If your books are broadly clean but your board pack still runs through you, hire a Head of Finance. If your numbers are late, your controls are thin, or your team keeps missing the close, hire a Financial Controller first. That is the honest answer, and the rest of this piece is about how to tell which situation you are actually in.
The two roles get used interchangeably, which is how you end up hiring the wrong one. They solve different problems. Getting the diagnosis right saves you a rehire and a year.
What does a Financial Controller actually own?
A Financial Controller owns accuracy and control. Their job is that the numbers are right, on time, and defensible.
That means the month end close, the balance sheet, reconciliations, statutory accounts, audit, tax compliance, and the day to day rhythm of the ledger. A strong FC makes your reporting boring in the best way. Nothing surprises you late.
They also run the transactional team. Purchase ledger, sales ledger, credit control, payroll oversight. This is the machine that produces your data, and the FC keeps it clean.
If you cannot currently trust the number on the page without checking it yourself, that is a controllership gap. No amount of forward looking analysis fixes a shaky foundation.
What does a Head of Finance actually own?
A Head of Finance owns the bridge between accurate numbers and better decisions. They sit wider than an FC and usually pull FP&A, reporting, and often the control function under one remit.
Where the FC asks "is this right?", the Head of Finance asks "what does this mean and what should we do?". They build the commentary in your board pack, own the forecast, and start having the conversations with budget holders that currently land on your desk.
A good Head of Finance is the person who frees up your week. They take the layer of translation and challenge that you have been doing personally, and they make it repeatable.
The trade off is depth of technical control. Many strong Heads of Finance are lighter on hands on statutory and audit than a career FC. That matters when you choose.
How do you diagnose which one your function needs?
Run three quick tests on your own week.
First, the trust test. When a number comes to you, do you check it or act on it? If you re check everything, you have a control problem, and you need an FC.
Second, the calendar test. What is eating your time? If it is chasing the close and fixing errors, that is an FC. If it is building the story, challenging commercial teams, and answering "why" questions, that is a Head of Finance.
Third, the growth test. Are you scaling, adding entities, raising, or preparing for a transaction? A transaction heavy path leans FC for the technical rigour. A commercial scaling path leans Head of Finance for the partnering.
Most functions have both needs. The question is which one is currently the bottleneck, because that is the one you hire next.
Can one person do both, and when does that break?
Early on, yes. A hybrid FC who can also forecast and talk to the business is common and useful in a smaller function.
It breaks at scale. As transaction volume grows, control work expands to fill the week, and the forward looking work quietly disappears. You then have accurate numbers and no insight, or good insight sitting on shaky numbers.
The usual sequence is FC first to stabilise, then a Head of Finance or FP&A hire above or alongside as the function matures. If you try to skip the controllership stage, you tend to end up rebuilding it under pressure later.
How does this change who you interview?
Interview for the bottleneck, not the title. If you need control, test the close. Ask a candidate to walk you through how they cut two days off a timetable, how they handle an audit that is going wrong, how they build a reconciliation discipline that survives them leaving.
If you need a Head of Finance, test judgement. Give them a messy set of results and ask what they would say to the board. Listen for whether they lead with the number or the decision.
Be honest in the brief about which you are hiring. A career FC dropped into a partnering role gets frustrated, and a commercial Head of Finance buried in reconciliations leaves. We spend a lot of our finance recruitment time correcting briefs that asked for one and described the other. If you are ready to move, our open finance roles show how these mandates are worded in practice.
Common questions
Should a Head of Finance report into me or replace me? Neither. A Head of Finance sits the layer below you and absorbs the operational and analytical load, so you move up into strategy, transactions, and the board relationship.
We have an FC already. Do we upgrade them or hire above them? Depends on appetite. If your FC wants to grow commercially and shows judgement, develop them. If they are a strong technical controller who is happiest there, hire a Head of Finance alongside and keep the control strength.
Is FP&A Manager a substitute for a Head of Finance? No. An FP&A Manager owns forecasting and analysis but usually not the wider function or the control layer. Think of it as one component of what a Head of Finance carries.
