The Fractional CFO for Australian Pet Boarding, Daycare & Training
We know what room-type margin means. We know how Pet Manager exports look. We know occupancy reporting starts the moment you open the doors — not at month-end. Three pet-industry clients. One specialised CFO practice.
Currently embedded with operators across NSW + QLD, spanning boarding, sale preparation, and RTO-track operations.
Pet boarding is hospitality — and we’ve lived inside it.
Pet boarding sits inside the same operational economics as luxury tourism hotels: multi-site, capacity-utilisation driven, occupancy × average daily rate × labour productivity. The practice was built by eight years as CFO of Hanrob, Australia’s largest pet boarding operator, alongside senior finance roles at the Federal Group of Tasmania (including Saffire Freycinet). Two service-hospitality verticals, both lived from the operator side — not learned on your time.
Most fractional CFOs come from SaaS, professional services or e-commerce. Their reporting templates assume monthly recurring revenue, project margin or AOV. None of those translate to your business. Your unit economics are different: occupancy %, average daily rate, room-type margin, ancillary revenue per stay, labour-hours per occupied night, seasonality patterns that peak at Christmas and Easter for boarding, term-time for daycare, and year-round for training. A generic CFO learns these over a quarter. We’ve already built reporting against them as our standard pack.
Three pet-industry clients. Two service-hospitality verticals lived from the inside. We don’t waste a quarter learning your industry.
What you get every month.
Standard reporting pack designed for multi-site pet operators. Every metric is comparable across sites, room types, and time periods.
Site-by-site P&L
Each location standing on its own, comparable line-by-line. Cross-site overhead allocated transparently.
Room-type margin analysis
Which room types subsidise which — and what your true blended margin is once cleaning, food, and labour are properly allocated.
Occupancy + revenue optimisation
Where occupancy and ADR diverge, and where pricing has room to move. Cohort analysis by booking channel.
Labour productivity benchmarking
Hours per occupied night per site — productivity you can actually action. Roster comparison across locations.
Ancillary revenue analysis
Add-ons, services, and incidentals — often the difference between break-even and profit. Penetration rates by room type.
Seasonal rate scenario analysis
What happens to revenue if you move ADR by 10% in peak season vs shoulder. Forward-looking scenario modelling on real bookings.
We integrate with what you already use.
No platform changes required. We read what you have and produce reports against it.
Three engagement levels, sized to where you are.
- Multi-system access review (Pet Manager, ConnectTeam, Xero, Stripe, banks)
- Transaction analysis and reconciliation across sites
- Cash position + risk mapping
- Identification of overdue obligations and cash pressure points
- Findings report with prioritised roadmap
Best for: Operators who want a structured starting point before committing to a retainer.
- Site-by-site P&L + room-type margin analysis
- Occupancy + revenue optimisation reporting
- Labour productivity benchmarking
- Cashflow forecasting
- Two scheduled meetings per month
- Direct access as needed
Best for: Multi-site operators wanting embedded financial leadership without a full-time CFO hire.
- Business valuation and normalised earnings analysis
- Data room assembly and financial presentation pack
- Due diligence support and buyer Q&A coordination
- Transaction advisory through to settlement
Best for: Operators preparing to sell their business, who want financial readiness in advance of formal advisor engagement.
Skin in the game.
For work directly related to sale preparation, we will discuss deferring fees until settlement of the property and/or business sale, whichever occurs first. We don't ask you to fund the preparation that gets you across the line.
If your business is under pressure, we know how to do this work.
Some pet industry operators end up in distressed cashflow situations — supplier pressure, ATO arrears, seasonal cash gaps, or growth that outran working capital. We don't position this as our default mode, but if it's where you are, we have the playbook.
What distress mode adds:
- Weekly cashflow management with strict payment controls
- Cash management and payment prioritisation framework
- Supplier negotiation support
- Performance dashboards focused on liquidity, not growth metrics
We do not: Solvency assessments. Director duty advice. ATO liability negotiation. Insolvency administration. These require specialist insolvency practitioners, and we'll refer you to one if needed.
Three reasons specialised matters here.
We benchmark against pet-industry peers, not generic SME averages.
A 65% occupancy rate is a disaster in boarding and a triumph in daycare. Generic CFOs don't know which is which.
We know the seasonality.
Boarding peaks at Christmas and Easter. Daycare follows the school term calendar. Training and behavioural work is year-round. Forecasting that doesn't account for this is forecasting noise.
We don't waste a quarter learning your industry.
First report is on your desk in week three, not week twelve. You pay for analysis, not for our learning curve.
In most pet boarding operators, the executive structure is lean. At single-site and small multi-site groups, the Owner/Director wears every hat. At larger multi-site groups, there’s usually a GM or Operations Manager — but a dedicated CFO function is rarely there. You — or your lean team — are left either making pricing or capacity calls without the financial data both sides need, or waiting longer than the business can afford. Most do what entrepreneurs do: take the risk and sort it out as they go. Most of the time that’s right. Sometimes the outcome is worse than it had to be. When the infrastructure delivers every figure real, integrated, actionable, the decisions get made on real information — and a Chartered Accountant on retainer at the few hours a week your business actually requires becomes the financial-strategy altitude you didn’t realise you could afford.
See a sample report before you commit to anything.
A 30-minute conversation at no charge. We'll send you a sanitised sample of a multi-site P&L pack so you can see exactly what reporting looks like.
Questions pet industry operators ask before we start.
Do you only work with pet businesses?
No — we work across multiple verticals. But pet industry is one of two specialty practices (the other being RTOs), and the reporting pack here is purpose-built for the vertical.
What if I have one site, not multiple?
Single-site is fine. The multi-site reporting collapses cleanly to one site. Our Hunter Valley engagement is a single-site operator.
What if my data is messy?
Most clients' data is messy. We produce the best report possible with the data available and explicitly note material limitations. The Financial Systems Review is designed to surface and prioritise data-quality fixes.
How does sale prep fee deferral work?
Pre-approved hourly billing accumulates monthly. At settlement, the accumulated total is paid out of sale proceeds. We don't accept deferral arrangements unless we believe the sale is likely to complete — that's part of our discovery conversation.
Do you connect to Pet Manager?
Yes. We know the export shape, the data joins, and the typical reconciliation gaps.
Can you help with growth funding?
We can prepare the financial pack a lender or equity provider needs. We don't act as a corporate finance advisor — for transaction-heavy work we partner with an external advisor.