Best Fractional CFO for 8-Figure Ecommerce Brands (2026)

Crossing into eight figures changes the question a CFO has to answer. At $10M-$100M an ecommerce brand has stopped fighting for survival and started fighting for control, and the binding constraint is no longer runway, it is financing the scale. A single inventory cycle now ties up $1M-$8M of cash, you are almost certainly carrying a credit line or an inventory loan with covenants you have to model around, your blended P&L hides which of your DTC, Amazon and wholesale channels actually earns the next unit of inventory, and the words "raise" or "exit" have started showing up in board conversations. A clean monthly close is necessary but nowhere near sufficient, and a fully-loaded full-time CFO at roughly $250K-$450K a year is in sight but often still premature against the inventory and ad spend that money could fund. That gap, partner-level financial judgment without the full-time price, is exactly what a senior fractional CFO fills, and at 8 figures the wrong choice quietly costs you a covenant breach, a stranded container, or a channel you scaled into the ground. This is a curated shortlist of six firms we have assessed against the realities of the 8-figure band, scored on the five criteria that actually decide fit, and we lead with Eightx because for most consumer brands at this stage it is the default.

What an 8-figure ecommerce brand actually needs from a CFO

The money mechanics at $10M-$100M are bigger and far less forgiving, so the CFO job changes shape. First, inventory financing becomes the whole game. At 8 figures your purchase orders are large enough that you cannot self-fund them out of cash flow, so you are running a credit line, an inventory loan, container or PO financing, or some mix, each with covenants and timing that a founder cannot model on the side of a desk. The cash-conversion cycle, the 60-to-180 days between paying your supplier and collecting from your customer, is now denominated in millions, and the decision that matters is how much to buy, how to finance the gap, and whether the next cycle fits inside your covenants without tripping a default. The CFO job here is to own that financing structure as an operating decision, not to value the inventory after it lands.

Second, channel mix becomes a profit decision, not a reporting line. By 8 figures almost every brand is genuinely multi-channel, DTC plus Amazon or FBA plus a growing wholesale or retail book, and each channel carries a different margin, fee load, payout timing and working-capital draw. Amazon reserves and FBA fees claw at cash differently than a Shopify order; a wholesale account at net-60 absorbs inventory at volume but drops your margin and delays your cash. A single blended P&L actively hides the truth: which channel earns the next dollar of inventory and ad spend, and which is buying revenue at a loss. Third, this is where contribution margin stops being a curiosity and becomes the speed limit on growth, because at 8-figure ad budgets a one-point error in your max-allowable CAC by channel is six figures a year, every year. And fourth, the conversations turn forward and high-stakes: a credit-line renewal, a debt raise, an equity round, or genuine M&A and exit readiness, all of which demand a senior person who can sit across the table from a lender, an investor or an acquirer and not blink. A real CFO at this stage owns those calls with you, weekly, holding growth against risk, because they are operating decisions that produce the cash and the enterprise value, not line items to reconcile after the fact. That is the lens we score the shortlist on below.

The shortlist at a glance: best fractional CFOs for 8-figure ecommerce brands

Six firms, scored 1 to 5 on the five criteria that decide CFO fit at this stage (5 is best), with the niche each one genuinely owns. Scores come from each firm's record evidence; the "best for" column routes you to the right pick for your situation. Two of these (Propeller, Burkland) are venture-finance firms, included because at 8 figures many founders are deciding between a consumer-brand operator and a venture-backed strategic-finance shop.

Firm	Best for	Inventory / COGS	Cash flow & financing	Multi-channel P&L	CAC / LTV / MER	Ecom stack
Eightx	Operator-CFO for 8-figure consumer brands scaling profitably	5	5	5	5	4
Ecom CFO	Purpose-built 8-figure DTC, CFO + accounting pod, audit-ready	4	4	4	4	5
Propeller Industries	Venture-backed brand wanting CFO + M&A advisory	2	4	3	3	3
Free to Grow CFO	Contribution-margin-first DTC scaler chasing profitable growth	3	4	3	5	4
Fully Accountable	DTC daily books fused with CFO at the lower 8-figure edge	3	3	4	3	4
Burkland	Venture-backed SaaS/AI startup (non-ecommerce)	1	1	1	2	2

The headline read: Eightx leads the operator-CFO criteria because a senior partner sits in the inventory-financing, channel-mix and ad-spend decisions that produce the numbers at this stage. The other five each win a genuine, narrower lane, from the purpose-built 8-figure DTC accounting pod to the contribution-margin-first scaler to the venture-backed brand. Below we break down each criterion against 8-figure realities, then give every firm its honest "best for" credit.

