Investor Relations

How to build an investor kpi dashboard as Asset Management Founders

Investor RelationsFor Asset Management Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Every quarter you spend two or three days pulling LP reports together by hand. You export from QuickBooks, paste into a spreadsheet, manually update NAV tables, dig through bank statements in Plaid or your accounting portal for distributions and capital calls, then format everything into a deck that looks different from last quarter because you built it under deadline pressure. The institutional tools that solve this — Juniper Square, Addepar, iLevel — want $50k+ per year and assume you have a dedicated ops team. You don't. You have yourself, maybe a part-time CFO, and a quarterly deadline that keeps arriving whether you're ready or not.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Investor RelationsFor Asset Management Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live KPI dashboard that pulls fund financials from QuickBooks, Stripe, and Plaid on a scheduled sync — so your DPI, TVPI, IRR, and cash runway numbers are current without a manual export

An automated investor reporting workflow that drafts your quarterly LP update from real financial data and emails it on the cadence you set — no blank-page problem, no stale numbers

A scenario model that lets you stress-test portfolio assumptions against live fund cash flows, so you walk into LP conversations knowing the downside case before they ask

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 Scenario Analysis

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule (invoices, bills, payments, journal entries, and vendor records), syncs your Plaid bank feed on a schedule (categorized transactions and balances), and syncs your Stripe data on a schedule (charges, payouts, and subscriptions). Gmail is connected via scheduled sync for sending LP update emails. The Investor Reporting, Runway Analysis, and Scenario Analysis apps are each pre-built starters from the App Store — you customize the LP groupings, reporting cadence, and KPI definitions by describing your fund's structure in plain language.

Prompts to copy

Build me an investor KPI dashboard that shows DPI, TVPI, net IRR, total AUM, and cash runway. Pull expense and balance data from my QuickBooks and Plaid accounts. Group capital calls and distributions by LP name. Show a 6-month trend line for net burn at the fund level.

Every quarter, draft an LP update email that pulls our latest fund financials from QuickBooks and Plaid, summarizes capital deployment since last quarter, flags any portfolio company milestones I tell you about, and formats everything consistently with our prior updates. Send it to my LP list in Gmail.

Build a scenario analysis that models three fund cash flow cases — base, upside, and stress — using our current Stripe revenue and Plaid expense data as the baseline. Let me adjust deployment pace and portfolio company failure rate and show how each scenario affects runway and fund-level IRR.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect QuickBooks from Starch's scheduled-sync integration — Starch will immediately begin syncing your chart of accounts, bills, invoices, journal entries, and vendor records so fund-level financials are available without manual exports.

2 Connect Plaid so Starch syncs your fund bank and custody account feeds on a schedule — this becomes the source of truth for cash on hand, capital calls received, and distribution outflows.

3 Connect Stripe if you have management fee or carry invoice payments running through it — Starch syncs charges, payouts, and subscription records on a schedule to capture fee income accurately.

4 Open the Investor Reporting starter app from the App Store and describe your LP table structure: 'I have 14 LPs, track them by commitment size, called capital, and distributions received. Our fund currency is USD. Reporting cadence is quarterly.'

5 Tell Starch which KPIs matter to your LPs: 'Add DPI, TVPI, net IRR, and remaining uncalled capital as the top-line metrics on every report. Pull the underlying numbers from QuickBooks and Plaid.'

6 Open the Runway Analysis app and customize it for fund-level burn: 'My operating expenses are management fees paid out, fund admin costs, and legal. Exclude portfolio capital deployments from the burn calculation — those are investments, not expenses.'

7 Open the Scenario Analysis app and set your three fund cases: 'Base case assumes we deploy $2M per quarter for 6 quarters. Stress case assumes two portfolio companies go to zero and deployment slows 40%. Upside case assumes one portfolio company raises a follow-on at 3x our entry valuation.'

8 Wire the quarterly LP email: 'Every quarter on the last business day of the month, draft an LP update that includes our top-line KPIs from the dashboard, a written summary of portfolio developments I'll review before send, and attach the latest scenario analysis. Send it to this Gmail list: [LP emails].'

9 Review the first auto-drafted quarterly update, make edits in plain language ('shorten the burn section, add a note about the Series A in portfolio company X'), and approve the send — Starch remembers your edits and applies the same tone to the next quarter's draft.

10 Set a weekly digest: 'Every Monday, send me a Slack message with fund cash position, any new Plaid transactions over $50k categorized as capital calls or distributions, and a one-line runway update.'

11 As new LPs close, describe their terms in plain language and Starch adds them to the reporting table: 'Add a new LP — $500k commitment, $250k called, 0 distributions to date, joined Q1 2026.'

