Finance & FP&A

How to build a monthly board financial pack as CPG Founders

Finance & FP&AFor CPG Founders2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Every quarter-end you're manually pulling Stripe MRR, exporting Plaid transactions, emailing your bookkeeper for a QuickBooks P&L that's three weeks stale, and somehow turning all of that into a board deck before Monday's call. As a CPG founder you're also reconciling gross-to-net deductions from UNFI or KeHE, breaking out trade spend from operating expense, and explaining why your gross margin looks different this month because of a co-packer surcharge. The board wants channel-level revenue — DTC vs. wholesale vs. Amazon — and you're cross-referencing four different exports in a Google Sheet at 11pm. The whole thing takes a day and a half you don't have.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Finance & FP&AFor CPG Founders2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live financial dashboard that auto-populates channel-level revenue (DTC Stripe, wholesale invoices, Amazon payouts), net burn, and runway every morning before you open your laptop

A monthly board pack — narrative summary, charts, gross-margin bridge, and cash position — drafted by Starch from your connected data with one prompt, ready for your edits in under an hour

An automated monthly send so investors get a polished update on a consistent cadence without you spending a Sunday night in 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

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Stripe data on a schedule (DTC charges, subscriptions, payouts) and your Plaid bank feed on a schedule (operating account transactions, categorized by vendor). QuickBooks entity data — bills, invoices, vendor payments, journal entries — also syncs on a schedule. For Amazon Seller payouts, Starch automates your Amazon Seller Central account through your browser — no separate API setup needed. Connect QuickBooks from the scheduled-sync providers and Amazon from browser automation; Starch queries your Shopify store live from the integration catalog when the pack runs.

Prompts to copy

Build me a monthly board financial pack that pulls Stripe DTC revenue, Plaid bank transactions, and QuickBooks bills. Break revenue into DTC vs. wholesale vs. Amazon. Show gross margin, net burn, runway, and a top-5 expense category breakdown. Flag any month-over-month variances over 15%. Draft a 200-word narrative I can edit before it sends.

Show me a live runway dashboard using Stripe and Plaid. Calculate real net burn using a 3-month rolling average, not just last month. Project cash out 18 months forward. Add a line for my co-packer payment schedule so I can see lumpy cash weeks.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Stripe as a scheduled-sync provider — Starch pulls DTC charges, subscription MRR, and monthly payouts automatically on a daily refresh.

2 Connect your business checking account via Plaid scheduled sync — this gives Starch categorized transaction-level data for net burn calculation, including co-packer wire payments, broker fees, and trade spend.

3 Connect QuickBooks via scheduled sync — Starch pulls bills, vendor payments, and journal entries so your P&L reflects accrual-basis costs, not just cash out the door.

4 Connect Amazon Seller Central through browser automation — Starch logs into your Seller Central account and pulls monthly settlement reports and payout summaries without needing an MWS API setup.

5 Connect Shopify from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries it live when the pack runs to reconcile DTC order volume against Stripe revenue and flag any order-payment gaps.

6 Open the Runway Analysis starter app and customize it with the prompt: 'Add a co-packer payment schedule line using my largest Plaid vendor outflows. Show 18-month forward projection and flag any months where ending cash drops below $150k.'

7 Open the Investor Reporting starter app and tell Starch your channel structure: 'My revenue has three channels — Shopify DTC, wholesale (UNFI/KeHE invoices in QuickBooks), and Amazon. Break all revenue and margin metrics by channel in every report.'

8 Give Starch your gross margin inputs: 'My COGS includes co-packer invoices tagged as vendor [name] in QuickBooks, inbound freight bills, and Amazon FBA fees. Calculate gross margin net of trade spend categorized under promo in Plaid.'

9 Do a dry run close for last month — review the drafted narrative, check that channel revenue matches your own reconciliation, and correct any categorization mismatches in QuickBooks or Plaid labels once.

10 Set the monthly send schedule: 'Send the board pack to [email list] on the 8th of each month. One week before send, draft the pack and Slack me a preview link so I can add color on top wins and risks before it goes out.'

11 Add a deduction summary section: 'Pull all QuickBooks bills from UNFI and KeHE, subtract against invoices, and show me a net revenue bridge — gross billed minus deductions taken — as a line item in the pack.'

12 After the first live send, iterate: tell Starch what the board actually asked about and refine the template — 'Add a slide on velocity by top SKU and one on DTC repeat purchase rate from Shopify' — and Starch updates the template for every future month.

