📬 Speed Running: Spend approval for scale-ups

The one-person finance team isn’t a pipe dream. It’s becoming reality.

AI has made it possible. And DualEntry is leading the charge.

DualEntry, an AI-native ERP, just raised a $90M Series A to give CFOs the modern platform they deserve, with:

Read about DualEntry’s Series A – backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla, and Google Ventures – that’s rewriting the ERP playbook and making the one-person finance team possible.

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Last call to be part of a new project I’m working on…

If you’ve used AI in your finance team and seen real impact (saved time, improved output, or just made life less painful), I want to talk.

This isn’t for vendors, consultants, buzzword bandits, or god forbid… IT people. It’s for real finance pros who’ve done something worth showing off.

👉 Drop your details here if you’re curious. I’ll be in touch.

Now, on to today’s Mailbag

We’ve got some great topics today. Here’s what’s on tap:

Now, let’s get into it.

Rosemary from the United States asked:

Hi Secret CFO,

How do you determine when a middling player is not enough, and what are some data points you use to make your decision?

Thanks for the question, Rosemary.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years leading teams, it’s that people rarely change that much. They can develop new skills, but their worldview, how they see risk, authority, and change, tends to be deeply ingrained. So if you’ve given them feedback and coaching and still aren’t seeing the shift, don’t expect them to suddenly wake up tomorrow and start bungee jumping.

So how do you decide when “good enough” isn’t enough?

I like to think about individual performance using a simple 2x2 grid. On one axis, you’ve got technical competence. On the other hand, behaviors: how they show up, lead, and live your values.

It looks like this:

So what do you do with your “big problems”?

If you can remove them without risk, do it. If not, you need to quietly de-risk the role, reduce their influence, and build a succession plan before acting. In every case I’ve done this, I’ve later thought, “I should have done that sooner.”

When I’m assessing whether to persist or part ways, I look for patterns: missed commitments, cross-functional feedback, dependency bottlenecks, or how many things need to be escalated to me to move forward.

And remember, this is not just a people issue, it’s a business issue. Your job isn’t just to build a happy team, it’s to build one that compounds value. If someone’s slowing velocity or blocking decision flow, that’s a business problem, not a people one.

But all of this hinges on being clear about what “good behavior” actually means.

Have you defined it? Does your team know it? What are the non-negotiables? Coachability? Likability? Work ethic? What else? Which are most important?

Until you’ve defined what behaviors are sacred, you can’t expect others to live them.

TLDR:

Figure out your non-negotiable behaviors. Give people a chance to show them. Give feedback and coach. Then, if they refuse to learn… cut the cord.

Good luck, Rosemary.

Aspiring CFO from London, UK asked:

Following on from your recent capital allocation series, how many times in your career have you been provided with information that allowed you to pull together capex proposals that could be properly evaluated? How often are they materially accurate?

I am asking from the perspective of working as an FC in a tech scale-up. We often get pushback that the information we’re asking for when assessing new projects is too time-consuming to produce/too tricky to estimate, and we need to focus our resources on execution. Unfortunately, this means I often feel I haven’t adequately done my job of evaluating whether a project is financially worthwhile. Our board generally does not care too much about EBITDA right now, as we are well-financed. Their priority is revenue growth and building market share.

I worry this approach isn’t sustainable in the long term. What are your thoughts? Is this approach acceptable for now, or should I look to move somewhere where more critical thinking from finance would be valued/supported? Is it ever feasible to make estimates on performance outcomes from the finance seat alone without input from colleagues in engineering/product?

Thanks for the question. This is a really good one.

Your colleagues aren’t wrong. In a well-funded tech scale-up, conventional capex analysis (DCFs, payback periods, hurdle rates) probably isn’t the highest priority. Those tools were built for steady-state businesses, not fast-moving ones still proving or scaling product-market fit.

So we need to zoom out a bit.

One of finance’s atomic duties is capital allocation: rationing scarce capital to deliver the strategy. How you do that depends on where you are in your growth journey.

From the tone of your question, I’m assuming your business has product-market fit. So your job is to help the team scale as quickly as possible within your target unit economics. In that environment, you don’t need perfect forecasts or 20-tab DCF models, you need to make sure every major dollar of spend fits inside the economic model that underpins growth.

If gross margins, working capital, CAC, etc., are all in line with your expectations, then… well… let the team cook (yes, I have Gen Z kids). But when spend starts creeping outside those boundaries (extra sales heads that break the quota model, marketing spend that blows up CAC, or extended payment terms that kill cash conversion), you need to slow things down and ask the hard questions.

You’ll rarely get perfect data to make those calls. Your job isn’t to wait for it. It’s to build a lightweight, repeatable process that gets you directionally right answers fast. Precision matters less than speed and consistency.

And no, you can’t estimate commercial performance outcomes from finance alone. You can model sensitivities and scenario cases, but the assumptions must come from product, engineering, or sales. They need to own them. That’s what makes the model useful. It becomes a shared truth, not a finance artifact.

