Fractional Chief Financial Officer (Remote, US)

Are you tired of crunching the numbers for a dull industry? Are you a data-driven financial leader with a passion for motorsports? Do you want to make your own mark on a business that’s hungry to grow and evolve? If this sounds like you, then keep reading. We’re in search of our first Chief Financial Officer to take us to the next level.

Who are we?

Apex is a leading provider of high-performance automotive wheels and accessories, catering to the motorsport and performance car enthusiast community. We have a strong vision for the future, a powerful narrative about our products, and an enthusiastic team to execute our plans. We’ve been in business for over 17 years and our team of 40+ staff are spread out remotely across the USA.

Objective

Take over the financial reins from our CEO and provide dedicated focus to our numbers, elevating our attention to cashflow, budgets, spend, and department efficiency. Your success is measured by how hands off the CEO can be for day-to-day financial operations, how well you can boost the decision making of our management teams, and how helpful you can be during our fund raising process.

We will want to work on a fractional contract basis while our organization responds to changing economic conditions. In the long term, we see potential for this position to turn into a full-time position.

Job Summary

As Apex’s CFO, you’ll play a crucial role in driving our financial strategy for growth and profitability. You’ll need to implement new processes and workflows in order to remove the CEO from the current accounting process. One of your first major projects will be to support our CEO as he works with our investment bank to secure growth funds for both Apex and a joint venture for a dedicated factory. You’ll support the due diligence process, and all post-funding reporting requested by investors.

Currently, the day-to-day is handled by one talented Senior Accountant, and many of the automations we put in place. The must-do items get done but we’re missing a critical layer of review and reporting. We aren’t looking for a CFO to lead an army of accountants. We’re looking for someone who brings us the analysis, wisdom and decision-making that we need to get through this upcoming funding raise and to make better decisions. While the team is small, this will initially be a more hands-on role, establishing and delivering those reports or working through special projects to help cut various costs. You’ll scale the team as the company grows.

The company is hungry for a leader who can give dedicated attention to key metrics. We want our Customer Service Managers to be thinking about cost-per-call in their analysis, not just calls taken per day. We want our Purchasing Managers to think about rent and interest rates when deciding how much product to hold on hand. We want a data-driven CFO to work with our COO to elevate our reporting so that we don’t get fooled by vanity metrics, or look at an incomplete picture.

Apex has never had a CFO before - we're at a very exciting time in our company evolution!

Who are you?

• A data nerd and spreadsheets wiz that makes data-driven decisions, not hunches.
• You hunt for wrong, extra, and missing digits like a hawk because you know entering a $10000.00 check versus a $1000.00 check is absolutely unacceptable.
• You’re overly cautious about security and that shows in how you handle passwords, the workflows you create to approve payments, and the shortcuts you stop people from taking.
• You’re driven to implement change and you’re more than just an idea person. You can see a project through to its finish by overcoming implementation obstacles.
• You care about your people and that shows in the interest, support, feedback and kindness you show them.
• Missing deadlines gives you knots in your stomach, so you take every due date seriously.
• Improving the efficiency of a process or automating it all together puts a huge smile on your face.
• A great listener that can read between the lines and succinctly notate key takeaways from meetings, and understand the bigger picture.
• Doing something over or doing it the hard way is your preferred method if it’s in the customer’s and company’s best interest.
• You love creating your own tools, calculators, and worksheets to solve complex financial questions.

How to apply

In your cover letter please answer the following prompt. How much does being a car enthusiast matter to your success in this role?

