109 State St, Boston, MA · Remote-first across the US For referral partners hello@digitalfrontiersconsulting.com
Digital FrontiersConsulting · Finance
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Pricing

Published here. Priced in writing. No meter running.

Almost nobody in this market publishes numbers. We do, for two reasons: it respects your time, and a firm that will not name a price before a call is telling you something about how the engagement will go.

Project sprint
$5,000–$25,000
Core retainer
$3,500–$7,500 / mo
Embedded partner
$7,500–$15,000+ / mo
Specialist add-on
$150–$400 / hr
Discovery call
No charge
Project Sprint
$5–25K
fixed scope · 2–8 weeks

One defined problem, finished. The usual way a relationship starts — low risk for you, and it lets both sides find out how the other works.

  • Fundraise-ready financial model
  • Audit- or diligence-readiness review
  • Dashboard build and handover
  • Close-process rebuild
  • Written scope, dates and fee before we start
Core Retainer · most common
$3.5–7.5K
per month · 10–20 hrs

Your finance function, led. The steady state for most companies between a bookkeeper and a first full-time hire.

  • Monthly management accounts and commentary
  • Board pack and investor updates
  • Budget, rolling forecast and re-plan cadence
  • Dashboard upkeep and data governance
  • A named partner on call, and quarterly reviews
Embedded Partner
$7.5–15K+
per month · 20–40+ hrs

In the business most weeks. For complexity, transition, or a period where finance genuinely needs a leader rather than a service.

  • Everything in the core retainer
  • Interim finance leadership through a transition
  • Multi-entity and cross-border structures
  • Live fundraise or sale-process support
  • Full advisory access between meetings
Specialist Add-On
$150–400
per hour · as needed

Deep expertise, deployed precisely. Added to any engagement with the scope and the rate agreed in advance.

  • Tax — federal, state and cross-border
  • Technical accounting judgments
  • Industry operators and benchmarks
  • Controller-level execution capacity
  • A partner stays accountable throughout

For reference: a full-time senior finance hire runs $400,000+ a year fully loaded — before you know whether you need one, and before recruiting fees.

The alternatives

What the same money buys elsewhere

An honest comparison, including where another option is genuinely the better buy. We would rather lose an engagement here than in month four.

OptionTypical costWhat you getWhere it falls short
Bookkeeping service$500–$2,000 / mo Clean transaction entry and a monthly reconciliation. Nobody senior interprets it, and nobody is answering the board.
Tech-enabled platform$1,750+ / mo for CFO tiers Bundled bookkeeping with a CFO layer on top, at scale. Rotating staff, junior delivery, and a product roadmap that is not yours.
Solo fractional CFO$3,000–$10,000 / mo One excellent, personal, low-overhead senior person. A hard capacity ceiling, no bench, and no cover when they are unavailable.
Traditional advisory firm$25,000–$150,000 / project A sharp framework, a strong brand and a polished deck. Paid for the recommendation, gone before the implementation.
Full-time senior hire$400,000+ / yr Dedicated leadership, in the building, every day. A large fixed cost and a twelve-week search, decided before you know the shape of the need.
This firm$3,500–$15,000 / mo A named senior partner, governed AI tooling, and a specialist bench on call. Not the cheapest option, and deliberately not built for pure transaction processing.
How we bill

The parts nobody puts on a pricing page

Scope, dates and fee are agreed in writing before any work starts. Sprints are fixed-fee. Retainers are monthly, thirty days’ notice either way, with no annual lock-in — if the work stops being worth it, you should be able to stop it.

We do not bill for the discovery call, for the proposal, for reading your board deck before a meeting, or for the phone call where you ask a quick question. Hourly meters make clients ration exactly the conversations that create the most value.

Included in every engagementDiscovery call, written scope, a named partner, the governed tooling, and the audit trail behind every number.
Quoted separately, always in advanceSpecialist time, audit-support beyond the agreed scope, and one-off system implementations.
Never chargedProposals, quarterly reviews, short questions between meetings, and the call where we tell you that you do not need us.
TermsMonthly billing, net 15, thirty days’ notice on retainers. No annual minimum and no auto-escalator.
Pricing questions

Asked before every engagement

Why publish ranges rather than a single price?

Because the honest number depends on entity count, transaction volume, the state of the ledger and how quickly you need it. The range is wide enough to be truthful and narrow enough to be useful — and by the end of a thirty-minute call we can usually name the figure inside it.

Can we start small?

We prefer it. Most relationships begin with a sprint on the thing that hurts most: a model, a close, a dashboard, an audit-readiness review. If that goes well, a retainer is an obvious next step rather than a leap of faith.

What happens if the scope changes mid-sprint?

We stop and re-price in writing before doing the extra work, or we finish the original scope and put the rest in a second sprint. What we do not do is discover the overage in the invoice.

Do you take equity instead of fees?

Occasionally, as a partial substitute for cash at the earliest stages, and only when both sides are comfortable being candid about valuation. Cash keeps the relationship clean; we will tell you plainly which we would prefer in your situation.

Is there a minimum commitment?

No annual lock-in. Retainers run month to month with thirty days’ notice on either side. We would rather earn the next quarter than enforce it.

Next step

Get the number for your situation

Thirty minutes on the phone is normally enough for us to name a price inside these ranges — and to tell you if the answer is that you do not need us yet.

No charge for the call · No proposal fee · No obligation