12 Before each LP call, ask the dashboard directly: 'What are our current DPI and net IRR, and how does our stress-case runway compare to what we reported last quarter?' — and walk into the conversation with the answer already in hand.

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

Q1 2026 LP Report Close — $28M Emerging Fund

Sample numbers from a real run

Total AUM (committed)	28,000,000
Capital called to date	16,800,000
Remaining uncalled capital	11,200,000
Total distributions to LPs	1,250,000
Fund operating expenses (Q1)	187,000
Management fee income (Q1)	140,000
Net fund cash (operating account)	2,340,000
Estimated net IRR (inception to date)	0
DPI	0
TVPI	0

It's the last week of March 2026. Normally this is where you'd spend three days in spreadsheets. Instead: Starch has already synced Q1 QuickBooks data (all journal entries, the $187k in fund operating expenses broken down by vendor, and management fee invoices totaling $140k). Plaid shows $2.34M in the operating account and correctly flags the $1.25M distribution wire from two weeks ago. The Investor Reporting app auto-drafts the quarterly LP email with top-line figures: 60% of capital called, $1.25M returned, estimated TVPI of 1.4x based on the latest portfolio company marks you entered. You review the draft, add two sentences about the portfolio company that just closed a Series A, approve, and Starch sends to all 14 LPs via Gmail. Total time from 'open Starch' to sent email: 45 minutes, not two days. The scenario analysis that's attached shows LPs your base case runway at 14 months and your stress case at 9 months — you'd rather show them the downside math proactively than have them ask.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Net IRR (inception to date, updated quarterly from QuickBooks and Plaid data)

DPI (distributions to paid-in capital — actual cash returned to LPs vs. called capital)

TVPI (total value to paid-in — unrealized + realized value relative to called capital)

Fund operating runway (months of cash in the management company operating account at current burn)

Capital call pace vs. deployment schedule (called % of committed vs. planned deployment timeline)

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Juniper Square

Purpose-built for fund admin and LP reporting, but starts around $50k/year and assumes a dedicated ops team — not practical for a sub-$50M emerging fund without back-office staff.

Addepar

Excellent portfolio performance analytics, but priced for multi-billion RIAs and family offices; implementation alone takes months and requires dedicated onboarding resources.

iLevel (Blackstone)

Strong for PE portfolio monitoring and LP portals, but the cost structure and support model assume institutional fund sizes and staff that most emerging managers don't have.

QuickBooks + Excel + manual deck

Zero software cost, but you lose 2-3 days per quarter assembling it, numbers go stale immediately after export, and the process doesn't scale past your second fund without hiring someone.

Visible.vc

Good lightweight LP update tool, but doesn't pull live financials from your accounting system — you still have to enter numbers manually every quarter.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — investor reporting, runway analysis, scenario planning 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 sync QuickBooks or do I have to export CSVs every quarter?

Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule — invoices, bills, payments, vendors, and journal entries update automatically. You never export a CSV. One honest limit: QuickBooks report views like the built-in P&L summary are temporarily disabled pending a connector fix, but all underlying entity-level data (the transactions that make up that P&L) syncs normally and Starch builds the roll-up views directly.

Can Starch calculate IRR and TVPI from my actual fund data, or is it just showing me numbers I type in?

For cash-based metrics like DPI and fund operating burn, Starch is pulling live from Plaid and QuickBooks — those numbers are calculated from real transactions, not manual inputs. For TVPI and IRR, portfolio company marks are inputs you control (valuations aren't in your bank feed). You describe the marks and Starch calculates the multiples. This is the same reality every fund tool faces — unrealized value requires human judgment.

I have LPs on different commitment sizes and pro-rata rights. Can the dashboard handle that?

Yes. Describe your LP table structure in plain language — 'LP A has a $2M commitment, 1.5x distribution waterfall preference, and pro-rata rights on follow-ons' — and Starch builds the data model to match. It's not a locked template; you're describing your actual fund structure and Starch adapts.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? My LPs will ask about security before I connect fund accounts.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If that's a hard requirement from your LPs or compliance counsel, that's worth knowing upfront. Many emerging fund managers use Starch for internal reporting workflows and keep LP portal access on a separate system — the two aren't mutually exclusive.

What if my fund uses NetSuite instead of QuickBooks?

Starch connects directly to NetSuite on a scheduled sync — invoices, expenses, journal entries, balance sheets, and income statements. The Investor Reporting app works with NetSuite the same way it works with QuickBooks; you'd just connect NetSuite instead during setup.

Can I use this if I'm still on a simple bank account setup without a formal accounting system yet?

Yes. Plaid alone gives you categorized transaction data and balances, which is enough to build a fund cash runway view and basic LP reporting on capital flows. As you formalize into QuickBooks or NetSuite, you connect those and the dashboard gets more detailed — you're not locked into a starting configuration.