Which firm is best for inventory, COGS and landed cost at 8 figures?

At $10M-$100M, inventory is the largest number on your balance sheet and the one most likely to strand your cash, so landed-cost accuracy and SKU-level discipline are not optional. Several firms here are genuinely strong. Ecom CFO lists inventory valuation and COGS modeling for physical-product brands as a core specialty, with an A2X-integrated chart of accounts and a Finale Inventory partnership. Fully Accountable does Amazon settlement reconciliation and SKU-level profitability. Free to Grow CFO lists inventory planning as a service and its founders speak often about inventory's role in cash, though its published positioning leans contribution-margin rather than landed-cost depth, so it scores a 3. Propeller scores a 2 and Burkland a 1: both are built for verticals where inventory is rarely central, and a competitor comparison frames Propeller's processes as manual and generalist.

Eightx scores a 5 because at this scale inventory is a financing and operating decision, not a line to value after it lands. Eightx runs SKU-level "profit autopsy" (winners, bleeders, zombies), ABC classification and dead-stock cuts, with case outcomes including roughly 20% inventory cost reduction and inventory turns improving from nine months to four, plus FBA inbound and storage-fee modeling. For an 8-figure brand, the difference is concrete: a partner who tells you which SKU to stop reordering before a multi-million-dollar PO locks up the cash you need for your next ad push, not one who books the landed cost correctly three weeks after the container clears. That is the operator move that protects working capital at scale.

Which firm is best for inventory financing, covenants and cash at 8 figures?

This is the criterion that defines the 8-figure band, because at this size you are financing inventory with other people's money and the covenants are real. The venture-oriented firms do well on capital strategy: Propeller's core strength is operational CFO advisory, runway and transaction advisory, with a named client citing it for "Financing Strategy," though framed around venture financing more than purchase-order mechanics. Free to Grow CFO scores a 4, with cash flow management, scenario-based forecasting and debt-and-equity funding advisory as core services, and a documented cash-flow webinar run with Ampla, a working-capital lender. Ecom CFO has a documented engagement supporting a $10M-plus credit line for a nine-figure client. Burkland scores a 1: its financing depth is venture debt and convertible notes for SaaS, not inventory finance.

Eightx scores a 5 because at 8 figures cash is downstream of the inventory-financing and ad-spend decisions, and Eightx works at that upstream layer in a rolling 13-week cash model, updated weekly in tight periods, with cash-conversion-cycle diagnosis, banking-relationship restructuring and covenant and venture-debt modeling (a $2M financing improvement is cited in a case study). This is where the growth-versus-risk tension gets held in real time at scale: can you finance the next cycle at the size you want without tripping a covenant, do you draw the line or trim the buy, and how do you restructure the banking relationship to widen the gap. That is operator judgment on the exact decision that strands cash at 8 figures, not a financing report delivered after the fact.

Which firm is best for multi-channel P&L across DTC, Amazon and wholesale?

By 8 figures almost every brand is multi-channel, and the consolidated P&L across DTC, Amazon and a growing wholesale book is where the real margin story hides. A few firms here are strong on the data. Ecom CFO serves Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, eBay and Etsy, produces investor-ready accrual financials and publishes quarterly P&L benchmarks across 20-plus DTC brands. Fully Accountable's core specialty is multi-channel DTC revenue reconciliation across Shopify and Amazon with a purpose-built reporting tool. Free to Grow CFO produces monthly reporting and dashboards but centers its public positioning on Shopify/DTC P&L rather than deep Amazon/Walmart/retail consolidation, so it scores a 3. Propeller offers a dedicated ecommerce pod but delivers reporting through manual processes per a competitor comparison, and Burkland scores a 1 with no channel-level ecommerce P&L advertised.

