Finance & FP&A

How to build a 13-week cash flow forecast as Chief of Staff and Founder's Office

Finance & FP&AFor Chief of Staff and Founder's Office3 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

You're not the CFO, but you're the one who gets Slacked at 11pm asking 'what's our runway?' before tomorrow's board call. Your current answer involves opening QuickBooks, exporting a CSV, opening Plaid's dashboard in another tab, copying Stripe MRR into a Google Sheet you inherited from a finance consultant, and spending 45 minutes reconciling numbers that don't quite match. The output is a 13-week cash flow tab that's already stale by the time you paste it into the board deck. No finance hire, no FP&A analyst, just you, four browser tabs, and a spreadsheet you're not fully sure is right.

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Finance & FP&AFor Chief of Staff and Founder's Office3 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live 13-week cash flow forecast that pulls directly from your Plaid bank feeds and Stripe revenue data — updated daily, no manual exports

Side-by-side scenario comparisons (base case, delayed fundraise, accelerated hiring) so when the CEO asks 'what if we hire 10 more engineers?' you have an answer in under a minute

A spend anomaly feed that flags unusual vendor charges and new autopay subscriptions before they hit the board deck as surprises

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Runway Analysis Scenario Analysis Transaction Insights

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Plaid bank feed data and Stripe charges, customers, and subscriptions on a schedule — transactions and balances refresh automatically so your forecast doesn't require a manual pull. QuickBooks is also wired in via scheduled sync for bills, invoices, and vendor payments, giving you accrual-basis context alongside your cash-basis Plaid data. All three surfaces — Runway Analysis, Scenario Analysis, and Transaction Insights — draw from the same synced dataset.

Prompts to copy

Build me a 13-week cash flow forecast using my Plaid bank transactions and Stripe revenue. Show weekly cash-in and cash-out, ending cash balance each week, and flag any week where we dip below $500k.

Create three scenarios on top of the base forecast: one where we delay our Series B by 6 months, one where we add 8 net new hires in Q3, and one where MRR growth slows to 5% month-over-month. Show runway and break-even for each.

Add a spending anomaly panel below the forecast — highlight any vendor charge this week that's more than 30% above its 90-day average, and list every new vendor that's appeared in the last 60 days.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Plaid in Starch — Starch syncs your bank transactions, balances, and categorized spend on a schedule. If you have multiple accounts (operating, payroll, reserve), connect all of them so the forecast reflects total cash, not just one account.

2 Connect Stripe — Starch syncs charges, invoices, and subscriptions directly. This gives the forecast real revenue inflow timing, not just MRR averages, which matters for weekly cash positioning.

3 Connect QuickBooks — Starch syncs bills, invoices, payments, vendors, and journal entries. This lets you layer in accrued expenses and AP timing that Plaid alone won't show you.

4 Open the Runway Analysis starter app from Starch's App Store — it gives you a working burn rate and projection view out of the box. Customize it to show weekly granularity instead of monthly, and set your minimum cash threshold alert to whatever your board-approved floor is.

5 Tell Starch what a 13-week view means for your business: 'Extend the projection to 91 days, show cash balance at the end of each Friday, and break out payroll outflows separately from vendor spend.' The app rebuilds to match.

6 Open Scenario Analysis and describe your three planning assumptions — the base case is already populated from your live data. Add your 'delayed fundraise,' 'accelerated hiring,' and 'slower growth' variants by typing the assumption changes in plain language.

7 Wire Transaction Insights to surface anomaly alerts — tell Starch: 'Flag any transaction category where this week's total is more than 25% above the 12-week average, and list every vendor that charged us for the first time in the last 60 days.'

8 Set a Monday morning automation: 'Every Monday at 7am, refresh the 13-week forecast, check for anomalies, and send me a Slack summary with current cash balance, weeks of runway, and any flagged transactions.' Starch syncs Slack and can push the digest directly to your channel.

9 Before each board meeting, open the Scenario Analysis view and screenshot the three-scenario runway table for the deck. Because it's pulling from live Plaid and Stripe data, the numbers are current as of that morning — no reconciliation step required.

10 When the CEO or a board member asks a follow-up question — 'what if we cut software spend by 20%?' — type it into Starch directly as a new scenario branch rather than rebuilding the spreadsheet from scratch.

11 After the board meeting, publish the forecast view as a shared Starch dashboard link with view-only access so the CFO-equivalent or lead investor can check in without emailing you for the latest file.

