CX Cash Blog
Practical guides on treasury, cash flow forecasting, FP&A, SaaS metrics, fundraising and portfolio monitoring, written for founders, CFOs and VCs.
Know your cash position to the second, consolidate every account, and run treasury like the pros.
From the 13-week forecast to driver-based projections. See your runway before it arrives.
The statements, reporting cadence, and systems that turn raw numbers into decisions.
Build a budget that holds, control spend without killing momentum, and free up working capital.
Model the business, stress-test the assumptions, and be ready for the black swan.
ARR, NRR, CAC, LTV, burn, the Rule of 40: every metric founders and investors live by.
Runway, SAFEs, cap tables, term sheets, and investor updates: fundraising without the fog.
Portfolio monitoring, fund metrics, diligence, and board reporting for VCs and angels.
The Pulley cap table app closes on 8 December 2026. Opt in to Carta by 30 November, or export the stock ledger, 409A reports and 2026 ISO exercises yourself.
Equity dilution is the fall in each owner's percentage when a company issues new shares. The formula, median dilution by round, SAFEs, pools and anti-dilution.
Reserve planning: VC funds hold back about half their capital. Size reserves for rounds a new investor prices; insider-only rounds return less.
Small business budgeting software compared across 12 tools: the plan tier where budget-versus-actual starts, its list price, and who each tier suits.
Seven FP&A software tools for SaaS startups, sorted by where the model lives and how it leaves, with published prices and five ownership changes since 2018.
Nine cash flow forecasting software tools for small business, priced from vendor pages and judged on how each one dates invoices paid late.
Treasury management software for startups, compared: Mercury, Brex, Rho, Ramp and five TMS vendors, judged as treasurers rank them: safety, liquidity, yield.
An investor update template works because its lines are fixed, so a missing number reads as bad news. What to include, how often, and what the law requires.
Scenario analysis works when each case starts from one named cause that moves several numbers together. How the Fed and Shell do it, and what founders can copy.
Headcount planning needs a dollar cost per hire. Health cover is a fixed sum and payroll taxes stop at caps, so one salary multiplier misprices the team.
A chart of accounts is the numbered list of accounts a ledger posts to. A SaaS company needs few, a department key on every cost and capitalisation in view.
Cash flow projections for SaaS should start from a few operating drivers, contract terms first, because billing and payment terms decide when the cash arrives.
Cash flow visibility software can show nothing newer than the bank's last report. How balances age, which status to trust, and what a stale number costs.
A down round resets the price, but the liquidation preferences stacked above it decide whether anyone will fund the company. Clear the stack, fairly.
Financial modeling best practices exist so someone else can check the model. Builders misjudge their own errors, so size the review to the stakes.
Budget variance analysis in three steps: test each monthly variance for a signal, split the plan's error from the team's, and only then judge performance.
Startup valuation methods each borrow one market number: a target stake, a local median, an exit multiple. Name and date it before you negotiate the price.
SaaS revenue recognition under ASC 606: five fixed steps, four judgements that move the numbers, and why the written policy is part of the revenue figure.
Size an option pool on grants net of what leavers return: unvested options come back at once, and vested ones when the exit window closes.
A SaaS P&L has rules down to EBITDA and none after it, so read the add-backs first: one Blackbaud quarter scores 41 on the Rule of 40, or 24 on GAAP margin.
Cash vs accrual accounting for SaaS: the IRS allows cash until $32M of average receipts, but investors' model contracts ask for GAAP accrual from signing.
A term sheet sets a round's price, preference and control terms. The money terms decide who is paid in a middling sale; the votes decide whether it happens.
Bookings vs billings vs revenue: signed, invoiced, earned. Only revenue has a rulebook; count bookings as ASC 606 counts RPO, by the noncancellable term.
The three financial statements are one balance sheet at two dates plus the flows between them. Read it first, then check each flow lands, as in Duolingo's 10-K.