See this running on Starch

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

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Worked example

March 2026 Board Close — 8-SKU Snack Brand, ~$180k MRR

Sample numbers from a real run

DTC Revenue (Shopify / Stripe)	72,400
Amazon Revenue (Seller Central payout)	54,800
Wholesale Revenue (UNFI net of deductions)	38,200
Gross Revenue	165,400
Trade Spend & Deductions	-14,600
Net Revenue	150,800
COGS (co-packer + inbound freight)	-74,900
Gross Profit	75,900
Operating Expenses (salaries, broker fees, SG&A)	-61,200
Net Burn (cash basis, Plaid)	-18,400
Cash on Hand (Plaid balance)	392,000
Implied Runway at Current Burn	21

Starch pulled the March pack automatically from four sources. Stripe showed $72.4k in DTC net revenue — up 11% month-over-month, driven by a 3-day flash sale on the new grain-free line. Amazon Seller Central, read through browser automation, reported a $54.8k March settlement payout, roughly flat versus February after accounting for a $3.1k FBA long-term storage fee that Starch flagged as an anomaly. Wholesale net revenue came in at $38.2k — but Starch pulled the QuickBooks bills against UNFI invoices and surfaced $14.6k in deductions taken that month, $4.2k of which were potentially invalid short pays on a promotion that ended in January. Net burn on a cash basis was $18.4k, against $392k in the operating account — 21 months of runway at current pace. Starch drafted the board narrative in the voice of the prior two updates, flagged the UNFI deduction discrepancy as a risk item, and had the full pack in the founder's Slack preview link by 7am on April 7th. Total founder time to send: 35 minutes of edits.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Net Revenue by channel (DTC vs. Amazon vs. Wholesale net of deductions) — because gross billed from a distributor is a fiction until deductions clear

Gross Margin % net of co-packer invoices, inbound freight, and FBA fees — the number that tells you whether the unit economics actually work

Real net cash burn using a 3-month rolling average from Plaid — not a single month that might be distorted by a lumpy co-packer wire

Implied runway in months at current burn rate — the number your board asks first

Trade spend as % of gross wholesale revenue — whether your promotional dollars are eroding margin faster than they're building velocity

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Google Sheets + manual exports

Free and familiar, but you're re-pulling Stripe CSVs, QuickBooks reports, and Amazon settlements every single month — one categorization error in row 847 silently breaks your margin bridge and you won't catch it until the board asks a follow-up question

QuickBooks + a bookkeeper

Your bookkeeper closes the books accurately but typically 2-3 weeks after month-end, meaning your March board pack is built on February actuals — and they don't touch Stripe, Amazon, or the channel revenue breakdown you actually need

Fathom / Spotlight Reporting

Clean P&L reporting if you live entirely in QuickBooks, but no Stripe DTC channel, no Amazon settlement reconciliation, and no narrative drafting — you're still writing the board memo yourself

Notion or Coda board pack template

Good for formatting consistency, but data still has to be manually pasted in each month — the template doesn't know what your burn was or that UNFI shorted you $4k on a promo deduction

Causal or Mosaic

Purpose-built financial planning tools with strong scenario modeling, but they cost $500-$2k/month, assume a finance team who will maintain the model, and don't draft the investor narrative or automate the send

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — investor reporting, runway analysis 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

My books aren't closed by the time I need to send the board pack. Can Starch work with partial-month data?

Yes. Starch's Runway Analysis dashboard uses Plaid bank transaction data and Stripe revenue data — both update daily and don't depend on your bookkeeper closing QuickBooks. You can send a board pack based on cash-basis actuals from Plaid plus Stripe revenue while QuickBooks catches up on accruals. Just tell Starch in your prompt: 'Use Plaid transactions for cash burn and Stripe for revenue; note in the narrative that QuickBooks accruals are pending close.'

Can Starch pull Amazon Seller Central data directly?

Yes, through browser automation. Starch logs into your Amazon Seller Central account and reads settlement reports the same way you would — no API credentials required. The Amazon Seller Dashboard is also a live app in Starch's App Store. Note that Amazon's settlement reports are issued bi-weekly, so monthly revenue figures will be an aggregation of two settlement periods.

My UNFI deductions are a mess. Can the board pack break those out?

Starch can pull QuickBooks bills from UNFI and KeHE and compare them against invoices to surface a net revenue bridge. Tell Starch: 'Show gross billed versus net received for each distributor and flag any deduction that doesn't match a current promotional period.' This won't automatically dispute deductions for you — but it gives you the reconciliation you'd otherwise build manually every month, ready before the board call.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? I'm connecting bank and Stripe data.

Not yet — Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. That's the honest answer. If SOC 2 is a hard requirement for your board or investors right now, that's worth knowing upfront. Starch is built for operator founders who want live financial visibility today and are comfortable with a startup-stage security posture.

QuickBooks P&L report views — can I pull those directly?

QuickBooks P&L and Transaction List report views are temporarily unavailable due to an upstream connector issue being fixed. What does sync: all entity-level data — bills, invoices, vendor payments, journal entries, and customers. For most board pack use cases (burn by vendor, gross margin by COGS category, outstanding payables) the entity-level data is what you actually need anyway.

Can the board pack be sent automatically, or do I have to trigger it manually?

You can set a fully automated monthly schedule — for example, 'draft on the 5th, send to my investor list on the 8th unless I pause it.' Starch will Slack you a preview link between draft and send so you can add color on anything that happened that month that the data doesn't explain — a new retail door, a co-packer delay, a launch that's coming. You stay in the loop; you just don't have to build the pack from scratch.

What if I have a co-packer payment that hits in a weird month and blows up my burn number?

Tell Starch about your payment schedule once: 'My co-packer runs are paid on net-30 from production date; flag any Plaid outflow over $30k to [vendor name] as a production run payment and show it separately from recurring opex in the burn breakdown.' Starch will carry that logic into every future pack so the board sees a normalized burn figure alongside the lumpy cash-out line, instead of a spike that looks like a problem.