Finance & FP&A

How to build a monthly board financial pack as Asset Management Founders

Finance & FP&AFor Asset Management Founders3 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

Every quarter — and ideally every month — you're assembling a board or LP pack from scratch. You pull NAV estimates from a spreadsheet you built, copy in transaction data from QuickBooks or your bank feed, manually type in portfolio company updates you collected over Slack and email, and then spend three hours in Google Slides making it look presentable. You don't have an analyst. You don't have a CFO. The tools that large funds use (Juniper Square, Addepar) cost more than your management fee covers and assume a dedicated ops team. So the pack goes out late, or it's thinner than you want, or you send an apology note promising a fuller update next month.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Finance & FP&AFor Asset Management Founders3 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live financial dashboard that pulls your fund's bank transactions and revenue data automatically, so your cash position, burn, and runway figures are always current when you open the board pack draft

An investor reporting workflow that drafts the narrative sections — portfolio performance, key risks, capital deployment pace — and emails a polished update to your LP list on whatever cadence you set

A slide deck builder that converts the metrics and narrative into a formatted board presentation without you touching Google Slides

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

Investor Reporting Runway Analysis Presentation Agent

Data sources & config

Starch connects directly to Plaid (bank feeds, categorized transactions, balances) and Stripe (charges, payouts, subscriptions) via scheduled sync — data refreshes automatically so your figures are never stale the morning you sit down to write the pack. QuickBooks is also available via scheduled sync if you run entity-level bookkeeping there (invoices, bills, journal entries). The Presentation Agent builds slide decks from the draft narrative and live metrics. Note: Presentation Agent is currently in development — request beta access to be notified at launch.

Prompts to copy

Build me a monthly LP update that pulls our Plaid bank transactions and Stripe revenue, calculates net burn and runway, and drafts a narrative covering capital deployed this month, top portfolio company wins, risks I should flag, and our current cash position. Format it consistently with the tone of a seed-stage fund manager writing to sophisticated LPs, not a startup writing to consumers.

Show me a 24-month runway projection broken down by expense category — management fees received, fund expenses, portfolio reserves — using our Plaid and Stripe data. Flag any month where projected cash drops below six months of operating expenses.

Build a 12-slide board pack for our Q1 2026 LP meeting. Include a fund overview slide, NAV bridge, capital deployment pace versus our investment thesis, top three portfolio company updates, one risk slide, and a forward outlook. Pull the financial figures from our runway analysis and investor report draft.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Plaid from Starch's scheduled-sync providers. This brings in your fund's bank transactions, categorized by Plaid, refreshed on a schedule — your operating account, your capital call account, any reserve accounts you want included.

2 Connect Stripe if you receive management fees or carry as Stripe payments. Starch syncs charges and payouts automatically so management fee revenue appears in the same data layer as your expense transactions.

3 Connect QuickBooks via scheduled sync if you use it for fund accounting. Starch pulls invoices, bills, vendor payments, and journal entries — up to 50,000 records per entity — so your accruals and commitments are visible alongside cash data.

4 Open the Runway Analysis app. Describe your fund's expense structure: 'Show burn by category — management expenses, legal and compliance, portfolio reserves set aside, and any capital calls received. Project forward 24 months and mark months where the operating account drops below $500k.' Starch builds the projection from your live Plaid and Stripe data.

5 Open the Investor Reporting app. Tell it the structure of your LP update: 'Draft a monthly LP update covering: (1) capital deployed this month and cumulative deployment versus our target pace, (2) portfolio company highlights — pull from any notes I paste in, (3) a risks and watch-list section, (4) current NAV estimate and cash position, (5) what we're working on next month.' Starch drafts the narrative and fills in the financial figures automatically.

6 Review the draft. The Investor Reporting app keeps tone consistent with your previous updates — if you write in a direct, no-spin style, it won't suddenly start using fund-marketing language. Edit the portfolio company bullets and flag anything you want reworded.

7 Set the cadence. Tell Starch: 'Email this update to my LP list on the 10th of each month. Pull fresh financial data when it runs.' The automation handles the send without you manually triggering it each cycle.

8 When a board meeting is coming, open the Presentation Agent (or describe the deck to Starch directly). Tell it: 'Build a 12-slide board pack based on our Q1 investor report draft and the runway projection. Slide order: fund overview, NAV bridge, deployment pace, top three portfolio company updates, risks, forward outlook.' Starch assembles slides with data visualizations pulled from the same financial layer.

9 Export the deck as a PDF or shareable link for board members. If you want a PowerPoint version to edit before the meeting, export to .pptx directly.

