Finance & FP&A

How to forecast runway and months of cash as Professional Services Founders

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

You close the books mentally around the 10th of each month, but by then your bookkeeper still hasn't reconciled everything, and your 'runway' number lives in a Google Sheet that someone last updated when you had eight employees. Stripe invoices are sitting in one tab, Plaid transactions in another, and your actual payroll burden from Paylocity is a manually typed number from HR. You know roughly how many months of cash you have — somewhere between four and nine, depending on whether that $80K retainer renewal actually closes. That spread is too wide to make a real hiring decision, and you feel it every time a senior consultant asks about their compensation review.

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

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live burn-rate dashboard that pulls your Stripe invoice revenue and Plaid bank transactions daily, so your runway number is never more than 24 hours stale — no spreadsheet, no waiting for the books to close.

Side-by-side scenario models showing what happens to runway if your largest retainer churns, if you hire two mid-level consultants in Q3, or if you raise blended rates by 12% at renewal — built against your actual numbers, not a blank template.

A monthly investor or board-ready cash projection view you can pull in 60 seconds instead of rebuilding from scratch every quarter.

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

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Stripe data on a schedule (charges, invoices, payouts) and syncs your Plaid bank transactions on a schedule (categorized transactions, balances across all connected accounts). If you run payroll through Paylocity or ADP, Starch syncs that data on a schedule too so your fully loaded headcount cost is always current rather than a manually entered estimate. HubSpot deals can be connected from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries them live to layer pipeline probability into your forward projections.

Prompts to copy

Connect my Stripe account and Plaid bank feed, then build me a runway dashboard showing net burn by month for the last 6 months and cash-out date at current pace. Break expenses into payroll, software, and contractor categories.

Using the same Stripe and Plaid data as my runway dashboard, build a scenario model where I can toggle: (1) losing my top retainer client ($18K/month), (2) adding two FTEs at $120K fully loaded each in July, and (3) a 15% rate increase on renewals starting Q3. Show me runway and break-even under each combination.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Stripe in Starch settings — Starch begins syncing your charges, invoices, and payouts on a daily schedule. For a consultancy, this captures retainer billings, project milestones, and one-off engagements automatically.

2 Connect your business bank account through Plaid — Starch syncs categorized transactions and running balances daily. You'll see payroll debits, rent, contractor payments, and SaaS subscriptions pull in without any manual categorization work.

3 If your payroll runs through Paylocity or ADP, connect it in Starch — headcount costs will sync on schedule so your burn figure reflects actual fully loaded comp, not a number you typed in last quarter.

4 Open the Runway Analysis app from the Starch App Store and confirm your expense category mappings look right. For a professional services firm, you'll likely want to split 'payroll' from 'contractor' (1099 spend) because the two have different scaling profiles.

5 Ask Starch to adjust the default view: 'Show net burn excluding the $22K tax escrow transfer that hits every quarter — that's not operating expense.' Starch lets you describe the adjustment in plain language rather than writing a formula.

6 Review your 24-month forward projection — the baseline assumes current burn and revenue continue. Note where the projection goes below your target cash cushion (most professional services founders want 6+ months at all times).

7 Open the Scenario Analysis app and set your baseline. Tell Starch: 'My largest client is Meridian Group at $18,500/month. Model what happens if they don't renew in September.' The app builds that scenario against your live Stripe and Plaid data.

8 Add a hiring scenario: 'Add two senior consultants at $95K base, $135K fully loaded each, starting August 1. Show me how that changes runway and when I'd need to bring in new revenue to compensate.' Compare this side-by-side with the churn scenario.

9 Add a pricing scenario: 'Model a 12% rate increase applied to all retainer renewals after June 30, with an 85% renewal acceptance rate.' This lets you see whether the pricing move buys you more runway than the risk of losing a few clients.

10 Connect HubSpot from Starch's integration catalog and ask Starch to pull weighted pipeline into the projection: 'Layer in my HubSpot pipeline at deal probability — only include deals closing in the next 90 days, weighted by close probability.' Now your best-case scenario has a grounded revenue estimate, not a wishful number.

11 Save the three scenarios (base, churn-Meridian, churn-Meridian + two FTEs) as a named view and ask Starch to generate a summary paragraph you can drop into your board deck: 'Write a 3-sentence cash position summary for our Q2 board update covering current runway, key assumptions, and our hiring decision threshold.'

12 Set a weekly refresh alert: 'Every Monday at 7 AM, Slack me the current runway figure, any change in net burn from the prior week, and a flag if runway drops below 7 months.' You stop manually checking the spreadsheet; it checks itself.

