A family office CFO, by the month.
Held by J.R. Barbieri, CFO to five family offices for eighteen years, for a few families at a time.
Starts within seven business days of the signed letter. Week one is the Controls Check. In English or Spanish. Week one alone: The Controls Check or The Structure Check, $3,500.
- 10 families at most
- 7 business days to start
- 5 days to the first finding
- 12 months, the price fixed
One price up to $500 million across the family's entities. Above that, by letter.
A full-time single-family-office CFO: $620,000 a year, median total compensation. Morgan Stanley and Botoff Consulting, Single Family Office Compensation Report, 2025
Four instruments, one seat: the Controls Check, the tie-out, the record, and the principal's page.
The Controls Check
Money leaves a family office through a mandate, not a policy. A policy the bank does not enforce is a sentence.
What it reads Each bank's own mandate and entitlement report, against the payments policy; every account on a month of statements, traced to an entity and a line in the report.
What stays inside the engagement Which of the twenty tests, in what order, and the tolerances.
The tie-out
A report that is not tied to its source is an opinion with a logo. Every figure on the family's page comes from a row that agrees with the bank, the custodian and the ledger.
What it reads Every entity, every month: books against bank and custodian, with each break named and explained.
What stays inside the engagement The order of the reconciliation and the engine that runs it.
The record
Written once; any rewrite shows. A record an outsider can re-derive is the only one that outlives the person who kept it.
What it reads The entity register, the approval matrix, and decisions with their reasons, dated and sealed; a fingerprint anyone can recompute without us.
What stays inside the engagement The seal format is open; the family's data never leaves its systems.
The principal's page
A few positions, a few decisions and a few dates decide the rest. The page carries only those.
What it reads One page a month, no login: what the family owns, what it has committed to, what it decided; cash for the next ninety days; what needs a signature.
What stays inside the engagement The models behind the five questions below.
A path you can see before you buy, and climb once you have.
- 01Day 1
Access
Read-only logins to online banking; the mandates, the entity list and the latest report. The letter and the NDA are already signed.
- 02Day 5
The finding
The Controls Check, to the principal and the CFO together. Two banks, three entities, or nothing: whatever the documents show.
- 03Day 30
The first close
Every entity tied out on the record for the first time. Every break named.
- 04Day 60
The principal's page
The first one-page month. Cash for the next ninety days. Payments above the line, seen twice since day 30.
- 05Day 90
The year, written down
Every recurring task documented. The record exportable. The family decides whether month four happens.
Each step ends in something the family holds. On day ninety the family decides whether month four happens; nothing follows unless it does.
What the family holds, each month.
1: Week one: the Controls Check
Who can move your money, accounts no report shows, reporting rebuilt by hand, work one person holds. Each finding beside its document.
2: The close, tied out
Every entity's books against its bank, custodian and ledger, on the record, with every break explained.
3: Payments, prepared and checked
Every payment run is prepared and checked by ParetoAlpha against the invoice and the approval matrix; your signer releases it. ParetoAlpha holds no credential that can approve or release a payment.
4: The record
The entity register, the approval matrix, and decisions with their reasons, dated and sealed. Yours to take any day, checkable without us.
5: The principal's page
One page a month: what the family owns, what it has committed to, what it decided; cash for the next ninety days; what needs a signature. No login.
6: The foundation's December
Where the family has a foundation: its payout from the filed return, and the trustee letter.
7: Year-end
The package for your CPA firm and the list for your auditor, delivered by 31 January.
8: Continuity
Every recurring task written down, so the office runs when any one person is out, me included.
The five questions the principal’s page answers, every month, from the record:
- What is our idle cash costing us?
- Which manager did not earn their fee?
- Where do we look diversified but are not?
- Where do the family’s dollars and hours go?
- What is due in the next 90 days?
It prepares no tax return, gives no tax, legal or investment advice, audits no financial statement, holds no money and releases no payment.
Four questions. The engine answers each on a sample office. Then your name.
