The usual advice is a revenue threshold. That is the wrong test, and it is why so many companies hire finance leadership a year later than they needed it.
The real trigger
The moment to act is the first time you face a decision your numbers cannot answer. Should we take this distributor on the terms offered? Which product line is actually funding the others? Can we survive the working capital gap this order creates? Bookkeeping tells you what happened. None of those questions is about what happened.
What good looks like
- Unit economics built from the transaction up, not inferred from the P&L down
- A forecast that survives being interrogated by someone who wants it to be wrong
- A monthly pack short enough that the board actually reads it
- Someone who will say no to a deal that looks good and is not
If nobody in the building can tell you which customer is unprofitable, you do not have a reporting problem. You have a decision-making problem wearing a reporting problem as a disguise.