Customer Support

How to run customer qbrs as Professional Services Founders

Customer SupportFor Professional Services Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

QBRs at a 12-person consultancy are a manual sprint every quarter. You pull utilization numbers from Harvest or Float, invoice data from Stripe or QuickBooks, project status from Notion, and email history from Gmail — then a senior spends two days stitching it into a deck that looks slightly different every time. Half the data is stale by the time you present it. The client asks 'what did we actually deliver in Q1?' and you're live-searching your inbox. Renewal conversations get rushed because prep ate the week. You don't have a CS team; the partner running the account is also the one building the slide.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Customer SupportFor Professional Services Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A client QBR dashboard that pulls live delivery metrics, invoice status, and email thread history into one view — so you walk into every review already briefed

A repeatable QBR deck template built by Starch's Presentation Agent from a one-line prompt, populated with the account's actual numbers each quarter

An automation that surfaces renewal risk signals — last touchpoint date, open invoices, utilization vs. contracted hours — before the renewal conversation sneaks up on you

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

CRM Presentation Agent Meeting Notes

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Stripe data on a schedule for invoice and payment status. Connect HubSpot from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries it live for deal and contact history. Connect Harvest or Float from Starch's integration catalog for utilization and hours data. Starch syncs your Gmail on a schedule for thread history and last-contact dates. Google Calendar is synced on a schedule for meeting history. Slack is synced on a schedule so Starch can post renewal risk alerts to your channel.

Prompts to copy

Build me a client QBR tracker. For each account, show: contracted hours vs. hours delivered this quarter (from Harvest via the integration catalog), open and paid invoices from Stripe, last email thread date from Gmail, renewal date, and a renewal risk flag if last contact was more than 30 days ago or there's an overdue invoice.

Generate a 12-slide QBR deck for Meridian Partners covering Q1 2026. Include: work delivered vs. contracted scope, key milestones hit, three open items carrying into Q2, invoice summary, and a proposed agenda for the renewal discussion. Use our standard consulting template.

After every client call, summarize decisions made, action items with owners, and any scope change signals. Save to the Meridian Partners account in the CRM and flag me on Slack if a scope change was mentioned.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect your data sources: wire Stripe (scheduled sync), Gmail (scheduled sync), Google Calendar (scheduled sync), and HubSpot or your CRM of choice from Starch's integration catalog. If you track hours in Harvest or Float, connect those from the integration catalog too.

2 Describe your QBR tracker to Starch in plain language — name the fields that matter to your firm: contracted vs. delivered hours, invoice status, last touchpoint, renewal date, satisfaction signals from email tone.

3 Starch builds the app. Open it, verify your client list is populated, and spot-check one account against your source tools to confirm the data looks right.

4 Set up the renewal risk automation: tell Starch 'flag any account where last email contact is older than 30 days or where an invoice has been open more than 45 days, and post a Slack alert every Monday morning.'

5 Two weeks before each QBR, open the client's account view in Starch. Review the auto-surfaced summary: hours delivered, invoices paid vs. outstanding, meetings held, key email threads, open action items from the last review.

6 Prompt the Presentation Agent: describe the client, the quarter, the two or three things that went well, and the one or two things that need a conversation. Starch drafts the deck — typically 10–14 slides — in a few minutes.

7 Review the draft. Swap any slide that needs a different layout, adjust the narrative on the scope or pricing slide, and confirm the numbers match what's in the tracker.

8 Export to PowerPoint or a shareable link. Send the agenda slide to the client contact 48 hours before the meeting so they can add topics.

9 During the QBR, run Meeting Notes. It transcribes the call, extracts decisions and action items, and flags any scope change language the client mentions.

10 After the call, Meeting Notes posts the summary to the client's CRM record and surfaces any scope signals for you to review. If renewal terms were discussed, Starch can draft a follow-up email from the action items.

11 After each QBR cycle, ask Starch: 'Which accounts had the longest gap between contracted hours and delivered hours this quarter?' Use the answer to tighten scoping on the next contract.

12 Before renewal negotiations, pull the account's full history: all QBR summaries, invoice record, hours delivered vs. contracted across every engagement — and use it as briefing material for the pricing conversation.