For the family office whose finance seat is empty, about to be, or held by one person with no backup. An office with a CFO in place buys week one alone. The page answers before you give a name. Then: a reply from me, usually the same business day, with three times for a thirty-minute call; one envelope the same evening; the first month’s invoice on signature, by wire or ACH; your ninety-day page within a day. No checkout, no card, no portal.
Can any one person at your office release a wire alone?
The finished document, before any of this: the specimen Controls Check on a fictitious office (PDF).
What a family can check.
ParetoAlpha does not discuss the families it works for, and will not confirm one. What a family can check before signing: the specimen, the method, the engagement letter and the NDA, the insurance certificate, a call before anything is signed, and the four promises above, each of which puts the risk on ParetoAlpha.
Week one's refund
Any month
The record is yours
The arithmetic
One person. Why that is safe.
A seven-hundred-person firm keeps your books in its systems, in its format, and continues them with the next person it assigns. The Seat keeps them in yours, in a record anyone can re-derive without me, with every recurring task written down by day ninety. If I am out for a week, the office runs on the written procedures. If I am gone, the family holds the record, the procedures and the right to leave that month. Nothing of yours lives only in my head or on my machine.
J.R. BarbieriFounder
He built his own models because no platform could answer the questions multi-generational families asked, then built ParetoAlpha so the next CFO does not have to.
No family he has worked for is named on this site, and none will be. Yours would not be either.
BA, San Francisco State University · MBA, UCAM (Murcia, Spain)
What you can read here, and what the firms publish.
| What a buyer can read before a call | ParetoAlpha | Twenty-two firms read on 7 November 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| The price | $15,000 a month, on the page | none |
| The term and the exit | Fixed twelve months; cancel any month | none |
| A refund decided by documents | Week one, by the bank's own documents | none |
| The engagement letter and the NDA | Published | none |
| A finished specimen of the deliverable | Published | none |
| The method's first principles | Published | one names a diagnostic; none its steps |
| A record anyone can verify without the firm | Yes | none |
| Who holds the seat | One person, by name | teams, with names and credentials |
| Client names, counts or assets | Not published, by rule | assets, headcount, awards |
The firms are multi-family offices, trust companies, the Big Four’s private practices and accounting firms that sell outsourced family office finance; their pages were read on the date above and none is named here. The last two rows are where they are stronger, and they are printed for that reason.
Before anything is signed.
ParetoAlpha, Inc. is not registered with the SEC, is not a CPA firm and is not a law firm. It keeps the books and the record, and releases no payment. The twelve House Principles are printed on one page, dated.
- Read-only, in your own systems. Your office creates the logins, logs their use and can revoke them any day.
- ParetoAlpha holds no credential that can approve or release a payment. Payment runs are prepared for your signer, who releases every one.
- The family's name appears nowhere: not on this site, not in an example, not in a reference, without written consent.
- No copy of your documents leaves your systems. The record is sealed as fingerprints; the bytes stay with you.
- Professional liability $2 million per claim and $2 million aggregate; cyber liability $1 million. The certificate is in the envelope.
- I am not a CPA. This is not an audit or an attest engagement.
- Under the letter, ParetoAlpha's liability is limited to the fee paid.
- ParetoAlpha holds no SOC report or ISO certificate. I complete your security questionnaire instead.
- The engagement letter and the NDA come before any access. The signed engagement letter governs. Read the Controls Check letter and the NDA; the Seat’s letter adds the monthly schedule above and the cancellation line, and nothing else.
- For the questionnaire itself: the nine questions counsel and IT ask, answered on one page, printable, each answer a sentence from the letter or this site.
Request the CFO Seat.
Year-end is when wires move, staff take leave and the December grants go out. It is when who can move money alone, and who holds a task nobody else can do, gets tested.
For the firm or recruiter that introduces a family. ParetoAlpha pays no referral fee and takes none. I manage no money. The finding goes only to the family. Whoever introduced you learns that the check is done only if you agree to it in the letter.