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Worked example

Pre-Series B Board Prep — March 2026

Sample numbers from a real run

Operating account (Plaid)	2,840,000
Stripe MRR (weekly avg inflow)	187,000
Payroll run (Weeks 1, 5, 9, 13)	-310,000
Vendor spend — SaaS + tooling (weekly avg)	-42,000
Rent + office (Month 1 lump)	-38,000
Projected 13-week ending cash	1,940,000

It's the Thursday before a board meeting. The CEO forwarded a board member's email asking for 'updated runway and a look at what happens if the round takes longer.' Your old answer was a 90-minute spreadsheet rebuild. With Starch, you open the Runway Analysis app: Plaid is synced as of this morning showing $2.84M across operating and reserve accounts; Stripe shows $187k average weekly inflow against a plan of $195k — slightly under. The forecast flags Week 9 as the first week where the rolling 4-week average dips below the $2M board-approved floor if MRR growth stays at current pace. You switch to Scenario Analysis: the 'Series B delayed 6 months' scenario shows ending cash of $610k at Week 26, which crosses the threshold in Month 5. You type 'add a scenario where we reduce net new hires from 8 to 4 in Q3' — Starch rebuilds the projection and shows that adjustment extends the floor-crossing point by 11 weeks. You paste both scenario outputs into the board deck in under 10 minutes. Transaction Insights flagged one anomaly this week: a $4,200 charge from a SaaS vendor that normally runs $800/month — turns out the annual renewal auto-upgraded to an enterprise tier. You surface that in the board notes before anyone has to ask.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Weeks of cash remaining at current net burn (updated daily, not at month-close)

Weekly cash-in vs. cash-out variance against the 13-week plan

Number of new vendors charged in the last 30 days (spend control signal)

Days to board meeting vs. days since last forecast refresh (a proxy for data staleness risk)

Scenario delta: how many weeks does each lever (headcount, fundraise timing, revenue growth) change runway by

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Google Sheets + manual Plaid/Stripe exports

You control every cell, but the forecast is stale the moment you close the tab — and reconciling bank data with Stripe and QuickBooks manually takes 60-90 minutes per cycle that you're doing yourself.

Mosaic or Jirav (FP&A platforms)

Purpose-built for FP&A teams with a dedicated analyst to configure and maintain them — implementation takes weeks, pricing is built for finance departments, and you'll still be the one translating outputs for the board deck.

QuickBooks reports alone

QuickBooks gives you accrual-basis financials, but it doesn't show you cash-basis weekly positioning or forward projections — and QuickBooks P&L and Transaction List report views are currently not available in Starch's sync (entity-level data like bills, invoices, and payments syncs normally).

Excel with a finance consultant's template

Works until the consultant leaves or the template breaks — and every scenario update requires someone who understands the formula structure, which in most chiefs-of-staff offices means you at midnight.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — runway analysis, scenario planning, transaction insights all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch store my bank data, or does it just query it live?

Starch syncs your Plaid transaction and balance data on a schedule and stores it in Starch's database — that's what makes the daily refresh possible without you manually triggering a pull. It's not a live query to Plaid every time you open the dashboard. This also means the forecast works even when Plaid's API is slow.

Our books aren't closed yet for last month — will the forecast be off?

The Plaid sync gives you cash-basis actuals from your bank feeds, which don't depend on the books being closed. QuickBooks entity-level data (bills, invoices, vendor payments) syncs separately and reflects whatever state QuickBooks is in. If your bookkeeper hasn't posted February's bills yet, the QuickBooks layer will lag — but the cash-basis Plaid view will still be accurate to this morning.

Can I share the forecast view with our lead investor without giving them full Starch access?

Yes — you can publish a read-only dashboard link from Starch. The investor sees the view you configure; they can't browse your other connected data or apps.

We use Xero, not QuickBooks. Does this still work?

Yes. Connect Xero from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries it live when your forecast needs it. Xero isn't a scheduled-sync provider the way QuickBooks is, so historical data is queried on demand rather than pre-synced — but for most 13-week cash flow use cases, the Plaid and Stripe scheduled syncs carry the weight and Xero fills in the AP/AR context.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? We have to answer that question before connecting bank data.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified as of today. That's the honest answer. If your company's security review requires SOC 2 Type II before connecting financial accounts, Starch isn't the right fit today. It's on the roadmap.

Can the Monday morning Slack summary go to a private channel only I can see, or to a shared exec channel?

Either. When you set up the automation, tell Starch which Slack channel to post to — it can be your DMs, a private #founders-office channel, or the #exec-team channel. You can also configure it to post a short version to one channel and a detailed version to another.

How do I build a scenario that isn't just 'change headcount' — like, what if we reprice our product mid-year?

Describe it the same way you'd explain it to a finance analyst: 'Add a scenario where we raise our Pro plan from $199 to $249 starting June 1, applied to all new customers and renewals after that date, and show how that changes MRR trajectory and runway through December.' Starch builds the scenario from that description. You're not configuring formula cells — you're describing the business assumption.