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Building Your Finance Team was the closing conversation at The Future Is Fractional 2026, hosted by Scrubbed on September 24, 2026. Scrubbed’s Debra Andrews spoke with Ottavio Siani, a fractional CFO who also founded Triangle Coffee, which runs eight cafes across the Boston area and Washington, D.C. They walked through four decisions: whether to hire in-house or use a provider, how to vet an accounting partner, what to do in the first 90 days, and how to scale a hybrid team, plus where AI fits. The short version: divide work by context, vet partners on workload and industry fit, and expect in-house and outside capacity to grow together. Few finance leaders face a clean choice between building a team in-house and handing the work to a provider. Most end up with a mix. The harder questions are how to divide the work, how to choose a partner, and how to make the arrangement hold as the company grows. Session 5, the closing session of The Future Is Fractional 2026, a virtual conference hosted by finance and accounting advisory firm Scrubbed on September 24, 2026, took on those questions. Scrubbed Chief Marketing Officer Debra Andrews walked through four decision points with Ottavio Siani, a fractional CFO who also runs his own multi-location business, so he sees both the advice and the result. Key Takeaways: Divide work by context. In-house staff handle what’s new and unusual; a partner handles the routine. Vet partners on workload, industry fit and software knowledge, not just price. Four or five clients per accountant is a good answer, in Siani’s view . Be skeptical of full-automation promises. Several of his clients’ books went unclosed for months after trying them. Set cadences and communication rules early. Review cash weekly and the close monthly, and agree on response times. Bring the existing team along. Show them the work they’ll gain time for. Expect in-house and outside capacity to grow together. A provider scales in small steps; in-house hiring moves in big ones. Use AI, but keep a person accountable. AI can build the models; someone still has to give them a real read. What is a hybrid finance team? A hybrid finance team combines in-house finance staff with an outside provider, such as an outsourced or offshore accounting team or a fractional CFO. In Siani’s model, the in-house person supplies context and reviews the work, while the provider handles routine processing and produces reports. Meet the Speakers Debra Andrews (moderator): Chief Marketing Officer, Scrubbed. Ottavio Siani: Founder of Triangle Coffee, which runs eight cafes across the Boston area and Washington, D.C., and a fractional CFO for seven or eight years, serving more than 10 companies. Decision 1: In-house or outsourced accounting? Usually Both Siani typically does both. Any finance support that isn’t full-time inside the company still needs someone inside to explain what’s happening day to day. He used his cafes as the example. A recurring charge from the same milk supplier needs no discussion; the offshore team knows the vendor from a shared vendor list and books it correctly. But a new coffee roaster is different. The name may not say what the company does, and the purchase might be an experiment that belongs in a research budget rather than cost of goods sold. Someone on-site has to explain it. How Siani divides the work In-House Finance Staff Outsourced or Offshore provider Transactions New vendors, new charges, anything new or unusual Recurring charges from known vendors on a shared list Context Explains what a purchase is for and where it belongs Books it correctly once the context is clear Reports Reviews them Produces them As the company grows An in-house controller may read the provider’s reports and design processes Scales its time with the business That split gets more leverage out of the in-house person's time. “They’re not booking the debit and credit. Instead, they’re just dealing with the new vendors, the new charges, anything new that’s happening,” while the offshore team, in his case Scrubbed, handles the rest. Decision 2: How to Vet an accounting partner Across more than 10 fractional CFO clients, Siani often works with outside accounting firms, and has run the selection process many times. Accounting partner vetting checklist Question to Ask What Siani looks for How many clients does each accountant handle? Four or five is a good answer. He once heard 20; the team did good work but was grinding uncomfortably hard. Have they worked in your kind of business? His clients usually sell physical products, which brings inventory, payables, receivables and working capital challenges that software-only experience may not cover. Can they advise on software? Firms that work with many companies know which inventory or accounting tools fit which situations. How does the price compare with a full-time hire? He always runs that comparison, and it eliminates some options quickly. Are they promising full automation? A warning sign. On automation promises: AI tools are getting closer to automating larger portions of finance work, he acknowledged. But three or four of his clients signed up with companies promising fully automated accounting. It was “a disaster.” Books went unclosed for months while they tried to raise money, and he was brought in to clean up. “I’d be skeptical of any promise that… somebody will fully automate your accounting.” Decision 3: The first 90 days with a new finance partner It depends on the starting point, Siani said. Onboarding a partner at a company with little prior activity is straightforward. He also joined one company, working alongside Scrubbed, that had nine months of unclosed books and a botched attempt to consolidate two entities. There, the priority was indicative reports that gave executives a handle on the business, not a perfect close. Assuming no crisis, his foundation is cadence: Weekly, focused on cash: where it’s coming from and where it’s going. Monthly, reviewing the close. In both meetings, a roadmap and a prioritized issue list. Not everything gets fixed in the first close. If inventory balances are the biggest worry, start there and leave a mostly accurate receivables process for later. Agree on communication rules Companies and firms have different communication styles. Some companies only move when someone writes in all caps; a third-party firm sending polite emails and waiting may not realize that. Sometimes the fix is as simple as an agreed subject line: 'URGENT,' with a clear deadline and what happens if it's missed. So Siani sets explicit rules: Channel Expected Response Email Within 48 hours Email marked urgent Within 24 hours Messaging app As soon as possible Bring the existing team along In-house staff often worry when a provider arrives. Occasionally, Siani acknowledged, someone is underperforming and being replaced. More often, the existing team is simply maxed out. He calms the nervousness by laying out the full list of work, showing it’s too much for the current team, and dividing it: “You will be reviewing this report. You will not be producing the report.” Convincing people that the provider frees them to focus on what they uniquely can do usually takes a couple of months. Decision 4: Scaling a Hybrid Finance Team Outside capacity scales more smoothly. A third party can scale “more linearly,” Siani said. Hiring in-house moves in steps, and part-time hires are hard to find: bring someone on, carry extra capacity until the company grows into it, then run short and hire again. A provider lets you add time as you grow. The two tend to grow together. He hasn’t yet seen a hybrid model outgrow its third-party resource at the small and mid-sized companies he works with. At some companies he has hired an in-house controller who then reads the provider’s reports and helps design the processes behind them. Large companies do this too, he noted, often using third parties for parts of the finance operation such as accounts receivable. AI for fractional CFOs: Faster models, Same accountability A person stays responsible. Siani agreed with the consensus from earlier sessions: a person must stay responsible for the output. Because AI tools can be so easy to work with, “it’s easy to kind of get a little lazy and not review something.” People signing off on information need to feel responsible enough to give it a real read. A year of progress.. He works mainly with Claude and says it has improved dramatically since a year ago, when the common complaint was that AI made things up and couldn't be trusted.. In one engagement, he spent nine months rebuilding a client’s finance function after a bad experience with previous providers. Much of the work was building financial models for a fundraiser. “I didn’t type a single formula into Excel.” He structured the models, commented on them and built in quality checks while the Claude did the building. A year earlier, he said, he’d have told you that building Excel models is what most people pay a fractional CFO for. “It’s a tool that’s too powerful to be ignored.” Across all four decisions, Siani's answer was rarely either-or. Keep the context and the review inside the company, let a partner carry the volume, and let both grow as the business does. This session is part of The Future is Fractional 2026. For how team design connected every conversation at the event , read Own the Core, Access the Rest: What The Future is Fractional (TFIF) 2026 Revealed About How Finance Teams Are Being Rebuilt what finance leaders are rethinking about talent, AI and team structure.