Graphite runs your back office. Bridges builds the finance foundation your next round depends on.

• Graphite runs the back office - bookkeeping, AR/AP, tax, budgeting, and forecasting. Bridges specializes in controller, strategic finance, and CFO work for vertical SaaS, fintech, B2B payments, and healthcare billing companies.
• Breadth is Graphite's strength and its limitation. A 50-person firm with offshore resources covers SaaS, HealthTech, CPG, services, and Web3. This means the work sits with whoever is assigned. Bridges caps at 10 to 15 engagements at a time. Tim Salikhov, The Payments CFO, is the lead on every engagement.
• Graphite prices by the hour. Bridges prices for the outcome. Graphite publishes no rate card; engagements start around $1,250/month for bookkeeping, but actual retainers could be 3 to 5 times that. Bridges lists every starting price - controller services from $2,750 for accrual books, strategic finance from $10,000, fractional CFO inclusive of strategic finance from $15,000.

Choose Graphite to outsource your back office. Choose Bridges for accurate financials, forecasts, and CFO judgment.

Graphite is the right choice if you want one vendor to run bookkeeping, AR/AP, tax compliance, and basic FP&A. Bridges is right when questions get harder and there's no right answer - how to design the right go-to-market team, how many SDRs to pair with AEs, how to structure sales commissions, how to run the upsell motion, which bets to make with your runway, how to optimize billing, which processor to choose, and more.

Graphite vs. Bridges: Side-by-Side Comparison

How Graphite Works

Graphite is a New York firm of 50 people, plus a bookkeeping team offshore. It grew out of a VC fund, formed to run finance for the fund's portfolio companies, and has been independent since 2016. The offer is the full finance department as a service: bookkeeping, AR/AP, tax, budgeting, and forecasting. It's purpose-built to serve e-commerce startups, providing them with inventory management and sales tax compliance. Among its clients are several SaaS companies, though it's not the main focus.

Graphite is best for

• Companies that want bookkeeping, AR/AP, tax, budgeting, and forecasting from one vendor
• CPG and e-commerce companies - inventory and sales tax are handled in-house
• Seed through Series B startups, and owner-operated SMBs outside the venture track

Watch out for

• The $1,250/month figure is a floor for basic bookkeeping - budget off the scoping review, not the floor
• Payments, Stripe, and usage-based billing are not listed as specialties
• A team model means your work sits with whoever is assigned - ask who leads your account and how often that person changes

How Bridges Works

Bridges is a boutique strategic finance firm. Tim Salikhov serves as CFO on every engagement, supported by controllers and financial analysts. Concurrent engagements are kept to 10 to 15 at any time - to optimize for outcome, not volume.

Every member of the Bridges team spent 10-20 years operating inside vertical SaaS, fintech, B2B payments, and healthcare billing companies - as VP Finance, Controllers, and Strategic Finance leads. Bridges takes on clients at seed, supports them through Series B, and ensures a clean transition to an in-house VP Finance when the time comes.

The first weeks are the most intensive. Bridges reviews the books, billing, Stripe setup, and financial systems, rebuilds the chart of accounts to match the business model, and connects financial systems to a single source of truth - with a target of working numbers within 30 days of the first call.

Bridges is best for

• Vertical SaaS, fintech, B2B payments, and healthcare billing companies at $3M-$30M ARR
• Companies with payments, usage-based billing, or hybrid revenue models
• Founders who need strategy and financial operations under one roof
• Companies heading into a Series A or Series B raise

Watch out for

• Bridges does not run payroll, HR, or tax filing - tax questions go to trusted third parties
• Bridges works in payments-related domains; plain vanilla SaaS companies are not a fit
• Fractional CFO is not sold standalone or as an add-on - it includes Strategic Finance, because the quality of CFO work depends entirely on quality of analysis and forecasts

Choose a Fractional CFO With Experience in Your Industry

Graphite serves startups across SaaS, HealthTech, CPG and e-commerce, services, and Web3, plus owner-operated SMBs. That breadth is the product: one department for any company. Bridges only works in four industries, where the team has spent careers - because generic SaaS benchmarks don't capture businesses with payment layers, usage-based billing, or hybrid revenue. A CFO applying standard frameworks to a payments-enabled platform is giving advice built for a company you're not running.

Track Record That Matters When Hiring a Fractional CFO Firm

Graphite has served hundreds of companies since 2016 and names clients including Caraway, Owlet, The Sill, and M.Gemi, but publishes no aggregate outcome data. Bridges keeps engagements small enough that each one moves the needle - and publishes the numbers because they're worth publishing. Among Bridges' past clients are Kabbage ($1B exit to American Express), Keep Financial (seed round led by a16z), Atrios (seed round led by a16z), Collectly (Series A AI-native RCM, 3X growth in 18 months), and other B2B payments companies.

Team Stability Is the Foundation of a Successful Fractional CFO Engagement

Graphite runs a team model: roughly 45-50 people across delivery, customer success, and sales, with work assigned after scoping. That structure scales - and it means the person who sold the engagement is rarely the person running your books next year. Ask who leads your account and how often that changes. At Bridges, Tim Salikhov is the CFO on every engagement. Controllers and financial analysts support the work, but Tim is the point of contact throughout - from onboarding through transition.

What to Expect After You Hire a Fractional CFO

Graphite onboards through a scoping review that sets the service mix, ownership model, and fee; the timeline to steady state is not published. Bridges reviews books, billing, Stripe, and financial systems in week 1, rebuilds the chart of accounts to match the business model, and targets working numbers within 30 days of the first call. From there, financials arrive by the 10th business day, every month.

Great Fractional CFOs Set a Clear Communication Standard

Graphite sets cadence per engagement through its customer success function. Bridges publishes the cadence: Strategic Finance clients get two working sessions per month, Fractional CFO clients get weekly sessions - both with async Slack access. The standard matters because finance questions don't arrive on a schedule.

The Best Fractional CFOs Price for Outcomes, Not Hours

Neither firm sells hours. The difference is transparency. Graphite scopes first and prices after: no rate card, with third-party listings putting engagements from $1,250/month for a finance-department scope. Bridges publishes starting prices for every way of working, so you can plan before the first call - and charges no onboarding fee.

Choosing Bridges or Graphite depends on your goals