Finance playbook
How the Finance Team keeps one true ledger, gets a Startup paid, governs every dollar going out, closes each month, and reads runway weekly.
Finance keeps one true ledger, gets the Startup paid, governs every dollar going out, and says each week whether the business survives. The Finance Team does all four with three Roles and no sign-offs.
One ledger, many projections
Every Action that moves money posts Entries to one double-entry ledger. Revenue, margin, MRR, and runway are projections of those Entries, never numbers someone types in.
Stripe is the rail. Each charge, fee, refund, and payout arrives as a Transaction and counts once it reconciles to the Entries already posted. The funds flow follows one dollar from card to bank.
The unit of profit and loss is the Startup, even when one Company holds many. Each keeps its own books, so it can graduate to its own Company or be sold whole. Every number cites the Policy it was computed under, as Policies explains.
Who wakes first
A new Startup runs on about four Roles, and none of them sits on the Finance Team. Until the first paid Order, the Founder reads cash and Cost in the weekly loop.
The first paid Order wakes the Billing Specialist. The first month with revenue wakes the Finance Lead to close it. The first funded Demand Budget or Supplier bill wakes the Treasurer.
Money coming in
Getting paid covers the inbound side: charging by Order, Subscription, Meter, or accepted outcome. Two rules shape it. An outcome bills only after the Customer accepts it, and access pauses only after Dunning has run its last retry.
Revenue recognition decides which of those dollars count, and where. Outside revenue and captive revenue never share a total.
Money going out
Every dollar out runs under three controls, and none of them is a sign-off.
| Lever | What it bounds | Who sets it |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | How much each Team may spend this month | Finance Lead, from the Founder's plan |
| Limit | How much one Role or Mandate may move at once | Finance Lead, recorded as a Decision |
| Spend state | Which spending is allowed at all | Tripwires on runway, moved by the Treasurer |
In FREE, spend runs inside its budget and Limits. In TIGHT, only spend against a signed Mandate with an amount and an expiry goes out. In HOLD, only committed obligations go out: payroll, tax, and bills already owed.
Tripwires move the state on their own. By default, default alive below 1 moves a Startup to TIGHT, and runway under three months moves it to HOLD. Each move is a Decision on the record, and the brakes show how a state binds every Action at once.
An Action above its Limit becomes an Approval for the next Role up. Refunds, payouts, price changes, and ad spend are one-way decisions, so each also waits out a delay window. Any watcher can pause, redirect, or cancel it; untouched, it proceeds.
The finance rhythm
Most of the Finance Team's work runs on a schedule, and every Action ends in a record.
| Cadence | Work |
|---|---|
| Daily | Dunning retries; Tax filing totals sales per jurisdiction |
| Weekly | Default-alive check; spend against each budget |
| Monthly | Monthly close by working day 5; the unit-economics review; the investor and Founder report |
| Per deadline | Each tax return, signed by an officer of the Company |
The close reconciles every Transaction, recognizes revenue, and locks the Period. A locked Period never changes; a later correction posts to the open Period with a reference to the original. Each Process and its Workflows are listed under the Finance Team's processes.
Sales tax attaches to the seller, and the seller is the Company, so tax totals run across every Startup it holds. A Startup selling $40,000 into one state may owe nothing alone and owe tax beside three siblings. The Sales tax row holds the rules.
Default alive
Every week the Default-alive check reads cash, net burn, and growth. Cash is the Startup's own balance or the budget its Studio allocated; burn is fully loaded Cost, human minutes included.
The answer is a number. Default alive at 1 or more means profit arrives before the cash runs out. A Startup below 1 learns it while there is still time to cut spend, raise, or change course.
Example
A Dataset API that sells verified business addresses closes its month on working day 3. Finn, its Finance Lead, reconciles 1,214 Transactions, locks the Period, and finds one Offer at minus 4% contribution. The Decision raises that Offer's per-call Price from $0.004 to $0.006.
Next
- Unit economics: what each sale costs, and when paid Plays open.
- Finance Team: Roles, Processes, and Metrics.
- Legal floor: the obligations the Finance Team meets.