close calendar, board and audit logistics, and the approval chasing that stalls the month.
- Judgment stays with you: what the numbers mean, what gets approved, and every conversation with the board, the auditors, and the bank.
- AI tools do the first pass on notes, drafts, and routine replies, and the assistant checks and corrects the output.
- Before you share access to the books, ask who can see your credentials, how access ends when a person leaves, and whether the provider's SOC 2 report is Type 2.
What Can a Virtual Assistant Do for a CFO?
Executives spend 8 to 12 hours a week on non-specialized work. For a CFO, the month-end close is a good place to look for those hours. In one benchmark, half of finance teams take six or more business days to close. In another report, 92 percent still carry significant manual effort in the close.
Not all of that effort is accounting. Some of it is chasing a missing accrual, re-sending a request for receipts, or finding a slot the controller, the auditor, and you can all make.
That chasing is the work an assistant takes over. Start by listing the tasks that interrupt you most in a close week, using the 26 core virtual assistant tasks as a checklist. The CFO tasks below are sorted into three groups.
The Close Calendar and Approval Chasing
A close stalls on follow-up: the reminder nobody sent, the submission that's late, the approval sitting in someone's queue. An assistant who owns the close calendar takes that follow-up on, and your team stops losing the first week of the month to it.
- Maintaining the close checklist in your task tool and sending each owner their reminders
- Chasing late submissions and escalating to you only when a deadline is at risk
- Collecting invoice and purchase approvals in Bill.com or your AP system through to sign-off
- Sending expense reports with missing receipts back to the submitter and tracking them to completion
- Keeping a running list of what the close is waiting on, by owner
Board, Audit, and Lender Logistics
A two-hour board meeting takes far more than two hours to prepare. There's the material to gather, the deck to format, the pre-read to send, and each function's contributions to collect. All of that is coordination, and an assistant can own it.
- Building the board deck from your templates and circulating the pre-read on schedule
- Maintaining the audit request list and uploading documents to the auditor's portal
- Scheduling audit, board, and bank meetings and keeping the dates from moving
- Tracking covenant reporting to its due dates and assembling the packages for your review
- Recording action items after each meeting and following up with each owner
Inbox, Calendar, and Travel
A CFO's inbox fills with questions about money: can we pay this, when does this renew, who approved that. When the answer is a fact on file, or the question belongs to someone else, it doesn't need you. An assistant with your escalation rules answers or routes those, and the people asking get an answer the same day instead of when you surface from the close.
- Sorting email by urgency, answering routine requests from your templates, and routing the rest
- Protecting close week and blocking prep time before board and audit meetings
- Tracking contract renewals and flagging each one before the auto-renew
- Booking travel for investor and board meetings and handling the changes when a flight moves
- Preparing your own expense reports and reconciling receipts each month
What a CFO Should Keep
In finance, the line between preparing and deciding needs care, because some paperwork is the decision itself. A click on approve in the AP system is the approval, and a signed contract is the commitment.
What stays with you is the relationships with the board, the auditors, and the bank, and the strategic calls those relationships rest on. The assistant assembles the board package, but you decide what it says, and you present it. That line protects the work only a CFO can do: reading the numbers, setting the forecast, and deciding where the money goes.
Five kinds of work stay with you, including some that look delegable:
- Approving spend, signing contracts, and releasing payments. The assistant collects approvals but never gives them.
- Reviewing the numbers before they go to the board, the auditors, or the bank.
- Every direct conversation with the board, the audit partner, the lender, and investors.
- Posting entries, reconciling accounts, and anything else that is accounting rather than administration.
- Decisions about people: hiring, performance, and compensation in your own team.
How AI Fits Into the Work
Assistants use AI tools every day, and the tools do the repetitive first pass.
What AI Handles Well for CFOs
Four places the tools already earn their keep for a CFO, and what the assistant adds to each:
- Meeting notes: a transcription tool drafts them. The assistant checks them against what was agreed and sends each owner their action items.
- Routine replies: an LLM drafts the answer to a vendor's payment question; the assistant confirms the status in the AP system and sends it in your voice.
- Workflow tracking: an automation moves an invoice through approval; the assistant steps in when an approver goes quiet.
- First drafts: the board memo starts as an LLM draft of your bullet points; the assistant shapes it into something you would sign.
In each case the assistant is the human touch on the output, the safety net under it, and the manager of the tool that produced it.
Where AI Still Needs a Person
A scheduling tool will book a vendor check-in over the hour you held for the audit committee, because to the tool both are meetings. An LLM drafting a vendor reply can get the payment date wrong. The assistant knows which meeting can't move, and checks the date against the AP system before the reply goes out.
Work that involves other people needs a person too. An assistant can call the department head who has missed the accrual deadline twice, read the tone of an auditor's email, and work out why the covenant package is late and fix it.
How a CFO Should Evaluate a Provider
The provider's structure matters more than the assistant's résumé, and two parts of it carry the most weight for a CFO. The close runs on a fixed calendar, so what happens when the assistant is out comes first. Who manages the assistant comes next, because that person documents the processes a backup works from.