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

Meridian Group Churn Scenario — June 2026 Planning Session

Sample numbers from a real run

Stripe retainer revenue (5 clients, trailing 3mo avg)	87,400
Plaid: payroll + employer taxes (10 FTEs)	61,200
Plaid: 1099 contractor spend	9,800
Plaid: software, tools, office	4,100
Net burn (current)	-87,700
Cash balance (Plaid, all accounts)	412,000
Runway at current burn	56
Scenario: lose Meridian ($18,500/mo Stripe retainer)	-106,200
Runway if Meridian churns	39

Your Runway Analysis dashboard shows $412K in cash across two business accounts (Plaid pulls both), $87.4K in average monthly Stripe inflows from five retainer clients, and $87.7K in monthly outflows — a roughly break-even month. Current runway is 56 months at this burn, which feels comfortable until you look at the Scenario Analysis tab. Meridian Group is your largest retainer at $18,500/month and their contract is up in September. The churn scenario drops monthly revenue to $68,900 and pushes burn to $106,200 — a $18.5K swing that cuts runway from 56 months to 39 months in a single model toggle. That's still fine on paper, but you're also evaluating two senior hires. The second scenario stacks the churn with $27K/month in new fully loaded headcount cost, which brings net burn to $133,200 and runway to 31 months. The 'hire two and lose Meridian' scenario isn't catastrophic, but it changes the conversation: you either need a replacement retainer in the pipeline before August, or you stage the hiring to Q4. You pull your HubSpot pipeline from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries it live — and see $38K in weighted deals closing in the next 90 days. That's enough to underwrite one hire confidently. The second waits until Meridian's renewal is signed.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Months of runway at current net burn (updated daily from Plaid + Stripe, not monthly from the bookkeeper)

Weighted pipeline coverage ratio: new ARR in the next 90 days vs. planned headcount cost increase

Retainer concentration risk: largest single client as % of total Stripe revenue (Meridian is 21% — a flag)

Fully loaded utilization-adjusted burn: payroll cost per billable hour against realized rate, so you know whether a slow project month actually costs you margin

Break-even revenue threshold under each hiring scenario: the minimum monthly Stripe inflow needed to keep net burn at zero

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Google Sheets + manual Stripe/bank exports

Works, but someone on your team spends 2-3 hours rebuilding it every month, the numbers are always slightly stale, and the scenario tab breaks every time revenue mix shifts.

Mosaic or Runway.com

Purpose-built FP&A tools with more financial modeling depth, but they're priced for funded startups with a finance hire to maintain them — setup takes weeks and the per-seat cost doesn't make sense below 20 employees.

QuickBooks + accountant reports

Your bookkeeper can produce a P&L, but it's backward-looking, arrives mid-month, and doesn't answer 'what happens if I hire in July' without a separate phone call.

Kantata / Deltek / Projector

Enterprise PSA tools built for 200-person firms — implementation takes a quarter, licensing is $300+ per seat, and you'll use 15% of the features while paying for all of them.

Float (cash flow forecasting)

Good at cash flow visualization but requires manual scenario setup and doesn't connect to your Stripe revenue or HubSpot pipeline without significant configuration — you're still stitching things together.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — 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

My bookkeeper uses QuickBooks and I don't want to change that. Does Starch replace it?

No — your bookkeeper keeps using QuickBooks exactly as they do today. Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule (invoices, bills, vendors, payments, journal entries) and uses it alongside Stripe and Plaid to give you a real-time view. The books stay in QuickBooks; Starch just makes the numbers accessible without waiting for month-end close. One honest note: QuickBooks report views like P&L summaries are temporarily unavailable in Starch due to an upstream connector fix in progress. Entity-level data — invoices, bills, payments — syncs normally and is what the runway calculation uses.

My Stripe invoices aren't all retainers — I have project billings, expense pass-throughs, and some old one-time charges. Will the revenue figure be accurate?

Starch syncs all your Stripe charges and invoices, so the raw data is complete. You'd tell Starch: 'Exclude invoice line items tagged as expense reimbursements from the revenue figure, and flag project milestones separately from monthly retainers.' The agent applies that logic going forward. It's the same customization you'd do with a formula in a spreadsheet, but you describe it in plain language instead of writing one.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? I have a client who will ask.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified at this time. That's an honest limit worth knowing upfront. If a client contract requires SOC 2 documentation for any tools handling financial data, that's a real constraint today. For internal use — your own runway and scenario planning — most professional services founders aren't blocked by this.

Can I include my HubSpot pipeline in the runway projection so the numbers reflect expected new revenue, not just current clients?

Yes. Connect HubSpot from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries your deals live when the projection runs. You'd say: 'Pull HubSpot deals in the 'Proposal Sent' and 'Contract Out' stages, weight by close probability, and include expected start dates in my 90-day revenue forecast.' The model then shows a base-case and an upside-case runway figure, both grounded in your actual pipeline.

I track utilization in Harvest and Float — can those connect?

Harvest and Float are reachable from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries them live when your app runs. You could build a custom utilization dashboard on top of them and ask Starch to cross-reference billable hours from Harvest against your headcount cost from Paylocity — giving you a realized margin per consultant view that neither tool shows natively. Describe what you want and Starch builds it.

What's the difference between the Runway Analysis app and the Scenario Analysis app? Do I need both?

Runway Analysis is your live 'where do we stand today' view — burn rate, cash balance, months of runway, updated daily. Scenario Analysis is for decisions: it takes the same Stripe and Plaid baseline and lets you model 'what if.' For a consultancy founder making a hiring call or evaluating whether a rate increase is worth the renewal risk, both are useful. Start with Runway Analysis to trust the baseline, then open Scenario Analysis when a real decision is on the table.