If those thresholds don’t exist today, that’s where your focus should be. Define the key ratios and limits that act as financial guardrails. Those are your equivalent of “spend evaluation” in a growth-stage business.

And if major spend is being committed without any finance visibility, you need to reassert control. The most underrated power finance has is the power of the pen … the pen that signs the checks. Or to refuse to do so when necessary.

If things are out of control, draw a line. Every cost needs a purchase order, pre-approved by finance, before it’s committed. No PO, no payment. It’s the simplest and cleanest firebreak you can create.

You’ll need your CFO’s and board’s backing to enforce that, but any competent board will support you. You can frame it positively:

“We’ve got $X of growth capital, and I want to make sure every penny goes as far as possible. My job is to help us maximize the growth impact from every $, not slow the business down.”

That framing aligns you with the growth mission and makes you a partner, not the “no” person.

And when growth starts to level off or capital tightens, that’s when you’ll evolve toward a more classical investment discipline — NPV, ROI, hurdle rates. But you’ll get there when it’s time.

Right now, your job is to protect velocity without losing control.

TLDR:

In a scale-up, your job is to create guardrails. Define your target unit economics. Make sure spend decisions stay inside them. And if they don’t, stop the music until they do.

Steven from London asked:

CFO of a small but fast-growing gym business.

Trying to weigh up a move to an ERP such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 vs upgrading QuickBooks by adding specialist automated AP and HCM systems

Plugging in specialist products will be easier than a wholesale change of ERP (and we have virtually no in-house knowledge other than mine). However, is it better to have this pain now, whilst still small, or wait until we have more resources internally to help with it?

Equally, can a one-stop ERP ever be as slick as a selection of specialist platforms?

The specialists have done a good job of selling themselves as being materially better at their roles however, we are not a complicated business. The big focus for me is on automation, speed, and control.

Steven,

I can answer this question with one diagram:

It was originally designed to explain how to build a startup, but it applies perfectly to how you should think about building finance systems and scaling your finance function.

I’ve seen it too many times: people use words like “future-proofing” to justify rolling out ERPs far bigger than the business needs.

“We’ll need it at some point, so we may as well do it now.”

That logic ignores the tremendous downside of having a system that’s too complex for the team to use. I’ve seen businesses brought to a complete standstill by rolling out systems they simply weren’t ready for.

You said your focus is automation, speed, and control. Three excellent principles - so use them as your filter.

If you’re running gyms, what really matters?

That’s it.

Focus on those workflows and make sure they are watertight. Build around simple, best-in-class point solutions that integrate cleanly with your accounting platform through APIs.

A specialist stack will give you the speed, automation, and usability you need now, without overwhelming your team. You’ll know when you’ve hit QuickBooks’ limits - either when reporting becomes too manual or integrations start breaking down. That is the moment to make the ERP leap.

And when you do, choose carefully. Most ERPs were not designed for subscription businesses. If it were my money, I wouldn’t rush it.

TLDR: Build your finance tech stack like an MVP product. Start simple, integrate well, and scale when the pain becomes undeniable - not before.

A few of the biggest stories that every CFO is paying close attention to. This is the section you might not want to see your name in.

Deloitte’s Q3 2025 CFO Signals report was released on Wednesday, and it seems optimism reigns supreme. “In North America, 90% of finance chiefs said their companies’ financial prospects are much better or better than three months ago.”

Securing top talent (and upskilling/reskilling) came in as the top worry keeping CFOs up at night. Good news if you are young and hungry.

Humblebrag alert for Ernst & Young. The Big Four firm is expecting its lowest US auditing shortfall rate in 16 years. Down from 46% just 3 years ago to below 9% this year. That’s a win for audit quality. EY credits investing in technology, workforce retention and training.

This story has it all: designer wines, NDAs, press leaks, expense account abuses, and a sexual-harassment claim. Definitely not the kind of story you want to see your name in.

Turns out former Moët Hennessy CFO Mark Stead is in hot water for violating an NDA signed after his dismissal for alleged expense abuses, for feeding information to the media about a sexual-harassment claim that occurred during his tenure.

Never burn your bridges…

ICYMI, here are some of my favorite finance/business social media posts from this week. In the words of Kendall Roy, “all bangers, all the time.”:

Nature is healing…

Let me know what you thought of today’s Mailbag. Just hit reply… I read every message.

There’s a new issue of the Boardroom Brief out this Thursday. Read the first Boardroom Brief piece here.

On Saturday, I opened a new Playbook series on the world of the private equity CFO, and how every CFO can learn a thing or two from the PE jungle. Check out the newsletter here.

Disclaimer: I am not your accountant, tax advisor, lawyer, CFO, director, or friend. Well, maybe I’m your friend, but I am not any of those other things. Everything I publish represents my opinions only, not advice. Running the finances for a company is serious business, and you should take the proper advice you need.