Fractional CFO for Manufacturing and Industrial Businesses in Houston

Most manufacturers can tell you their gross margin. Far fewer can tell you what a specific product actually costs to make once overhead is properly allocated.

That gap is where pricing decisions go wrong, and it usually stays invisible until a competitive quote gets won at a loss.

Overhead absorption decides which products look profitable

If overhead is allocated as a flat percentage across everything, your product costs are wrong in a predictable direction. Simple, high-volume products get overcharged for overhead they don't consume. Complex, low-volume products get undercharged for setup, changeovers, and engineering time they absorb heavily.

The result is a costing model that makes your hardest products look like your best ones. Companies then chase the complex work and quietly lose money doing it.

Fixing this means allocating on something that reflects actual consumption: machine hours, setup counts, labour hours, whatever genuinely drives the cost. It isn't complicated work. It just requires deciding to look.

Inventory is cash with a different name

Raw materials, work in progress, and finished goods are all cash you've already spent, sitting on a shelf.

Manufacturers routinely run profitable and cash-poor for exactly this reason. Profit says the business works. The bank account says the money is in the warehouse.

Inventory turns by category, not in aggregate, is the number worth watching. Aggregate turns hide the slow-moving items that are consuming most of the working capital.

Supply chain belongs in the forecast

Material lead times and freight costs shift for reasons unrelated to how you run the business. A delayed shipment moves production, production moves shipping, shipping moves billing, and billing moves cash.

That chain used to be a contingency. It's now a normal operating condition, and it should sit in the forecast as a modelled scenario rather than a surprise.

Capital equipment and the case that gets skipped

Equipment decisions are frequently justified on payback period alone. Payback ignores what happens after payback, ignores financing cost, and ignores what the capital would have earned elsewhere.

A proper case includes the financing structure, the effect on capacity and mix, and what the decision does to covenants if debt-funded.

Working with me

I'm Ben Cohen, founder of Visionary Arc Finance and a former PwC Senior Manager, with in-house corporate finance experience at Johnson & Johnson. I've worked across manufacturing, technology, and services, including investor relations for a publicly listed industrial company.

For Houston manufacturers, early work usually means getting overhead allocation onto a basis that reflects reality, making inventory turns visible by category, and building a forecast that treats supply chain timing as a variable rather than an assumption.

Delivered remotely. You work with me directly.

Common questions

Do you work with our ERP?

I work with whatever produces reliable data. Where the system can't support proper cost allocation, sorting that out is usually the first task rather than a later one.

We do custom work, not repeat production. Does costing still apply?

More so. Custom and project work is exactly where flat overhead allocation misleads most, because no two jobs consume the same resources.

Is this only for larger manufacturers?

No. Smaller operations often have more of their working capital tied up in inventory proportionally, which makes the cash question more urgent rather than less.