When you need a Financial Controller
In our experience the useful distinction between the finance titles is scope. A Financial Controller owns the close, the balance sheet, controls and audit for one business, reports to a CFO or Finance Director, and leads the accountants and transactional team. It is the right hire when you already own the commercial side and the board, and need the numbers to be fast, clean and trusted.
If nobody above the seat owns the forecast and the board pack, you are hiring a Head of Finance, not a Controller. If there are several entities to consolidate, a group audit or an acquisition programme, you are hiring a Group Financial Controller.
Write the year-one outcome first
A faster close, a clean audit, a new ledger live, a team that runs without you: what should be different in a year sets the level more reliably than the title does. The free Hiring a Financial Controller guide turns this into a role chooser and a one-page brief you can fill in.
How we run the search
Every search is run by a director, retained or contingent as agreed with you. We take the brief properly and check the package against the live Finance Pay Index, headhunt directly, present a shortlist of usually six to eight with our written view on each, handle the offer and the counter-offer risk, and check in through the first 90 days. Across 149 of our placements, the median time from the first CV we sent to an offer was 19 days. More on how a Harper May search works.