In a business world obsessed with growth, the back-office is often the last place people look. Strategy gets the headlines, marketing gets the budgets, and operations get the fires to put out. But somewhere between the invoices not sent, the forecasts not updated, and the tax claims left to luck, businesses quietly bleed out.
The more ambitious the business, the more dangerous the blindness.
Enter the smart CFO – not the one sitting in the boardroom full-time, but the one plugged in remotely, reading the numbers with discipline, steering the cash with precision, and interpreting chaos into a direction.
The rise of the Virtual CFO, particularly in markets like South Africa, is not a trend. It is a correction.
Beyond Bookkeeping
Most Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) don’t know they need a CFO – until it’s too late. Often, what they call “cash flow issues” are really structural problems. Pricing that doesn’t match cost. Growth that is funded by overdrafts instead of strategy. Teams that don’t know how to read a margin. Finance becomes reactive, transactional, delayed – and eventually destructive.
Yet, the solution is rarely to hire a full-time executive.
Virtual CFOs fill a very specific void: high-level financial thinking, without the overhead of a C-suite contract. But not all VCFOs are equal, and not all are built for the nuanced needs of South African SMEs landscape and businesses navigating both growth and governance.
This is where FinAscend – an Accounting and Finance business founded by Ntombi Melamu – is setting a new standard.
Built from Complexity, Structured for Simplicity
Ntombi Melamu didn’t enter the VCFO space because it was trendy. She arrived there through the long, often unglamorous route of actual financial management: as a Financial Manager at Imperial Bank which was later acquired by Nedbank Limited, working as a Financial Officer within the Group Finance Reporting for Business Banking, thereafter serving as a Group Financial Manager for other firms with multiple/complex group structures, often acting as a finance business partner to divisions that didn’t just need reports, but interpretation, planning, and accountability.
FinAscend, the company she founded in 2018, was born out of her people centric-approach and support for rising level of entrepreneurs and the SMEs, realising that these businesses are the cornerstone of the South African economy in driving growth and job creation: that many businesses are trying to scale with accounting systems built for survival, not growth.
Ntombi carries qualifications that speak to both credibility and continued evolution – a BCom in Financial Accounting form the University of Pretoria, BCom Honours in Financial Management, and professional accreditation as a Business Accountant in Practice BAP(SA), a member of the CFO Club with the Chartered Institute for Business Accountants (CIBA). She also holds a certificate in FinTech – Disruption in Finance from the University of Cape Town and Climate & Sustainability Reporting from Regenesys.
But what makes her voice resonate in boardrooms and SMEs ecosystem stakeholders isn’t the paperwork – it’s the ability to explain financial blind spots in a language SMEs and entrepreneurs in general understand, and build systems they can trust.
The Role, Redefined
A Virtual CFO is not just a finance person working virtually. The role at FinAscend is structured, not casual. Clients receive:
- As part of the knowledge of the business, a strategic overview through a review of 3–5 years of financial history to understand business life cycles.
- Clear, consistent monthly reporting that allows for course correction.
- Financial strategy layered over operations – not the other way around.
- Scenario planning, cash flow forecasting, risk mapping.
- Assistance with budgeting, audit preparation, and regulatory compliance.
The outcome? Not just compliance, but CLARITY.
This distinction is where Ntombi has carved FinAscend’s edge. The offering is embedded, outcome-driven, and aligned to investment readiness for SMEs in order to scale and grow.
Furthermore, through her exposure and experience as a finance business partner, coupled with a strong business acumen, FinAscend has been able to diversify its solutions offering, through collaboration with other industry experts, this includes areas like VAT recovery solutions for Pension and Provident Funds, where VATiQ offers the technical expertise and FinAscend facilitates business development strategies.
Add to that the firm’s BBBEE Level 1 status and recognition as a 100% Black female-owned enterprise, and what you get is more than a service – you get strategic partnership at the intersection of inclusion and insight.
When Financial Clarity Becomes a Brand
Entrepreneurs and SMEs don’t just need CFOs to count the money. They need them to see ahead.
Ntombi often says. “Clarity is quiet – but it’s what holds everything together.”
This quiet clarity has become the foundation of FinAscend’s brand and offering. Whether it’s an SME needing a setup of a financial function and structure, a fund needing to optimise its VAT apportionment methods and recoveries, or a startup needing to be investment ready, the common thread is the same: they all need someone to stand at the helm of the numbers and steer – while holding their hand each step of the process, and not just report.
FinAscend continues to support its various clients spanning from ICT, startup FinTechs in the last-mile logistics, amongst others, and has helped in building business processes and easy to use systems that allow leadership to make timely, informed decisions, and partners like Afri Consulting, who describe the firm as “analytically precise, trustworthy, and strategically aligned.”
But perhaps more telling is what FinAscend doesn’t do: noise. The firm is deliberate, structured, focused – and increasingly, trusted.
Why This Matters Now
As the South African SME landscape and economy in general oscillates between opportunity and uncertainty, companies that are able to scale and grow will not be the ones with the biggest networks but rather smart tools that are fit for purpose, that allows them to pivot as change comes and move with agility.
Financial clarity is no longer a “nice to have” – it’s a resilience mechanism.
FinAscend’s VCFO offer is quietly building a new class of entrepreneurs and SMEs that are confident and can tell their business stories with clarity through the numbers.
The Path Forward
In a world where everything is moving faster – marketing, operations, fundraising, disruption – the businesses that win are the ones who slow down just long enough to look at their numbers… and listen.
If clarity had a job title, it would be CFO.
And if it had a form that growing South African SME landscape could access today, it would be the Virtual CFO – the kind that FinAscend has been building quietly, professionally, and with intention.
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