Best practices for PE-backed CFOs and finance leaders

Private equity doesn’t just change the cap table of your business. It changes how you run it.

Your board is now your investor. Reporting cycles are faster, deeper, and less forgiving. And your margin for error just got a lot smaller.

The good news is, for CFOs, with this pressure comes clarity. When value creation is your first, second, and third priority, FP&A becomes more impactful…but only if you can keep up.

This post covers what it takes to operate at that level: the habits, systems, and mindset shifts that set top-tier PE-backed CFOs apart.

If you’re already in the seat—or stepping into one soon—here’s how to meet the moment.

1. Start with your new boss’s playbook

Every PE deal is built on a thesis. And whether it’s written down or implied, it always comes back to the same three levers:

1. Operational improvement: margin expansion, cost discipline, tighter execution
2. Multiple arbitrage: buying smaller companies at lower multiples and integrating them cleanly.
3. Leverage: using debt to drive returns—and managing it like your job depends on it.

This is the private equity playbook in a nutshell. They raise capital, deploy it, and get judged on how much value they return relative to the risk they take. Your job as CFO is to make their investment case real—not just with a strategy that looks good on paper, but with precise execution and data-backed decisions.

Here’s what that might look like in practice:

Operational improvement can come from a dozen directions. You might cut underperforming SKUs or renegotiate supplier contracts. Maybe you give field techs equity because they’re your most important customer touchpoint, and you want them thinking like owners. Maybe you overhaul your install process to reduce rework and lift NPS. Rather than simply cutting costs, the best operators unlock value that was already there.

Multiple arbitrage sounds simple. Buy at 6x, integrate into a platform at 10x. But none of that matters if the integration falls apart. You’re not just underwriting synergies—you’re responsible for realizing them. That means nailing the integration plan, aligning systems, and knowing where complexity will creep in. Because if the deal slows you down or muddies the model, the multiple uplift evaporates.

Leverage is the constant. You may not have picked the capital structure, but you’re accountable for navigating it. That means knowing your 13-week cash position cold, and when debt signals are flashing red.

This is the lens the board will use for every decision you bring forward. If you can’t tie it back to how the firm creates value, you’re not speaking their language.

2. Get your reporting package in shape

Once you understand how value is created, your next job is to show it.

Most PE firms will demonstrate what “good” looks like on day one. Sometimes they’ll hand you a full-blown Excel package and say, “Just fill this in.” Other times, you might get a loosely structured template with a few non-negotiables, or even a past precedent from a prior portfolio company that went over well.

Regardless, the message is always the same: this is how we expect to see the numbers. Make it work for your business, but don’t stray too far.

At a baseline, that package will include:

• Revenue
• EBITDA (or, you know, PF Adj EBITDA*)
• Leverage
• Year-over-year growth
• Three to five company-specific KPIs (e.g. net dollar retention, same-store sales, churn)

The specifics may vary, but the framework rarely does. Most firms require at least some level of apples-to-apples reporting across their portfolio—meaning there’s only so much room for customization. 

This is where a lot of companies start to struggle. Not because the reporting requirements are particularly burdensome, but because the plumbing underneath it isn’t built for speed or scale.

According to E78 Partners, many PE-backed FP&A teams still operate like they did before the deal: reactive, over-reliant on static spreadsheets, and too buried in manual workflows to step back and see the bigger picture. Reports get built in PowerPoint the night before the board meeting. Assumptions live in someone’s head. Numbers change, but no one’s sure why.

That simply doesn’t fly post-acquisition.

The fix isn’t more headcount. It’s structure and automation: one core package that’s flexible enough to serve different audiences, and tight enough to avoid version sprawl. When the CEO wants top-level KPIs and the board asks for gross margin by channel, you don’t need to rebuild the model—you just need to change the view.

Side note: We’re working on releasing an anonymized version of a real PE reporting package from a top-tier CFO. It’s clean, fast, and built to scale—and we think it’s the new standard. Stay tuned…

3. Assume you’ll be asked to re-cut the data—live

You walk into your first board meeting post-acquisition with a clean deck. Everything ties out. You’re ready to roll.

Then, ten minutes in: “Can we break this out by customer tier?” Or, “What if churn jumps two points next quarter?”

If you can’t pivot on the spot, you’ve already lost the room.

This is the difference between reporting and real FP&A—not just building models that look the part, but can actually hold up under pressure. When assumptions shift mid-meeting, the model shifts with them. When someone asks for a new cut, it’s not a fire drill—it’s a filter.

That bar is a lot higher than “accurate by month-end.” And it’s where most companies fall short. Too many FP&A teams still run like they did pre-deal: static spreadsheets, buried logic, version control by email. And when the board throws a curveball, the only option is, “Let us follow up.”

