Your whole finance team, one plan.
A boutique fractional CFO practice for early-stage startups: bookkeeping, analysis and CFO strategy under one roof, matched to your stage and your budget.
Built because the numbers kept arriving too late to use.
Aura was founded in 2020 by Zoya Mirza, CPA, out of a pattern she kept meeting in high-growth and investor-backed companies: the books were kept by someone who did not watch the business run.
The result was always the same shape. Numbers that did not match what the founder knew to be true, no reliable view of cash, investors asking questions the reporting could not answer, and processes that held until the month they did not.
What we actually do about it
We work as an embedded finance partner rather than an outsourced service. That means:
- — Processes built to survive the next stage, not just this month
- — Data rooms assembled the way investors read them
- — Runway forecast closely enough to act on
- — Cash and data leaks closed at the source
Roots in corporate audit and enterprise risk, with live engagements across Canada, the United States, Mexico and the EU.
What the fractional finance team does
Five areas. Most engagements start in one or two and widen as the company does.
Accounting & financial reporting
- Month-end close, on time
- Revenue recognition and cost allocation to standard
- Forecasting, budgeting and runway
- Scenario analysis
- Working with your auditors and tax advisors
Financial planning & analysis
- Planning and budgeting
- KPI development and tracking
- Variance and business performance reviews
- Pricing, unit economics and hiring plans
- Cash flow and liquidity planning
Fundraising & investor relations
- Data rooms built the way investors read them
- Valuation logic and term support — SAFE, equity, debt
- Cap table, option pool and dilution scenarios
- Leading diligence
- Board and investor reporting, and being in the room
Operations & systems
- Procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, record-to-report
- SOPs and training, so the process outlives the hire
- Audit trails for future regulatory compliance
- Tool selection and implementation
- Continuous review of what has been built
Risk & compliance
- Local tax, legal and financial compliance
- Internal controls, designed and monitored
- Insurance — D&O, liability, cyber
- FX, legal, regulatory and financial risk
- Covenant compliance on any debt raised
We start by finding out what is actually there.
Every engagement opens with an assessment of the finance function as it stands — how money moves, where the data gaps are, and which risks are live. Then we build in priority order.
Reconstruct cash and runway
Where the money actually is, and how long it lasts.
Review revenue, billing and collections
What is owed, what is arriving, and what is quietly not.
Assess reporting and visibility
Which questions the numbers can answer today, and which they cannot.
Evaluate tools and processes
What the stack supports, and what it is quietly costing.
Identify risks and control gaps
The things that break under growth, found before they do.
Then we build
We agree with leadership what has to exist first, and put in the foundation: reliable reporting, cash management, and the core operating processes around them.
The object is to move from finance that reacts to finance that informs — a function that produces decisions rather than explanations.
You keep everything. The models, the processes and the data room are yours, and they work without us.
Your budget. Our whole team.
Tell us what you can spend and we deploy the right mix — CFO strategy where judgement is needed, senior analysis and execution everywhere else. One monthly plan, matched to your stage.
All packages include a $350 one-time setup fee.
Or buy the hours on their own
Published rates. Every package price above is these hours, blended and discounted.
If the basics are all you need
Reconciliations, transaction categorisation and the monthly close. Priced by transaction volume, available as a standalone service.
Who you actually get
Eight people, all senior. You work with the ones below, not with whoever is free that week.
Big-4 alum who builds and runs the finance function end to end — close and revenue recognition, runway, forecasting, KPI reporting, unit economics, data rooms, cap tables and governance — then translates it into a story investors can fund. Has carried founders through multi-million-dollar raises. Splits her time between Paris and Montréal.
Twenty years across banking, capital, entrepreneurship and investing, having managed portfolios and transactions over $1B in commercial banking and real estate finance. Former co-founder of a cross-border renewable energy venture. She helps companies raise and structure the right mix of capital for the business they actually are.
Insurance and risk management, with a track record structuring and protecting businesses across real estate, construction, professional services and emerging ventures. Having completed a prior exit, he brings an operator's read on risk — and an active investor's read on what makes a venture worth backing.
Builds the financial infrastructure companies need to scale: FP&A, cash management, operational finance and finance process design. A specialist in getting a business financing-ready — investor models, data rooms, and the right mix of debt, grants and equity. Previously co-led startup sourcing at Angeles Investors, reviewing 200+ companies a year, so he knows how the other side reads a deck.
A CFA charterholder who turns financial and product complexity into decisions. At Best Buy he owned forecasting and budgeting for major businesses and ran the enterprise cash model behind roughly $7B of short-term investments; he has since built investor models and helped raise seed capital for an AI startup. Fifteen years of product and strategy alongside it — Deloitte, 3M, UnitedHealth — so he can tell you what to build as well as what it costs.
Has sat on every side of the table: an investor who has evaluated over 2,000 companies and helped manage a regulated portfolio of 800+, inside accelerators, and now founder of a portfolio intelligence platform. Her work on why good companies get overlooked was featured in the European Commission's 2025 report on the gender investment gap. She starts before the deck: should you raise at all, how much do you actually need, and does the plan reach either an exit or scale.
A decade of full-cycle bookkeeping, monthly closes, reconciliations, payroll and reporting — books that withstand diligence. Runs high-volume transaction environments for seed-to-Series A SaaS and AI companies, turning hundreds of monthly entries into statements that feed straight into dashboards and investor updates.
Turns noisy data into decisions. Came from capital markets finance at CIBC modelling multi-billion-dollar portfolios, and builds driver-based models, budget-to-actuals and runway scenarios for seed-stage founders. Real-time dashboards, automated risk maps, predictive expense models.
Why Aura, and not an outsourced bookkeeper
The work overlaps at the edges. What differs is what happens after the books are closed.
| Aura | Other outsourced providers | |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Embedded partner. Strategic and hands-on, with books that reflect how the business actually runs. | Transactional and bookkeeping-focused, with limited review after month end. |
| Investor prep | Data rooms, board decks and CFO support that faces the investor directly. | Little senior involvement, and rarely any fundraising experience with VCs. |
| Scope | Live engagements across Canada, the US, Mexico and the EU, and a network that comes with them. | Local compliance only. Connections are not part of the service. |
| Flexibility | Packages, à la carte hours, standalone bookkeeping, and equity arrangements where they fit. | Flat hourly or a fixed fee, whatever the question. |
| Seniority | A CPA-led team where the senior people are on the account, not just on the pitch. | Sold by a partner, delivered by whoever is available. |
We act as your embedded finance partner — aligned with your goals, invested in your outcome.
How we start
Four steps, usually inside two weeks.
Discovery call
Where it hurts today, how the company is set up, what is coming next.
Proposal
A scope written against what we heard: deliverables, pricing and timelines, with the hours shown.
Contract and kickoff
An MSA, then a call to introduce the people who will actually be on the account.
Onboarding and access
Tools, reports and platform access — QuickBooks, Stripe, Notion — and the work begins.
Let's find out what your numbers are not telling you.
A discovery call is thirty minutes and costs nothing. You will leave it knowing where the gaps are, whether or not you work with us.
Book a discovery call →Thank you for considering Aura as a partner in your growth.