Finance & FP&A

How to track ar aging and run collections as Event Agency Founders

Finance & FP&AFor Event Agency Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You're chasing 15 open invoices across HoneyBook or Dubsado while also finalizing a venue contract and answering a vendor's third follow-up email. Your AR 'system' is a Google Sheet you update when you remember to, a Dubsado pipeline that tells you a proposal was sent but not whether the deposit was actually collected, and a Gmail thread buried under catering quotes. You find out a client is 60 days past due when you go to book the next event for them. There's no aging report, no automated nudge, no single place to see who owes you what — just a creeping anxiety every time you look at your bank account.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Finance & FP&AFor Event Agency Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live AR aging dashboard that pulls every outstanding invoice, groups balances by client and event, and flags anything past 30, 60, or 90 days — updated daily from your connected bank and billing accounts

An automated collections workflow where Starch drafts a payment reminder in your voice, attaches the original invoice details, and queues it for your one-click send — no copy-paste, no forgetting

A spend and cash position view that combines your incoming deposits with outgoing vendor payments so you can see real net cash week by week, not just 'what's in checking'

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 Transaction Insights Email Agent

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Plaid bank account data on a schedule (deposits, debits, and categorized transactions refresh daily). Gmail is connected as a scheduled-sync provider so the Email Agent reads your existing invoice threads and drafts replies in context. QuickBooks or Xero can be connected from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries them live when your AR dashboard needs invoice status. HoneyBook and Dubsado are reachable through browser automation — no API needed — for reading proposal and invoice status directly from your existing workflow tools.

Prompts to copy

Build me an AR aging tracker that pulls my Plaid transactions to find incoming client payments, lets me manually log outstanding invoice amounts by client name and event date, and buckets everything into current, 30 days overdue, 60 days overdue, and 90+ days overdue columns. Flag any balance over $2,000 that's been sitting more than 45 days.

Every Monday morning, look at my AR aging tracker and draft a collections email for each client with an overdue balance. Write it in a polite but direct tone, reference the specific event name and amount owed, and queue each draft in Gmail for me to review and send with one click.

Show me a weekly cash flow view combining my Plaid deposits (client payments coming in) and Plaid debits (vendor payments going out), broken down by event where possible, with a 90-day forward projection based on my confirmed upcoming event schedule.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect your business checking and any client-payment accounts through Plaid — Starch syncs your transaction data on a schedule and starts categorizing deposits by vendor/client and debits by payee automatically.

2 Connect Gmail as a scheduled-sync provider so Starch can read your existing invoice threads, find payment confirmations buried in email, and match them against open balances.

3 Open the Transaction Insights starter app and customize it for your agency: rename spending categories to match how you actually think (Venue Deposits, Catering, A/V, Staffing) and set an anomaly alert for any charge over $1,500 from a new vendor.

4 Describe your AR aging view to Starch: tell it which clients have open invoices, the amounts, and the due dates — or let it scan your Gmail for sent invoice emails and build the initial ledger from those threads.

5 Set up the aging buckets: ask Starch to flag anything unpaid past 30 days in yellow, 60 days in orange, and 90+ days in red, and surface the top five highest-value overdue balances at the top of the dashboard every time you open it.

6 Wire the Email Agent to your AR tracker: describe the collections cadence you want (a gentle reminder at 7 days past due, a firmer note at 30, a 'please call me' message at 60) and the tone that fits your agency's client relationships.

7 Review the first batch of drafted collection emails — adjust the template language once, and Starch will apply your edits to every future draft so the voice stays consistent without you rewriting each one.

8 Connect QuickBooks or Xero from Starch's integration catalog if you use either for bookkeeping — the agent queries them live so your AR view reflects what's been officially invoiced, not just what you remember sending.

9 Set up a Monday morning automation: Starch checks the AR aging dashboard, identifies every balance that crossed a threshold since last week, drafts the appropriate collections email for each, and Slacks you a summary of what's queued so you can batch-review in under 10 minutes.

10 Use the Runway Analysis starter app to overlay your AR collections expected this month against your confirmed vendor commitments — so you can see whether you're actually cash-positive before you authorize the next event deposit.

11 Each time a client pays, the Plaid transaction sync picks it up automatically and Starch marks the corresponding AR line as collected — no manual update needed.

12 At the end of each quarter, pull a collections report: which clients paid on time, which needed reminders, average days-to-collect by event type — use it to decide which clients get shorter net terms next cycle.