10 After the board meeting, paste in any updated portfolio company notes or guidance changes, and tell Starch: 'Update the Q1 report draft to reflect the board's feedback on deployment pace and the revised guidance on Fund II timing.' The next LP update draft will incorporate it.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

March 2026 Monthly LP Update — $18M Seed Fund

Sample numbers from a real run

Management fees received (Stripe)	37,500
Fund operating expenses (Plaid — categorized)	22,100
Net burn — fund operations	-15,400
Capital deployed — March (2 new checks)	750,000
Cumulative deployment vs. $8M target	3,200,000
Fund operating cash (Plaid balance)	1,840,000
Estimated runway at current op burn	119

Going into the March close, you have $1.84M in the fund's operating account and $14.8M in committed capital still to deploy. Starch pulled the management fee receipt from Stripe ($37,500, Q1 installment), categorized $22,100 in operating expenses from Plaid — legal ($8,400), accounting ($6,200), software and data ($4,100), travel ($3,400) — and calculated a net operating burn of $15,400 for the month. Two checks went out in March: a $500k lead in a climate-tech seed round and a $250k follow-on in a portfolio company that hit its Series A milestone. Cumulative deployment is now $3.2M of the $8M target, running about 60 days behind the original pace. The Investor Reporting draft flagged this proactively: 'Deployment pace is running below target; current 18-month projection suggests we reach full deployment by Q2 2027 versus the original Q4 2026 target. Two term sheets in diligence could accelerate this by one quarter.' That sentence took Starch about 30 seconds to draft and would have taken you 20 minutes of spreadsheet math to write honestly. The LP email went out on the 10th, automatically, with the final figures you approved two days earlier.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Net operating burn per month (management fees in minus fund operating expenses out, not portfolio deployment)

Capital deployed as a percentage of target fund size, tracked against the original deployment schedule

Fund operating runway in months at current burn (distinct from portfolio company runway)

LP update cadence compliance — whether updates go out on schedule versus late

Management fee coverage ratio — what percentage of operating expenses management fees cover versus out-of-pocket GP commitment

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Juniper Square or Addepar

Built for established funds with ops teams; pricing starts around $50k/year and implementation assumes you have a CFO or fund accountant configuring it — not practical for a sub-$50M emerging manager running lean.

Google Slides + manual QuickBooks export

Zero recurring cost but consumes 6-10 hours per board pack cycle; numbers are always one export cycle behind and the narrative is written from scratch every time.

iLevel (Blackstone portfolio monitoring tool)

Excellent for portfolio company data aggregation at scale, but priced and structured for multi-billion-dollar fund complexes — the implementation and data collection burden alone is prohibitive for an emerging manager.

Visible.vc

Good LP update tool for portfolio company metrics, but it requires portfolio companies to push data in; it doesn't pull your own fund-level financials from your bank and accounting systems the way Starch does.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — investor reporting, runway analysis, presentation agent 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 actually have access to my fund's bank account, or is it read-only?

Starch connects to Plaid read-only. It pulls transactions, balances, and categorization data — it cannot move money, initiate transfers, or modify anything at your bank. Same for Stripe and QuickBooks: all scheduled-sync providers are read-only unless the integration explicitly notes otherwise.

My fund uses QuickBooks for accounting but I also want bank feed data. Can Starch use both at the same time?

Yes. Starch syncs QuickBooks and Plaid independently via scheduled sync. You can build a board pack that uses Plaid for real-time cash balances and transaction categorization, and QuickBooks for accrual-basis figures like outstanding invoices, committed expenses, and journal entries. One caveat: QuickBooks report views like P&L and Transaction List are temporarily unavailable while an upstream fix is in progress — entity-level data (bills, invoices, vendors, payments) syncs normally.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? My LPs will ask.

Not yet. Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. If your LPs have formal vendor security review requirements that mandate SOC 2, that's worth flagging before you commit. It's on the roadmap. For most emerging managers, the honest answer to LPs is that Starch handles draft preparation and reporting automation — it's not a fund administrator or custodian.

What if my fund doesn't use Stripe — management fees come in by wire?

Plaid will pick up wire deposits in your bank feed and categorize them as income. You can tell Starch: 'Treat any inbound wire from [LP entity name] as a management fee receipt' and the runway and reporting apps will categorize it correctly. Stripe is most useful if you actually charge fees via Stripe, which some managers do for simplicity — it's not required.

Can Starch pull data from portfolio companies' systems for the board pack?

Not automatically — Starch doesn't have credentials to your portfolio companies' internal systems. What it can do: if portfolio companies share metrics in a Google Sheet or Notion database you have access to, Starch can connect to those from the integration catalog and pull the data into your report. For anything that requires portfolio companies to push data, you'd still collect it manually or via a tool like Visible, then paste the highlights into Starch for the narrative draft.

The Presentation Agent sounds useful — is it available now?

It's currently in development. You can request beta access to be notified when it launches. In the meantime, the Investor Reporting app produces a full narrative draft that you can export and drop into Google Slides manually — the financial figures and narrative structure are done; the formatting lift is the remaining part.

Can I customize the LP update template so it matches the format I've already established with my LPs?

Yes. Describe your existing format to Starch — section order, level of detail, whether you include a portfolio company table or just narrative bullets, your sign-off style — and it will follow that structure. The Investor Reporting app also learns from previous updates you feed it, so it maintains consistency in tone and framing rather than drifting toward generic fund-speak.