What Does a Part-Time Finance Director Do?

A part-time finance director oversees the financial operations of a company or organization. While many firms employ full-time directors, some companies split the role between two part-time directors, each of whom has a special area of expertise. Small companies sometimes employ part-time rather than full-time finance directors because there is not sufficient work to keep a full-time director busy.

The operations of many organizations are controlled by a board of directors and a part-time finance director may have a seat on this board. In such instances, the director provides the chairperson and the other board members with reports that detail the organization’s recent financial performance. The finance director may be responsible for managing the company’s budget as a whole, as well as developing annual performance goals for the finance department. During company expansions, the part-time finance director is responsible for securing funding from lenders or investors and during economic downturns the finance director is usually responsible for finding ways to cut costs.

In most instances, the part-time finance director is the senior most employee within the finance department. Therefore, the director has the ultimate responsibility for hiring and firing employees although directors at large firms often allow regional managers to recruit their own direct reports. Finance directors set production and performance goals for regional finance managers and the director normally holds regular meetings during which the company's progress towards these goals is tracked. Typically, a finance director has the authority to reassign goals mid-year if one department falls short of expectations or if another department surpasses its goal sooner than expected.

A part-time manager normally works half as many hours as a full-time director. Some part-time directors choose to work on the busiest days of the week while others report to work each day, but only stay for half a day. At firms with two part-time directors, one of these individuals may handle internal accounts while the other may take care of tax reporting and external relations with financiers and shareholders. Laws in some nations enable a single individual to serve as a part-time director at more than one firm, although such individuals must be careful not to compromise proprietary information about either company.

Typically, a part-time finance director is an individual with a college degree in finance, accounting or a related topic. Many firms prefer to promote from within in which case a director may be an individual who spent several years working in junior roles within the finance department. Other companies appoint well-known people to the board of directors in which case a part-time finance director may be a semi-retired accountant, government minister or a prominent figure from industry.