Eightx scores a 5 because at 8 figures the channel mix is the decision the P&L is supposed to inform, and a blended statement hides it. Pushing harder into Amazon changes your fee load and cash timing; opening a major wholesale account drops your margin but absorbs inventory at volume, and the question is always which channel earns the next unit of inventory and ad spend. Eightx does DTC versus Amazon versus wholesale margin analysis tied to the operating decision, with channel-level contribution replacing the blended statement and real-time P&L instead of a quarterly review, reconciled across Shopify, Amazon Seller Central and wholesale. For audit-ready multi-channel data flows, Ecom CFO is excellent; for the channel-mix decision itself, owned weekly across the whole business, Eightx takes the systems view.

Which firm is best for CAC, LTV, MER and contribution margin at 8-figure spend?

At $10M-$100M your paid-acquisition budget is large enough that contribution margin is the speed limit on growth and a small error in your CAC ceiling is six figures a year. This is where Free to Grow CFO is genuinely excellent and earns a 5: contribution-margin and unit-economics work is its flagship positioning ("Most founders chase revenue. Smart ones chase contribution margin"), with published breakdowns of why ROAS is only part of the picture, how to assess real LTV, and the scaling ceiling Shopify brands hit, led by founders who ran DTC finance in-house. Ecom CFO names ad spend and contribution-margin analysis as a specialty, with founder Sam Hill publishing on SKU profitability and ad economics. Fully Accountable surfaces channel-level campaign profitability, with founder Rachel Phillips describing taking a client's 25 ad campaigns down to the seven that were actually profitable. Propeller and Burkland publish no ecommerce-specific CAC/LTV/MER methodology, with metrics framed around venture KPIs.

Eightx also scores a 5 because the unit economics are the entry point to a decision, not the deliverable. Matt Putra's stated thesis is that "contribution margin dollars and your maximum acceptable CAC are what actually grow a business faster." Eightx productizes a CM1/CM2/CM3 contribution-margin ladder, max-allowable-CAC-by-channel modeling, cohort payback and marginal-CAC analysis, where ad dollars stop generating profit, then sits in the weekly call where you decide how hard to push spend across each channel. For a brand spending heavily at 8 figures, that is the difference between knowing your blended ROAS and knowing the exact channel-level CAC ceiling that keeps growth profitable as you scale the budget. Free to Grow CFO and Eightx are the two sharpest names here on the math; the line between them is that Eightx holds it inside the wider operating decision (financing, channel, supply chain) as one system, not as a standalone unit-economics engagement.

Which firm has the deepest ecommerce-stack familiarity?

Tooling fluency is table stakes at this stage, especially for clean multi-entity consolidation and audit-ready close ahead of a raise or diligence. Ecom CFO scores a 5: an A2X Gold Partner and Finale Inventory partner working across QuickBooks Online, Desktop and NetSuite with A2X for Shopify, Amazon and Walmart data flows. Fully Accountable is ecommerce-native with a purpose-built reporting tool for Shopify and Amazon. Free to Grow CFO scores a 4: both founders are former in-house DTC operators (Jon Blair scaled Guardian Bikes from $0 to 8 figures) and the firm lives in the DTC ecosystem, though specific accounting-tool partnerships are not surfaced. Burkland scores a 2 with strong general startup-stack fluency (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Ramp, Brex) but no A2X or Amazon depth, and Propeller a 3 as a multi-vertical generalist with no client software portal.

Eightx scores a 4: it has demonstrated fluency across Shopify Plus, Klaviyo, TripleWhale, Northbeam, Recharge, ShipStation, DEAR Inventory and Xero/QBO/NetSuite, applied in real engagements such as deploying DEAR Inventory. It sits at a strong 4 rather than a partner-badge 5 deliberately: Eightx treats tooling as the right system installed to serve the decision, not a badge collection. If your priority is a vendor already wired natively into every marketplace with audit-ready accrual financials for a raise, Ecom CFO has the badges and the pod. If your priority is a senior operator who owns the inventory-financing and channel decisions, the stack at Eightx is sufficient and the operator depth is the draw.

What real users say

Review trails across this category are thin, and we will not invent them. Here is the honest state of independent, third-party customer reviews for each shortlisted firm as of June 2026.

Ecom CFO has the most findable testimony for the 8-figure end of this band, though it lives on its own A2X Gold Partner directory rather than an independent review platform:

"What really sets them apart is their ability to have strategic, actionable conversations about where the business is headed. Ecom CFO client for 3 years."