That doesn’t fly in PE. You don’t get follow-ups. You get one chance to be the person in the room who actually knows what’s going on.

So what does readiness actually look like?

• Assumptions aren’t hardcoded—they’re linked, traceable, and easy to toggle
• Logic isn’t buried—it’s visible, so you can explain the “why” in plain English
• Scenarios aren’t built reactively—they’re baked in before anyone asks

When the conversation shifts, you don’t flinch. You pull up the model, change two inputs, and walk the board through the impact.

4. Treat 13-week cash flow as a survival tool

At a VC-backed company, you think in runway. At a PE-backed company, you think in weeks. Specifically: do we have enough cash to make it through the next 13 while covering our interest payments?

That’s the question your lenders and board care about. And it’s the one your 13-week cash flow model needs to answer—down to the dollar. In a leveraged environment, EBITDA alone won’t keep the lights on. Timing and liquidity are critically important, and default risk is always lurking.

A good 13-week model does three things well:

• Pulls from live A/R, with real assumptions about payment timing
• Tracks every payable, with clarity on what can be pushed and what can’t
• Rolls up into a view that flags exposure before it becomes a problem

Too many FP&A teams still treat cash flow like a side project—updated at quarter-end, built on static logic, divorced from day-to-day ops. E78 calls this out directly: “A focus on EBITDA growth often comes at the expense of liquidity management,” especially in leveraged buyouts. You don’t want to be the CFO who reports great earnings…and then trips an interest coverage covenant.

The shift here is mental as much as technical. You’re no longer optimizing for growth at all costs—you need to build in some slack for when payment terms slip or revenue timing shifts. Because when the board asks, “What’s our worst-case liquidity position if this deal slips a quarter?” you need to have a good answer ready.

5. Don’t fear AI—but don’t trust it blindly either

Every finance team is talking about AI. Few are using it in ways that actually hold up under PE scrutiny.

Here’s the bar: if you can’t trace the insight back to live data and controlled logic, it doesn’t belong in your model. No black boxes. No “we’ll look into it.” Because in a PE-backed company—especially in the first year or so post-acquisition—trust has to be earned. You don’t get to hand-wave your way through a forecast. You need to know where the number came from, why it moved, and what happens if it breaks.

That’s the standard we’ve set at Aleph. Our AI tools streamline tedious parts of the reporting process, flagging anomalies, surfacing edge cases, and automating the data prep that eats up 80% of your team’s time.

Every AI-generated suggestion in our platform is grounded in the same foundation as the rest of your workflow: structured models, auditable logic, and live data. When AI flags something unusual, you can trace it. When it proposes a scenario, you can inspect the assumptions. And when the board inevitably asks, “Where did this number come from?”—you’ve got an answer.

That’s how AI should work in finance. Not as a black box, but as a leverage tool for teams that already know what good looks like.

Lead the way in your new PE-backed role

We’re not going to sugarcoat it: an acquisition by private equity turns up the heat on finance teams. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Those who rise to the challenge find that it sharpens their focus on the value-creation levers in their business.

Here’s a recap of what to prioritize if you’re about to be acquired by PE (or already have been):

1. Keep a close eye on cash flow
2. Keep a close eye on cash flow
3. Build a complementary team and delegate effectively
   
   1. Note: here the down arrows are: 
      
      1. Finance teams at PE-backed companies have many responsibilities, and no single person will be an A+ at all of them. 
      2. FP&A and accounting are as important here as everywhere, but there are two additional layers of heightened responsibility: capital markets / cap table management, and data science
         
         1. Down arrow: Capital markets / cap table management = you have debt maturity planning, and covenants like Debt/EBITDA and Interest Coverage to monitor like a hawk to avoid a default. 
         2. Down arrow: PE owners love trend analysis to the extreme. Customer concentration, site-level P&Ls, what percentage of your end customers are in secularly declining industries? Make sure your team is adequately prepared for an infinite barrage of key questions like these, particularly during a sale process
      3. If you come from an investment banking / FP&A background, you might be an A+ at planning and forecasting, but know less about accounting. If that’s the case, allocate more resources to a senior accountant and get by with a more junior FP&A team.
4. Understand how value is created
5. Ensure you have adequate systems to show it
6. Have a game plan for when your models break
   
   1. Pursuing a buy-and-build with 10 add-ons per year? Suddenly find yourself in a regulatory buzzsaw? Did a new AI native competitor sprout up out of nowhere? Changes in the competitive and business landscape are more likely to break your model than a misplaced hardcode. Prioritize flexibility in your models to expect the unexpected.
7. Embrace AI, but don’t trust it blindly
8. Did we mention keeping a close eye on cash flow?

And most importantly, build a system that lets you do it all without working yourself into the ground.

If you can do that, you’ll thrive in your new PE-backed role.