A 409A valuation sets the strike price on startup options. Its discount to the preferred price measures the distance to an exit, and closes as one nears.
Burn rate is the cash a company loses each month: gross burn counts payments, net burn subtracts collections. The burn multiple prices the ARR it buys.
FP&A for startups is a cash projection, a budget and a monthly comparison. Young firms adopt them about two years in, and the founder should write them first.
A cap table lists who owns a company's shares, options and SAFEs. A median round dilutes it by about 16%; pools and SAFEs priced in can cost founders more.
What is account reconciliation? A check of the books against a record the company did not write. Any difference older than its payment rail allows is an error.
Startup finance terms with formulas and sources. FASB, the IRS, ILPA and the NVCA own some definitions; ARR, burn and CAC mean what each company says.
A SAFE note promises future shares with no interest or maturity. In the safe vs convertible note choice, its post-money cap puts later dilution on founders.
Expense management for startups: meet the IRS floor, keep pre-approval for big commitments, and review the whole ledger, because approval limits move spending.
Startup finance stack compared by layer: banking, cards, payroll, accounting, billing and FP&A, sorted by whose money each holds and who pays when it fails.
The cash conversion cycle counts the days cash is tied up. Company 10-Ks show what matters more: whether customers, suppliers or banks fund those days.
Startup financial red flags like fast growth and fundraising fit almost every startup. In SEC fraud cases, the tell was a number no outsider could confirm.
Financial risk management for a small business is mostly concentration: customers, banks, currency, rates, payment authority. How to measure and price each.
Top-down vs bottom-up budgeting: targets carry ambition, team builds carry optimism and padding. What the research says, and how to budget the gap.
A fractional CFO costs about four times a full-time executive per hour, so renting wins below roughly 40 hours a month. Pay data and 24 S-1s show when to hire.
Where to park idle startup cash: hold runway to the next milestone plus a raise, fence the surplus, then choose each home by its exit on a bad day.
A data room is the set of documents investors check before they invest. For a fundraise, build it from the warranties the company will sign at closing.
Startup runway is cash divided by monthly net burn. Size it for a raise that fails: rounds come about 23 months apart, so start raising with 16 months left.
Sensitivity analysis is only as good as its ranges. Set them from evidence, then test the plan to failure: the likeliest break is a mix of moderate misses.
Zero based budgeting has been tested since 1962, and its value lies in ranking spending. Zero-base once at a change point, then rank the margin every quarter.
A month-end close checklist in nine steps, from cut-off to sign-off, with what each step waits for and how to set a reporting date the close can keep.
Direct vs indirect cash flow: in a cash flow statement both methods reach the same number; in a forecast they diverge, and the evidence favours direct.
Your cash position is four balances: book, ledger, available and free. Holds, cut-offs, restricted cash and covenants split them; spend only the smallest.
Venture debt costs about 13% to 15% a year with fees and warrants. It beats equity as a bridge to a likely round and falls short as insurance against a miss.
A startup financial model will miss its numbers; VCs say fewer than 30% of companies meet projections. Build the structure, rank the growth rate, then raise.
A startup budget template needs 12 monthly cash columns, revenue in four layers, payroll at loaded cost and a column for what each commitment costs to stop.
AI in finance saves time on coding and reconciling, where a person can check each output against the ledger. What field studies, the SEC and the law show.
Cash flow forecasting at 13-week, 12-month and multi-year horizons: the method for each, which techniques beat a naive forecast, and how to score yours.
Treasury management governs a company's cash and financial risk. A funded startup needs it from its first round, as a board-approved investment policy.
A 13-week cash flow forecast runs the legal test of solvency a week at a time. Why weekly, why 13 weeks, how to date receipts by payer, and what lenders test.
Portfolio monitoring for VCs and LPs: the reporting deadlines, the KPIs to collect at each stage, and why late reports and small customer bases mislead.
