Internal Comms & Meetings

How to run a monthly business review as Small Law and Accounting Practices

Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Small Law and Accounting Practices2 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

At a six-attorney firm or four-CPA practice, the monthly business review doesn't happen in a boardroom — it happens in thirty scattered minutes on a Thursday afternoon when someone finally pulls up QuickBooks, scrolls through Outlook for billing context, and tries to remember which client matter ate most of March. There's no single place where realization rates, aged receivables, deadline pipeline, and staff utilization live together. Partners reconstruct it from memory, a printed aging report, and whatever the office manager forwarded. The result is a review that's either skipped or incomplete, and the same billing blind spots reappear month after month.

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Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Small Law and Accounting Practices2 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A monthly financial summary that automatically pulls QuickBooks billing data, bank transactions, and outstanding receivables — so the 'how did we do last month' question gets answered before anyone asks it

A partner-ready review document that includes collected revenue, realization rate, top matters by hours billed, outstanding invoices, and any flagged deadline risks — formatted and ready to share, not reconstructed from five tabs

An automated send cadence so the review goes out to partners on a fixed schedule every month, with narrative that stays consistent in tone and catches the same categories each time

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 QuickBooks data on a schedule — invoices, bills, payments, and vendor records update automatically so billing figures in the review reflect the current close. Starch also syncs your bank and transaction data through Plaid on a schedule for cash position and expense breakdowns. Outlook connects from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries it live to pull recent client communication threads for matter context. Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar syncs on a schedule for deadline and meeting context surfaced in the review narrative.

Prompts to copy

Build me a monthly business review report for our four-partner CPA practice. Pull collected revenue and outstanding receivables from QuickBooks, pull cash balances and expense categories from our bank feed via Plaid, and format a narrative summary covering: total billings, total collections, realization rate, top five client matters by revenue, aged receivables over 60 days, and net cash position. Email the finished report to all four partners on the first Monday of every month.

Show me a rolling 6-month cash trend for our firm, breaking out payroll, rent, and software expenses by month, using our Plaid bank feed. Flag any month where collections dropped more than 15% versus the prior month and add a one-line note explaining the dip based on the data.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect QuickBooks as a scheduled-sync provider. Starch will pull invoices, payments, bills, and vendor records automatically — no manual export, no waiting for your bookkeeper to close the books before you can see numbers.

2 Connect your firm's bank accounts through Plaid as a scheduled-sync provider. This gives you the cash position and expense breakdown that QuickBooks alone won't show you — payroll runs, rent, software subscriptions, and anything paid outside the billing cycle.

3 Connect Outlook (or Gmail) from Starch's integration catalog. The agent queries it live when the review runs to surface recent client email threads and flag any matters where communication has gone quiet.

4 Connect Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar as a scheduled-sync provider so Starch can pull upcoming tax deadlines, filing dates, and partner meetings into the review's deadline section.

5 Start from the Investor Reporting app in the App Store and tell Starch to fork it for a law or accounting practice context: 'Reframe this as a monthly partner review for a professional services firm — replace MRR and burn rate with collected revenue, realization rate, and aged receivables over 60 days.'

6 Add the Runway Analysis app and configure it for firm cash health: total cash on hand, projected collections based on current outstanding invoices, and months of operating runway at current expense run rate — useful if a large client is slow to pay.

7 Write the prompt that defines your review format: which metrics appear, in which order, what the narrative should call out (e.g., any client matter over $5,000 in unbilled WIP, any invoice aged past 90 days), and which partners receive the final email.

8 Set the delivery schedule — first Monday of the month at 8 a.m. is a common choice for firms that want it in inboxes before the weekly partner call. Starch runs the report, assembles the narrative, and sends it without anyone remembering to trigger it.

9 Review the first draft output against your actual QuickBooks figures to confirm the realization rate calculation matches how your firm defines it (collected / billed, not billed / budgeted). Adjust the prompt once to lock in the right definition.

10 Add a section for deadline risk: tell Starch to pull any calendar event tagged as a filing deadline or client deliverable in the next 30 days and list the responsible attorney or CPA alongside it, so the review doubles as a forward-looking risk flag.

11 Once the format is stable, publish the app internally so any partner can open it mid-month for a real-time snapshot — not just the scheduled send. The same connections power both the scheduled report and the on-demand view.