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 QBR — Meridian Partners (8-month retainer, $22k/month)

Sample numbers from a real run

Contracted hours (Q1)	180
Delivered hours (Q1, from Harvest)	163
Invoices issued (Q1)	66,000
Invoices collected (Q1)	66,000
Open action items from Q4 QBR	7
Action items closed before Q1 QBR	6
Days since last email thread with primary contact	18

Meridian Partners is your largest retainer — $22k/month, eight months in, renewal conversation due in six weeks. Before Starch, your senior consultant would spend most of a Friday pulling this together: exporting hours from Harvest, matching invoices in QuickBooks, scrolling Gmail for the last meaningful thread, and assembling a deck from last quarter's version. This time, the QBR tracker already shows Q1 delivery at 163 of 180 contracted hours — 91% utilization, within your target band. All three invoices cleared. Six of seven Q4 action items are closed (the seventh is a client-side dependency you'll flag). Last contact was 18 days ago — below the 30-day risk threshold, so no alert fired. You prompt the Presentation Agent: 'Build a 12-slide QBR for Meridian Partners, Q1 2026. Highlight the regulatory filing we completed in February, the 163/180 hours delivered, the one open action item, and open Q2 with a discussion about expanding scope to their London entity.' The deck comes back in about three minutes. You adjust the pricing slide, add a quote from the client's February email about the filing outcome, and export. The QBR takes 45 minutes. Meeting Notes captures the client's verbal agreement to explore the London expansion. That note lands in the CRM before you close your laptop, and Starch drafts the follow-up email from the action items list.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Utilization rate: delivered hours vs. contracted hours per client per quarter

Invoice collection cycle: average days from invoice issued to payment received

Renewal rate: percentage of retainer clients renewing at or above prior contract value

QBR prep time: hours spent per account assembling the review (target: under 90 minutes)

Action item close rate: percentage of QBR commitments completed before the next review

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Kantata / Projector / Deltek

Built for 200-person firms — six-figure contracts, a quarter to implement, and an admin to maintain them; not practical for a 12-person shop.

HubSpot + Harvest + Notion + Google Slides (manual stack)

Every tool does its job, but you're the integration layer — a senior burns a day each quarter assembling the QBR from four different places.

Notion AI or Coda Docs

Good for structured docs and light AI summaries, but they don't pull live invoice or hours data into the same view without custom formulas someone has to maintain.

Gong or Chorus (call intelligence)

Strong for sales call analysis in larger orgs, but priced per seat and overkill if you just need reliable post-meeting notes and CRM sync for client calls.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — crm, presentation agent, meeting notes 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

We track hours in Harvest and projects in Float — can Starch actually pull from both?

Yes. Connect Harvest and Float from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries them live when your utilization dashboard or QBR tracker runs. You don't have to migrate off either tool.

The Presentation Agent is listed as 'currently in development' — what do we use for QBR decks right now?

Honest answer: Presentation Agent is in beta. Request access to get notified when it launches. In the meantime, you can use Starch to generate a structured QBR brief — client summary, key numbers, agenda items — and paste it into your existing Google Slides template. It's still faster than the manual pull.

Is this going to replace our CRM or do we have to run two?

Neither. If you're already in HubSpot, Starch connects to it from the integration catalog and builds on top — the QBR tracker and client views read from your existing HubSpot data without forcing you to re-enter anything. If you'd rather consolidate, Starch's own CRM app can replace a lightweight HubSpot setup and adapt its schema to how your firm actually tracks client work.

Our client data is sensitive — consulting engagements, financial details, NDA-covered work. How does Starch handle that?

Starch is not yet SOC 2 Type II certified — that's worth knowing if you're in a regulated industry or your enterprise clients have specific data-handling requirements. For most professional services firms at this size, the risk profile is manageable, but it's the honest answer and you should evaluate it against your client contracts.

Can Starch track which partners or team members are over- or under-utilized across the firm?

Yes — describe it and Starch builds it. A prompt like 'Show me each team member's billable hours this month from Harvest vs. their target utilization, grouped by client' will produce a live dashboard. You can set it to refresh on a schedule and alert you when anyone drops below 60% or goes over 90%.

What if a client uses a portal or project tool we haven't mentioned — like Basecamp or a custom client extranet?

If it's web-based, Starch can automate it through your browser — no API needed. For example, if a client's status updates live in a portal you log into manually, Starch can navigate that portal and pull the relevant data into your QBR view. That covers most cases where a formal integration doesn't exist.