Finance
The Finance Team moves and records the money: Invoices, dunning, refunds within a Limit, payouts, the monthly close, tax, and runway.
Agents fill its three seats from the first day.
What it owns
How it runs
Three Roles staff the Team: the Finance Lead keeps the books, the Billing Specialist collects, and the Treasurer governs cash going out. Each wakes on a trigger: the first paid Order, the first month to close, the first bill or funded Demand Budget. A Human can take any seat with no other change.
Every money move posts Entries to one double-entry ledger, and every Stripe Transaction reconciles to them. Each Startup sells through its own connected account and keeps its own profit and loss.
Every Role that spends, refunds, or pays works inside a Limit and the Startup's spend state. An Action above its Limit becomes an Approval for the next Role up. Refunds, payouts, price changes, and ad spend also wait out a delay window that any watcher can use to pause them.
Dunning and Tax filing run daily, and the Default-alive check runs weekly. The Monthly close locks each Period by working day 5, and the unit-economics review follows it.
The playbook explains how the Team works. Five chapters go deeper: the funds flow, getting paid, revenue recognition, policies, and unit economics. The Finance Team's processes lists every Process it runs.
Roles
| Role | Definition |
|---|---|
| Finance Lead | The Finance Lead keeps the books: it closes each Period, reports tax at the entity total, and sets the money Limits every Role works within. |
| Billing Specialist | The Billing Specialist bills, charges, and collects: it bills on done, retries failed payments, and refunds within its Limit. |
| Treasurer | The Treasurer manages cash: it pays Suppliers and Partners, keeps spend inside each envelope, and reports the default-alive line weekly. |
Processes
Plays
None.
Metrics
| Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Monthly recurring revenue | Revenue from active Subscriptions, normalized to one month. |
| Gross margin | Revenue minus direct delivery cost, as a share of revenue. |
| Days to close | Working days from month end to a locked Period. |
| Recovery rate | Share of failed payments collected within 30 days. |
| Runway | Months until cash runs out at the trailing three-month net burn. |
| Fully loaded Cost | Fully loaded Cost sums every Cost the Startup’s Actions post, plus its share of shared Cost under the stated allocation rule. Owner: Finance Lead. |
| Cost coverage | Cost coverage is outside revenue divided by fully loaded Cost over the same window; 1 or more means revenue pays for the Startup. Owner: Finance Lead. |
| Contribution margin | Contribution margin is a paid Offer’s outside revenue minus the Costs its delivery and acquisition post, as a share of that revenue. Owner: Finance Lead. |
| Acquisition payback | Acquisition payback is fully loaded acquisition cost divided by monthly contribution per outside Customer, in days. Owner: Finance Lead. |
| Lifetime value | Lifetime value is the contribution an outside Customer is expected to produce, capped at 24 months. Owner: Finance Lead. |
| Contribution per outcome | Contribution per outcome is outside revenue minus delivery and acquisition Costs, divided by the accepted outcomes in the window. Owner: Finance Lead. |
| Days sales outstanding | Days sales outstanding is the average days from an Invoice being sent to its payment. Owner: Billing Specialist. |
| Runway days | Runway days is the days of cash left at the average net burn of the last 90 days. Owner: Treasurer. |