See this running on Starch

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Worked example

March 2026 Monthly Partner Review — Hendricks & Calloway CPAs

Sample numbers from a real run

Total billings (March)	148,200
Collected revenue (March)	121,500
Realization rate	82
Aged receivables > 60 days	34,700
Payroll (March)	51,000
Rent + utilities	8,400
Software and professional services	3,100
Net cash position (end of March)	203,400

Starch pulls March QuickBooks data — $148,200 billed across 34 active client matters — and cross-references Plaid bank transactions to show $121,500 actually collected, a realization rate of 82%. That's two points below the firm's 84% target. Starch flags $34,700 sitting in receivables older than 60 days and surfaces three client names from QuickBooks responsible for most of it. On the expense side, Plaid shows March payroll at $51,000 (in line with plan), rent at $8,400, and a $3,100 software line that's 40% higher than February — Starch notes a Karbon annual renewal hit mid-month. Net cash comes in at $203,400. The Runway Analysis section calculates 3.9 months of operating runway at current burn before any additional collections, which the partners use as a prompt to follow up on the three slow-pay clients before April's review. The full report, including a five-matter breakdown by hours billed and a 30-day deadline calendar pulling from Outlook Calendar, lands in all four partners' inboxes at 8 a.m. on the first Monday of April — no one assembled it manually.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Realization rate (collected revenue ÷ billed revenue, tracked monthly per partner)

Aged receivables by bucket (30 / 60 / 90+ days) and which client matters are driving the aging

Cash runway in months at current operating expense run rate

WIP (work-in-progress) unbilled at month-end, by matter and by attorney or CPA

Upcoming filing or deliverable deadlines in the next 30 days, flagged by responsible staff member

Comparison

What this replaces

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

QuickBooks + manual export to Excel

QuickBooks holds the billing data but can't draft the narrative, pull in calendar deadlines, or send the report — you're still doing the assembly by hand every month.

Karbon or TaxDome practice management

Strong workflow and deadline tracking within the tool, but neither generates a monthly review that combines financial metrics from QuickBooks, cash data from your bank, and email context from Outlook in one formatted document for partners.

Clio Manage (for law firms)

Clio gives you matter-level reporting and billing, but a partner-ready monthly review that includes firm-wide cash position, expense breakdown, and a written narrative still requires manual assembly from multiple sources.

Hiring a part-time controller or office manager to run the review

A human is more flexible and can catch things Starch won't, but at $30–$60/hour for 3–5 hours a month, you're paying for a task that runs on data that's already in your systems — and it still doesn't happen consistently if that person is out.

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

QuickBooks is already connected to our practice management tool. Does Starch need its own connection?

Yes — Starch syncs your QuickBooks data directly on a schedule, pulling invoices, payments, bills, and vendor records into Starch's database so the review can run without waiting for an export. Your practice management tool's QuickBooks integration and Starch's are independent; connecting Starch doesn't affect what Clio, Karbon, or TaxDome see.

Our bookkeeper closes the books on the 10th of the following month. Will the review have incomplete numbers if it runs on the 1st?

Yes, and that's worth naming honestly. Starch syncs whatever is in QuickBooks at the time the report runs. If you want fully closed numbers, schedule the review for the 12th or 13th of the month — after your bookkeeper's close — rather than the 1st. You can always run an on-demand preview on the 1st for a directional read, then let the formal send happen post-close.

QuickBooks has a P&L report view. Can Starch pull that directly?

QuickBooks P&L report views are temporarily unavailable in Starch pending a connector fix. Entity-level data — invoices, bills, payments, vendor records, and journal entries — syncs normally. The monthly review is built from those entities, not from the pre-built QuickBooks report views, so the numbers are accurate; they just come from the underlying records rather than the formatted QuickBooks P&L screen.

Can Starch pull matter-level data from Clio or TaxDome, not just QuickBooks?

Clio and TaxDome are reachable through Starch's integration catalog of 3,000+ apps — the agent queries them live when your review app runs. This means Starch can pull matter names, hours logged, and billing status from Clio alongside the financial data from QuickBooks and Plaid, and combine them in the same report. If your practice management tool isn't in the catalog, Starch can automate it through your browser — no API needed.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? We handle client financial data.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If your firm's data governance policy requires a certified vendor for handling client financial information, that's a real constraint worth flagging before you connect QuickBooks or Plaid. Starch is transparent about this — it's a genuine limit, not a footnote.

What if a partner wants to ask a follow-up question after reading the report — like 'which three clients are driving the 60-day aging?'

Because the report is built on live QuickBooks and Plaid data, you can ask Starch follow-up questions in plain language after the report runs: 'Show me the three invoices over 60 days and the last Outlook email thread with each client.' The agent pulls the answer from the same connected data without you opening QuickBooks or searching your inbox manually.