Read how support is structured, then ask each provider these questions.
- Who employs the assistant? A good answer: a full-time employee of the provider, covered by its security policies and training.
- Who manages the assistant? A good answer: names a person on the provider's side who reviews the work and documents your processes.
- What happens during vacation or turnover? A good answer: a backup with foundational training and access to your account's documentation, so they aren't starting from zero.
- How is scope defined? A good answer: administrative by design, with a clear line at accounting, approval, or advice.
- How are credentials handled? A good answer: names the password manager, says the assistant never sees a password, and names who on the provider's side holds the credential details.
- Is pricing published? A good answer: yes, with a breakdown you can read before you speak to anyone.
Security and Data Access
Once the provider's structure is right, the next question is access. A CFO's assistant will see the general ledger, the bank portal, payroll data, and board materials under embargo. That needs controls you can verify.
A provider should be able to describe three controls in plain terms. The first is a password manager behind two-factor authentication, so the assistant works inside your systems without ever seeing the password. The second is a device the provider or your company owns, never a personal one. The third is access the provider revokes the day a person leaves.
What SOC 2 Type 2 Means
SOC 2 is an independent audit of a company's security controls. A Type 1 report confirms the controls were designed properly on a given day. A Type 2 report confirms they operated correctly over a period of months: evidence that the policy was followed, not just that it exists. Ask for the Type 2 report, and ask how recent it is.
Questions to Ask Before You Share Access
A good provider can answer each of these in a sentence:
- Who can see my passwords, and where are they stored?
- Does the assistant work on a device you manage, and can files leave it?
- When an assistant leaves, how quickly is their access removed, and who does it?
- Can I see your most recent SOC 2 report, and is it Type 2?
- Will the assistant sign my confidentiality agreement and complete my security training?
What a Virtual Assistant Costs a CFO
A financial manager's median pay is $166,570 a year. Over a standard full-time year, that's about $80 an hour, and a CFO's hour is worth more. Take ten hours a week, the middle of the 8-to-12 range above. At $80 an hour, those hours cost about $3,500 a month, before you count what else they could have gone to.
There are three ways to buy those hours back. A freelancer hired directly has the lowest hourly rate, which depends on location and experience. The freelancer also leaves recruiting, training, security, and replacement to you. An agency places a person, charges a margin, and may leave the day-to-day management with you. A managed service is priced as a subscription. Look for one with fractional or full-time coverage, so the plan matches the workload. At Prialto we price that way, and the pricing page sets out the options.
Measure the return as you would any hire. Multiply the hours you get back by the value of your own hour. Set that against the monthly cost, then add the continuity and security you'd otherwise provide yourself.
Your First 30 Days
Plan the first month around your next close. Treat it as a strategic handoff: the time you spend documenting how you work is what lets the assistant take the work over and, in time, improve the process.
Week one is tool access: the calendar, the inbox, the AP and expense systems, the task tool, and the password manager, with your preferences documented as you go. Hand off three processes first, in this order:
- The close checklist and its reminders. It is already documented, repeats every month, and returns hours fastest.
- Expense and invoice follow-up. Simple rules, high volume, and the assistant learns your approvers and vendors on the way through.
- Calendar and inbox triage. This one needs your preferences, so it goes last, once the assistant has seen a close week.
Expect the first close to need your time. By the second, the reminders can go out without you. Over the closes after that, an assistant who has seen what stalls can start proposing which items should move earlier in the calendar.
Support That Grows After the First Few Closes
Over the months that follow, the assistant learns which approvals you want to see, who needs a call, and what a normal close looks like, so they need less direction and take on more. At Prialto, assistants are full-time employees, and the scope stays administrative by design. Every engagement includes a trained backup and an Engagement Manager, whose job includes finding work you had not thought to hand off. Prialto holds a SOC 2 Type 2 report.
Talk to us about what your close could look like.
FAQs About Virtual Assistants for CFOs
What Can a Virtual Assistant Take Off My Plate?
The administrative side of finance, not the accounting: the close calendar and its reminders, board and audit logistics, approval and receipt chasing, renewal tracking, and your own inbox, calendar, and travel. The assistant collects approvals and assembles the board and audit packages for your review. Posting entries stays with your team, and every approval and decision stays with you.
How Much Does a Virtual Assistant for a CFO Cost?
The price depends on which of three models you choose. A freelancer hired directly has the lowest hourly rate but leaves recruiting, security, and replacement to you. An agency adds a margin for placement. A managed service is a monthly subscription with fractional or full-time coverage that includes management, backup, and security. At Prialto we offer both kinds of coverage, and the pricing page sets them out.
Who Can See My Bank and Accounting Logins?
At Prialto, your assistant never sees a password directly. Credentials sit in a password manager behind two-factor authentication, under SOC 2 compliant practices. Your Engagement Manager, the person at Prialto who reviews your assistant's work, holds the credential details. The assistant works on a device Prialto or your company owns, never a personal one. Whichever provider you choose, ask for its SOC 2 Type 2 report, which shows controls like these operated over a period of months.