A single monthly pack that brings profit, cash and operating measures into one format, released on a date you can put in the calendar. Revenue is split by channel so marketplace, direct and wholesale do not hide inside one line. Gross margin sits beside it, with the costs that actually belong to delivering the sale. Burn, headcount cost and runway are shown in the same view so the leadership conversation is about the month, not about which file to trust. The format does not change from month to month; only the figures do. We agree cut-offs, currency treatment and the handful of KPIs that matter for your stage, then keep that contract. The pack is the artefact the rest of the desk work hangs on.
Six things we build, and what each one answers
The desk is a small set of artefacts, not a catalogue of “strategic finance”. Each module has a job: close the month, see cash, test whether growth pays, brief the board, explain the plan, and keep the pipes from leaking. You can buy one sprint or run them as a monthly rhythm.
Monthly reporting pack
What the pack always holds
- Revenue by channel
- Gross margin
- Burn and headcount cost
- Runway in months of cash
Further lines are added only when they change a decision. A kitchen-sink pack is how the close slips past week two.
Cash, unit economics, board
Rolling 13-week cash forecast
A weekly model of money in and money out that looks thirteen weeks ahead, long enough to see payroll, rent, tax and a slow debtor before they become a surprise. Receipts follow your actual collection pattern rather than a flat “thirty days” assumption, and payments follow supplier terms you already live with. We keep a base case, a slower case and a stretch case in the same file so a delayed receivable or a pulled-forward campaign can be tested without rebuilding the sheet. The forecast is updated on the same rhythm as the monthly pack, so cash and profit are telling the same story. It is a working tool for the operator who has to decide what can be committed this week.
Unit economics and cohort model
A model of whether growth is paying for itself. Cost of acquisition is what you spend to win a customer, counted the way your channels actually invoice. Payback is how many months of contribution it takes to earn that cost back. Retention is whether a cohort — the group of customers who started in the same period — is still buying, still subscribed, or quietly leaving. Contribution margin is what remains after the variable costs of delivering the product or service, before rent and central salaries. We cut those measures by product and by channel so you can see which growth is worth feeding and which is only volume. The model sits beside the monthly pack rather than in a side workbook nobody opens.
Board and investor pack
An eight-to-twelve slide set of the numbers the board actually debates, with a short written comment on what moved and why. There is a version for the board or investor meeting and a slightly fuller version for the internal team that has to explain the same figures the next morning. Charts follow the monthly pack, so a director cannot be shown a different margin from the one operations used last Tuesday. We prepare the pack on a calendar that leaves time for your own narrative, not at midnight before the call. The aim is a meeting that starts on the decision, because the arithmetic is already settled and cited back to source.
Plan, pipes, dashboard
Budget versus actuals and variance review
Each month we set the pack against the plan you are steering to and write down where the gaps are. A variance is simply the difference between what you planned and what happened; the useful work is naming the cause in language a non-specialist can use in a meeting. We separate mix, timing and true over- or under-spend so “marketing is over” is not the end of the sentence. Where the plan itself is now wrong, we mark the lines that should be recast rather than defended. The review is issued with the monthly pack so the same week that closes the month also resets the next one. Over a quarter the file becomes a record of what you learned, not a stack of unexplained red cells.
Data plumbing and dashboard
The unglamorous layer that makes the rest possible: bank exports, payment processors, billing, the accounting system and, where it helps, the commerce or CRM feed, landed in one place with names that match. From that layer we build a dashboard in Looker Studio, Power BI or Google Sheets — whichever you already live in — so the daily glance and the monthly pack are cousins, not rivals. We do not rip out a working stack to install a fashionable one. The plumbing is documented so a figure on a tile can be rebuilt from the source file if someone challenges it. When a feed breaks, the break is visible on the same day rather than three weeks later in a close that will not tie.
Tools we plug into
Ledgers and commerce
Xero and QuickBooks for companies that post in the cloud; NetSuite when the group has already outgrown a single-entity file. Stripe for collections and billing events; Shopify when the storefront is the source of orders, refunds and fees. We read what you already run. We do not ask you to migrate in order to start.
Pipeline and presentation
HubSpot when the CRM is the honest record of pipeline; Looker Studio or Power BI when a dashboard is already in the culture; Google Sheets when the working layer still lives in a shared drive. The point is one grain of data, presented in the tool your team will actually open on a Monday.
What we don't do
Bookkeeping, filings and audit sit elsewhere
We do not keep the books, prepare statutory accounts or file them. That work belongs with your accountant, who already holds the chart of accounts and the filing calendar. We do not audit. If you need assurance, you want a licensed audit firm. We do not issue investment recommendations or tell you which instrument to buy; if you need that conversation, take it to a licensed adviser. We do not sit in the finance chair. We feed whoever holds that seat with a pack they can defend.
Deliverable formats
- Monthly pack as a dated PDF plus the working spreadsheet
- Cash and unit models in Google Sheets or Excel
- Board pack as slides, with a short comment page
- Dashboard in Looker Studio, Power BI or Sheets
Pick the module that unblocks this month
If you are unsure, send last month’s P&L and name the decision that is waiting on a figure.