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

Q1 2026 Collections Push — 4 Events, $38,400 Outstanding

Sample numbers from a real run

Hartley Corporate Gala — final balance	12,500
Mariner Wedding — second installment	8,900
Bloom & Co. holiday party — deposit (60 days overdue)	7,200
Reyes Rehearsal Dinner — final invoice	5,800
Pending vendor reimbursements (A/V, florals)	4,000

It's March 3rd and your AR dashboard surfaces $38,400 across four events. Hartley Corporate's $12,500 final balance has been sitting 22 days — Starch drafts a friendly reminder referencing the January 14th event date and the wire instructions you sent originally. Bloom & Co.'s $7,200 deposit is the problem child: 60 days overdue, two unanswered emails already in the thread. The Email Agent reads that history, drafts a firmer note that acknowledges the previous messages, and flags it for your personal review rather than auto-queuing it. Mariner's $8,900 installment isn't due until March 15th — Starch leaves it alone. The $4,000 in vendor reimbursements are outbound expenses sitting in your Plaid feed; Transaction Insights has already flagged one $1,800 A/V charge that's double what you normally pay that vendor. By end of week, Hartley pays, Bloom & Co. responds with a partial payment, and you've collected $22,400 of the $38,400 with fewer than 20 minutes of your own time on email.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Average days to collect by client type (corporate vs. social/wedding)

Percentage of invoices collected before the event date vs. after

Outstanding AR balance as a percentage of trailing 90-day revenue

Number of invoices requiring a second or third follow-up before payment

Net cash position after confirmed vendor commitments for the next 60 days

Comparison

What this replaces

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

HoneyBook or Dubsado invoice tracking

Both show you invoice status inside their own pipeline, but neither gives you an aging report, neither drafts collections emails automatically, and neither connects to your actual bank to confirm payment landed — you're still checking manually.

QuickBooks AR aging report

QuickBooks produces a proper aging report if your books are kept current, but it doesn't draft follow-up emails, doesn't alert you proactively, and requires your bookkeeper to close the month before the numbers are reliable — which is usually two to four weeks behind.

Google Sheets AR tracker

A spreadsheet gives you full flexibility but requires manual updates on every invoice, every payment, and every follow-up — and it won't draft a single collections email or notice when a client's deposit finally hits your account.

Airtable + Zapier automations

You can build a more automated AR tracker in Airtable with Zapier triggers, but building and maintaining the Zaps takes real setup time, the email drafts are template-only (no context from the actual thread), and there's no cash projection layer built in.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — runway analysis, transaction insights, email agent 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

I use HoneyBook for invoicing, not QuickBooks. Can Starch still track which invoices are paid?

Yes. HoneyBook is reachable through browser automation — no API needed. Starch can navigate your HoneyBook account to read invoice statuses and pull them into your AR tracker. Alternatively, if you connect Plaid, Starch can match incoming bank deposits against your expected invoice amounts and mark balances as collected when the payment lands — no formal integration with HoneyBook required.

Will Starch actually send the collections emails, or does it just draft them?

By default, Starch queues drafts in Gmail for your review — you read, adjust if needed, and send with one click. You can configure the automation to send certain reminder types automatically (a 7-day past-due note, for example) while requiring your approval for the more sensitive 60-day messages. You stay in control of what goes out.

My clients pay a mix of ways — Venmo, wire, check. Will Plaid catch all of those?

Plaid syncs deposits as they appear in your connected bank account, so wire transfers and ACH payments show up reliably. Venmo business payments that settle to your bank account show up too. Physical checks appear once they clear. The one gap: if a client pays an invoice inside HoneyBook and HoneyBook holds the funds before disbursing, Starch sees the disbursement to your bank, not the original client payment. For those cases, Starch can read your HoneyBook account through browser automation to get the earlier payment timestamp.

I'm not SOC 2 certified — is Starch?

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If a corporate client requires SOC 2 documentation before you connect any tool to their data, that's worth knowing upfront. For most independent event agencies managing their own invoicing and collections, this isn't a blocker, but it's honest to say it's not there yet.

Can Starch pull historical AR data so I can see patterns from last year?

Starch is built for live data surfaces, not a long-horizon data warehouse. Plaid syncs your transaction history going back 12–24 months depending on your bank, and Gmail history is available from when you connect. If you need multi-year collections analysis, exporting your QuickBooks or HoneyBook data and loading it as a one-time import is the right path — Starch handles the live going-forward view really well but isn't a replacement for archived analytics.

What if a client disputes an invoice? Can Starch help manage that back-and-forth?

The Email Agent reads the full thread history, so if a client has already raised a concern in email, Starch incorporates that context when drafting the follow-up. You'd describe the situation — 'this client is disputing the venue add-on charge from the March event' — and Starch drafts a response that acknowledges the dispute rather than sending another generic payment reminder. You still review before sending, especially on anything sensitive.