Responsibilities

• Team Leadership and Development: Lead, mentor, and develop the finance and accounting team to ensure high performance. Implement best practices in financial management, budgeting, and reporting. Foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and balance.
• Day to Day Finance Operations: Deliver financial statements, budgets, and reports. Monitor accounts payable/receivable, payroll, and general ledger reconciliations. Ensure timely and accurate month-end and year-end closings. Oversee asset tracking, depreciation, and valuation. Budget, forecast and conduct financial planning to align with company goals. Monitor key financial metrics, analyze trends, and report variances to executive leadership. Drive initiatives to improve cost savings, efficiency and profitability. 
• Investor Relations & Banking Relationship Management: Support the CEO in driving investor relationships by delivering reports and data to our investment bank during the due diligence process and on an ongoing basis. Work with our accounting firm to complete or update Quality of Earnings. Support banking relationships by complying with annual reporting requests for established loans and completing new loan application paperwork and reporting as needed.
• Key Metrics Management: Be Apex’s metrics and reporting czar - we need great reports to make great decisions. Help our COO and CMO implement and deliver metrics that help departments make better decisions because they come from a better financial perspective. Make profitability and EBITDA more transparent.
• Cash Flow Management: Manage cash flow analysis and modeling and ensure that the company is never over-extended.
• Budget Management: Assist department heads in making independent decisions by working with the CEO to establish annual budgets at the company and department levels. Support the Procurement team in ensuring that inventory is right-sized and adequately planned from a financial perspective.
• Inventory Investment: Support the Procurement team in ensuring that inventory is right-sized and adequately planned from a financial perspective. Keep their performance in check. Ensure we don’t over buy or over leverage ourselves. Help drive higher level reporting, discussions, and decisions so our team can work towards increased turnover rates and lower inventory levels.
• Financial Strategy and Leadership: Help develop and implement the company’s financial strategy to support growth and profitability. Provide strategic financial input to support decision-making at the executive level. Participate in setting the company’s direction, financial strategy, and budgetary allocation. Suggest when to invest excess funds or to pay down loans.
• Risk Management and Compliance: Ensure practical and efficient financial processes, policies and controls comply with legal regulations and internal standards. Identify and mitigate financial security risks, including credit, interest, and operational risks. Responsible for supporting external audits (for example, workers compensation, insurance, property tax, government and IRS etc.). Work cross-departmentally to improve policies and practices that may impact financial security. 
• Taxes: Work with our CPA to ensure timely filing of multi-state taxes, estimate quarterly payments, complete R&D tax studies, PTE payments, etc.
• Technology and System Optimization: Oversee the improvement, selection and implementation of supportive financial software/add-ons that complement our core NetSuite system.

• A Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, business administration, or a related field required. A master's degree in finance, accounting, or business is preferred.
• CPA, CFA, or other relevant financial certification is strongly preferred.

• 10+ years of progressive financial experience, with at least 5 years served in a senior leadership role.
• Experience supporting mergers, acquisitions and investor reporting in a senior leadership position required.

• Experience in identifying and mitigating financial risks, including operational, credit, and market risks. 
• Experience supporting compliance, audits, due diligence, Quality of Earnings, etc.
• Experience with eCommerce-based businesses that hold inventory and distribute products is required.

• Proficiency in financial modeling, forecasting, and analysis.
• Knowledge of regulatory and compliance requirements, including tax laws, audit standards, financial reporting, GAAP, IFRS, and financial compliance requirements.
• Experience with financial software and systems (ERP: Netsuite preferred. Third-party budgeting and reporting tools.) and ability to implement system enhancements.
• Advanced proficiency in Excel or other spreadsheet software.
• Technical proficiency with Mac, Slack, Google Suite, Payroll systems (Rippling), performance management systems (Lattice), Project Management systems (Click-Up) is preferred.
• Proven experience leading, building, and developing high-performing finance and accounting teams.
• Prior experience working in a remote working environment.
• Ability to occasionally travel to HQ in California (estimated to be less than 4 times per year for leadership summits and team-building events).

Successful candidates for this position must pass a background check, including a credit check, a criminal background check, institutional and educational validation, work history validation, and personal reference checks.

This position has the potential change from a fractional/contract CFO to our full-time CFO. The below salary and benefits are applicable to the full-time position.

• For a full-time position, base annual salary between $180,000 - 250,000
• Work remotely from anywhere in the contiguous US
• 100% Apex paid employee medical, dental, and vision benefits with buy-up options
• Robust company contributions towards dependent medical benefits
• 401k with employer matching
• Paid vacation leave

• Paid sick leave
• Paid holidays
• Professional development assistance
• A flexible working environment where work/life integration is encouraged
• Support your track addiction with reimbursements for HPDE and autocross event registration fees
• Eligibility for the SEMA college grant and loan forgiveness program
• Casual in-office dress environment where T-shirts, jeans, and shorts are welcome
• Employee discounts and freebies on Apex products and swag
• Participate in company activities including karting, spectating at races, track days, and more