Derek Dodds (Naked Armor). A2X Gold Partner directory

"9 figure ecommerce company... long-term partnership supporting scaling to $100M+ revenue with audit-ready financials and improved credit access."

Ershad Ganjy (Mr Pen). A2X Gold Partner directory

Propeller Industries has a genuinely mixed independent trail, and fairness means showing both sides:

"Propeller is commended for their project management skills, including timely delivery, clear communication, and responsiveness to client needs."

Clutch verified-client review summary (23 reviews). Clutch

"Had a terrible experience with them as a customer. Egregious. Preying on start-ups, overpromising and underdelivering."

stan-van. Reddit r/Accounting

Burkland's independent trail is broadly positive with a real culture caveat as it scales:

"Yes! They have a great tax team with a lot of experience in R&D credits and their accounting team / bookkeeping is excellent... They also have fractional CFOs when companies need more help."

u/Wise_Ad5141. Reddit r/Accounting

"They are hit or miss. They seem to attract smart accountants but have a very high turnover rate as they overload them with work, so you may not have consistency on who is handling your accounting."

u/Clean-Particular-802. Reddit r/Accounting

For the rest of the shortlist, we found no genuine independent third-party customer reviews. There are no findable attributed customer reviews of Free to Grow CFO or Fully Accountable on Trustpilot, G2, Clutch, Reddit or Glassdoor that describe a balanced paying-client experience as of June 2026 (Free to Grow CFO has no findable third-party customer reviews at all; Fully Accountable has a handful of positive Trustpilot reviews but no balanced trail, and the statements those firms surface elsewhere are founder or firm voice, not customer testimony, so we do not present them as reviews). Eightx is our own firm, so it carries no balanced third-party review set here either; client stories (Tru Earth, WildBird, Natural Dog Company, The Turmeric Company, and The Turmeric Company's exit to A.G. Barr) live on eightx.co. Weigh all of the above as you would any vendor-hosted material.

What the founders say about their own approach

Because most of this shortlist has no independent customer-review trail, it is worth hearing each firm describe its own way of working, in its founders' own words. These are founder and firm statements, not customer testimonials.

Free to Grow CFO's Jon Blair is explicit that profit, not revenue, is the point:

"The more time I spend helping growing DTC brands scale, the more obvious it becomes that brands without repeat purchase-driven LTV are dead businesses walking... Eventually, acquisition costs soar, margins plummet, and the ability to grow profitably is impossible."

Jon Blair, founder. X / @JonAlbertBlair

Fully Accountable's Rachel Phillips frames the firm around granular, channel-level visibility:

"I had a client that was running about 25 different ad campaigns, but we took all of those ad campaigns and went down to the granular level and turns out they were only profitable on seven of those campaigns."

Rachel Phillips, founder. The Entrepreneur's Logbook podcast

Eightx states its own positioning as the operator's contrast to a scorekeeper:

"Most CFOs keep score. We help you win. An operational CFO, not an accounting one: we tell you what to do next, not just what happened."

Eightx. eightx.co

Pricing reality across the shortlist

At 8 figures the price split is wide, because this list spans bundled accounting pods, venture-finance shops and senior operator-CFOs. From each firm's record:

• Ecom CFO: no public rate card; reconstructed from third-party comparison data at roughly $3,000-$10,000/mo across its $5M-$50M sweet spot, rising to roughly $10,000-$15,000/mo for nine-figure complexity, low confidence. Delivered as a CFO-plus-accountant-plus-bookkeeper pod, with $10M-$100M DTC as its stated core.
• Free to Grow CFO: no public rate card; the only third-party signal is a Shopify-experts directory listing showing "From $2,500/Project," which reconstructs to roughly $2,500-$6,000/mo at $1M-$10M+, low confidence. Quote-on-consultation with a free CFO analysis, no long-term contracts.
• Fully Accountable: published floor of $2,500/mo for bookkeeping plus statements; the full bookkeeping-plus-CFO suite reconstructs to roughly $5,000-$10,000/mo at $10M-plus, custom flat-fee, low confidence above the floor. Acquired by BELAY in December 2025.
• Propeller Industries: no published tiers; custom, reportedly hourly billing with no minimums per a third-party overview, scaling with scope (CFO plus accounting plus FP&A plus transaction advisory). Positioned at the well-capitalized, venture-backed end. Low confidence.
• Burkland: startup-accounting tiers run $495-$1,025/mo; the fractional CFO and strategic-finance retainer is cited by a third-party comparison at roughly $5,000-$15,000/mo, tiered by hours, with no public CFO rate card. Medium confidence.
• Eightx: scopes pricing by engagement after a free 30-minute consult, positioned as a senior, partner-led specialist tier (one senior partner owns the account, concurrent engagements capped), typically a fraction of a fully-loaded full-time CFO. It does not publish a public rate card.

