Fractional CFO · Manufacturing finance
Finance leadership for manufacturers, food producers, and owner-led businesses, covering costing, pricing, controls, and the ERP work that makes them stick.
Robert Arthurs, CPA, Accounting · Banking & Finance, with 13 years across multinational finance, U.S. food manufacturing, and SAP Business One.
Margin bridge
loss → profitLower operating expenses after an 8-month ERP and cost-model transformation
Higher gross margins delivered across multiple markets
Consecutive external audit cycles without material deficiencies
Years across finance, manufacturing and controls
Where I come in
These are the three I'm brought in for most often, and all three trace back to the same root: a cost model nobody trusts.
Usually inventory valuation, work-in-progress, and a close process that reports history instead of cash needs. Fixing it starts with what's actually sitting on the floor and what it truly cost to put there.
Freight, yield loss, labor and overhead get spread evenly instead of where they're consumed. Rebuild the standard, then price on facts, and the unprofitable accounts stop hiding behind the profitable ones.
Clean master data, controlled transactions, and workflows people will actually follow. I've run an 8-month ERP transformation from the finance side, and stabilized a SAP Business One go-live afterwards, WiSys warehouse layer included.
Ways to engage
Strengthen the close, reporting, controls, team cadence and executive decision support.
InterimA reliable financial view for owners, and a practical partner for high-stakes decisions.
RetainerRebuild standards, analyze customers and SKUs, and protect margin through fact-based pricing.
ProjectTranslate operating requirements into system design, testing, ownership and adoption.
ProjectPrepare evidence, remediate gaps, formalize policies and reduce recurring audit findings.
ProjectFinancing analysis, business cleanup, shutdown support, acquisition diligence and scenario modeling.
ScopedHow the work runs
Four phases, in order. Each one ends with something you can see, not a status update.
Understand the numbers, workflows, pain points and decision gaps.
Set clear controls, ownership, data standards and operating routines.
Work across teams, systems and vendors to make the design usable.
Measure results, close gaps, train users and create a repeatable cadence.
Who you're working with
I'm Robert Arthurs, a finance leader who spends as much time on the plant floor as in the ledger. My work spans multinational finance, U.S. food manufacturing, ERP implementation and owner-led businesses, and it sits where finance, operations and systems overlap. I've led an 8-month ERP transformation that tied inventory, manufacturing and distribution to real-time cost tracking, and rebuilt a loss-making operation into a multimillion-dollar business on the back of disciplined costing and pricing.
The way I lead it is straightforward: make the financial consequence clear, bring operations into the solution early, challenge assumptions with data rather than noise, and stay with an issue until it's actually closed.
Leadership beyond finance
Board Director, Grace & Staff Community Development FoundationSince December 2020
Community leadership focused on education, empowerment, and stronger outcomes for Jamaica's young people.
Let's work together
Tell me what's breaking, whether that's the close, the margin, the ERP, or the audit, and I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person for it.