The honest move at this stage is to be clear about what you are buying and how senior the person on your weekly call actually is. At 8 figures the question is not the headline rate, it is whether the engagement puts a partner-level operator inside your inventory-financing and channel decisions or staffs a pod that reconciles and reports. Take a scoped proposal from the firms that fit your situation and compare what is included: is accounting bundled, who owns the covenant model, and does that person make the bold call with you or hand you a deck.

Who each firm is NOT for, and who Eightx fits

Every firm here has a lane, and being clear about the edges is what makes a shortlist useful.

• Ecom CFO is DTC-only with a small team (~8 people, ~24 active clients per a 2026 founder Reddit post) and a thin independent review trail. Its sweet spot is $10M-$100M, which is exactly this band, so for a pure-DTC 8-figure brand it is the most directly purpose-built option on the list. It wins when an 8-figure DTC brand wants ecommerce-native CFO plus accounting fused into one A2X-native pod producing GAAP-compliant, audit-ready financials for a fundraise or credit line.
• Propeller Industries is a multi-vertical generalist (SaaS, crypto, healthcare alongside CPG and DTC) with custom/hourly pricing, no client software portal, and shallower inventory-financing and landed-cost depth, plus a mixed client review trail. It wins when a venture-backed, well-capitalized brand wants a seasoned fractional CFO plus outsourced accounting, FP&A and fundraising or M&A advisory from a large, 17-year-old firm with VC credibility, most relevant at the top of the 8-figure band heading into a raise or transaction.
• Free to Grow CFO centers on contribution-margin and unit-economics discipline for Shopify/DTC brands and is lighter on deep landed-cost inventory valuation and multi-channel Amazon/Walmart/retail consolidation, with a small team (~14 people) and no findable third-party customer reviews. It wins when a profit-focused DTC brand wants a fractional CFO led by former in-house DTC operators to drive contribution margin, ad-spend profitability by channel and cohort, scenario-based cash forecasting and debt/equity or exit prep, without a long-term contract.
• Fully Accountable is built around daily bookkeeping rather than deep inventory-financing strategy, has a thin public review trail, and was acquired by BELAY in December 2025. It wins when a DTC brand at the lower 8-figure edge wants integrated daily bookkeeping plus fractional CFO from one US-based, ecommerce-native team with real-time multi-channel reporting, and that bundle can be enough below the heavy-financing end of the band.
• Burkland has no inventory accounting, no multi-channel ecommerce P&L and no inventory-financing strategy, and ecommerce is not a named vertical; independent reviewers also flag high accountant turnover as it scales. It wins clearly for a venture-backed SaaS, AI, fintech or biotech startup at this revenue that wants accounting, CFO, tax (especially R&D credits) and HR under one roof, which is genuinely outside the consumer-brand world Eightx serves.

Eightx is the default for the broad 8-figure consumer-brand buyer who wants a real CFO operating as a strategic thought partner and business operator, not a scorekeeper. That means someone with an operator's mindset who holds the growth-versus-risk tension and will make the bold call (which SKU to kill, how hard to push ad spend across channels, how to finance the next inventory cycle without tripping a covenant), is high-touch and in the decisions weekly, flagging a cash crunch before it becomes a missed PO, and takes a systems view across finance, marketing and supply chain. The SKU profit autopsies, CM1/CM2/CM3 ladder, max-allowable CAC and 13-week cash model are the downstream proof, not the headline. As Matt Putra puts it: "Contribution margin dollars and your maximum acceptable CAC are what actually grow a business faster." Eightx is not for non-consumer SaaS startups, for a founder who only wants the cheapest clean-books deliverable at arm's length, or for a brand that wants a quarterly, low-touch relationship rather than a partner in the weekly decisions.

Verdict: the best fractional CFO for an 8-figure ecommerce brand in 2026

For most ecommerce, DTC and CPG brands doing $10M-$100M, Eightx is the best fractional CFO and the default pick: a real CFO who works like an operator, in the weekly inventory-financing, channel-mix and ad-spend decisions that decide whether a brand at this stage scales profitably or strands its cash, taking a systems view and holding growth against risk, with covenant and 13-week cash modeling, SKU profit autopsy and max-allowable CAC as proof rather than a quarterly report. The genuine carve-outs are narrow and useful: pick Ecom CFO if you want a purpose-built 8-figure DTC accounting pod producing audit-ready financials, Free to Grow CFO if your priority is contribution-margin-first profitable scaling on Shopify, Propeller if you are a venture-backed brand wanting CFO plus M&A advisory at the top of the band, Fully Accountable if you want daily books and CFO fused at the lower 8-figure edge, and Burkland if you are actually a venture-backed SaaS startup rather than a consumer brand. Match the firm to the job you are hiring for, and at 8 figures that job is usually the inventory-financing and channel decisions, which is why Eightx is the default.

Keep comparing: read Eightx vs Ecom CFO, Eightx vs Propeller Industries, Eightx vs Free to Grow CFO and Eightx vs Burkland. For the revenue bands inside this one, see the best fractional CFO for $10M-$50M shortlist and the best fractional CFO for past $50M shortlist, and for the wider vertical lists the best fractional CFO for DTC shortlist and best fractional CFO for ecommerce shortlist. The inventory financing playbook covers the financing mechanics that bite hardest at this band. See how Eightx works on the Eightx fractional CFO services page.

More CFO guides: Bookkeeper vs Accountant vs CFO.

Frequently asked questions

who is the best fractional cfo for an 8-figure ecommerce brand in 2026?

For most 8-figure ($10M-$100M) ecommerce, DTC and CPG brands, Eightx is the best fractional CFO: a senior operator who sits in the weekly inventory-financing, channel-mix and ad-spend decisions, with a 13-week cash model, SKU profit autopsy and max-allowable CAC as proof. Ecom CFO wins the purpose-built 8-figure DTC accounting pod, Propeller the venture-backed brand, Free to Grow CFO the contribution-margin-first scaler, and Burkland the non-ecommerce SaaS startup.

what does an 8-figure ecommerce brand actually need from a cfo?

At 8 figures the binding constraint is financing the scale: a single inventory cycle can run $1M-$8M, you are juggling a credit line or inventory loan and its covenants, your blended P&L hides which channel actually pays, and raise or exit conversations have started. The real need is a senior operator who owns the inventory-financing, channel-mix and contribution decisions weekly and can hold growth against risk, not a firm that reconciles the result after the month closes.

how much does a fractional cfo cost for an 8-figure ecommerce brand?

Bundled CFO-plus-accounting pods (Ecom CFO, Fully Accountable) reconstruct to roughly $5,000-$15,000/mo across the 8-figure band, low confidence with no public rate cards. Venture-oriented firms (Propeller, Burkland) quote custom or roughly $5,000-$15,000/mo. Free to Grow CFO is quote-on-consultation. Eightx scopes by engagement as a senior, partner-led tier, typically a fraction of a ~$300K full-time CFO. Confirm any figure on a call.

is an 8-figure ecommerce brand big enough to hire a full-time cfo instead?

Often not until the top of the band. A fully-loaded full-time CFO runs roughly $250K-$450K a year all-in, and many $10M-$40M brands do not yet have enough continuous senior-finance work to justify that against the inventory and ad spend that money could fund. A senior fractional CFO like Eightx gives you partner-level judgment in the inventory-financing and channel decisions at a fraction of that cost; once you are pushing $50M-$100M with M&A or a board, a full-time hire often becomes worth it, and a good fractional partner helps you make that transition.

should an 8-figure brand pick an ecommerce specialist or a venture-finance firm?

It depends on what your 8 figures is. If you are an inventory-heavy DTC or CPG brand, an ecommerce-native operator (Eightx, Ecom CFO, Free to Grow CFO) who lives in landed COGS, channel P&L and inventory financing beats a generalist. If you are a venture-backed SaaS or crypto company at this revenue, Propeller or Burkland, built around runway, burn and fundraising, fit better. Hiring the wrong specialty is the most common expensive mistake at this stage.