20 skills
Finance Suite
Board Financial Update
Create investor-grade board financial updates that satisfy fiduciary reporting requirements and drive strategic alignment. This skill guides you through building quarterly and monthly board packages covering revenue performance, cash position, operational KPIs, and forward-looking guidance using GAAP/IFRS reporting standards, the Bessemer SaaS metrics framework, and management discussion best practices. Ideal for CFOs, VP Finance, and controllers preparing for board meetings, audit committee sessions, or investor updates. Deliverables include a complete board update narrative, financial highlights slide, variance analysis framework, and forward-looking guidance template.
financeBudget Proposal Finance
Build defensible, board-approved annual and departmental budgets using zero-based budgeting, driver-based planning, and rolling forecast methodologies. This skill walks FP&A analysts, controllers, and finance business partners through building budget proposals from scratch, including headcount planning, CapEx vs OpEx classification, ROI justification frameworks, and variance reporting. Ideal for annual planning cycles, mid-year reforecasts, new department budget requests, and cost optimization initiatives. Deliverables include a complete department budget template, headcount model, ROI justification framework, and budget variance report.
financeCap Table Explanation
Cap table management, dilution modeling, option pool sizing, 409A valuation alignment, and scenario analysis for founders, CFOs, and finance leads preparing for fundraises, exits, and board reviews.
financeCash Flow Explanation
Direct and indirect method cash flow statements, 13-week rolling cash flow forecasts, working capital analysis, and liquidity scorecards for CFOs, controllers, and finance leads managing liquidity and runway.
financeCfo Board Presentation
CFO board deck construction with SaaS metrics (ARR, NDR, CAC payback, Rule of 40), 15-slide board deck template, KPI dashboard slides, and risk register for finance leaders presenting to VC and PE boards.
financeDue Diligence Checklist
Financial due diligence methodology covering quality of earnings, working capital peg, 100+ item DD checklist, data room structure, and red flag identification for acquirers, investors, and CFOs preparing for or running a transaction.
financeExpense Report Guide
IRS-compliant T&E policy design, spend taxonomy, expense report templates, approval workflow architecture, and audit-ready documentation for finance operations at startups and scaling companies.
financeFinancial Audit Prep
Financial audit preparation covering SOX compliance, PCAOB audit standards, COSO internal controls, 80+ item PBC (prepared-by-client) list, reconciliation templates, and audit calendar for controllers and CFOs approaching fiscal year-end audit.
financeFinancial Projections Framework
Top-down vs bottom-up modeling methodology, SaaS model structure, 3-statement model outline, sensitivity analysis, and bull/base/bear scenarios for founders, CFOs, and FP&A leads building defensible financial forecasts.
financeFundraising Ask Structure
Frame your fundraising ask so VCs and angels understand in ninety seconds why you are raising this amount now and what it buys them. Use this skill when you are prepping for a seed, bridge, or Series A pitch and want to move past "we need runway" into a concrete use-of-funds narrative that holds up to follow-up questions. Produces a one-slide fundraising summary, a 150-word email pitch, a use-of-funds breakdown tied to 12 to 18 months of specific milestones, a valuation justification you can defend, and a round-structure comparison of priced-round versus SAFE with current MFN norms. Includes investor-meeting talking points and a two-minute ask for a warm-intro call.
financeGrant Application Outline
Comprehensive grant application outline builder for nonprofit program directors, academic researchers, and institutional development officers pursuing federal, foundation, or corporate funding. Walks you through logic model construction, theory of change articulation, OMB Uniform Guidance compliance, budget justification narratives, and multi-year sustainability planning. Produces a submission-ready grant narrative with evaluation framework and all required supplementary materials.
financeInvestor Update Email
Professional investor update email builder for startup founders and CFOs communicating with angel investors, venture capital firms, and strategic partners. Structures monthly and quarterly updates using the First Round Capital format, builds KPI dashboard narratives, handles bad news communication with transparency frameworks, and crafts specific ask sections that drive investor engagement. Produces polished, data-driven updates that maintain trust and unlock follow-on support.
financeInvoice Template
Send an invoice that gets paid within 15 days instead of chased for 45. Use this skill when you freelance or run an agency billing between $500 and $50,000 per engagement and want an invoice that is unambiguous, branded, and collects payment without ten followups. Produces an invoice template with line items, rates, taxes, PO number slot, net-X terms, late-fee language, and banking or Stripe/Wise payment links. Includes three tone variants (first send, polite nudge, final notice before collections) and versions for QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, and a PDF-only workflow. Covers US 1099 reporting thresholds and common ACH-versus-wire language expected by enterprise AP teams.
financeKpi Dashboard Brief
Brief the person building your KPI dashboard so the first version is decision-useful, not a Looker tile graveyard. Use this skill when you are a founder, VP, or operator hiring an analyst or BI vendor to stand up a metrics layer and want a spec the builder can implement without 12 rounds of feedback. Produces a dashboard brief covering business questions the dashboard must answer, a 6 to 12 KPI list with formula definitions, data-source mapping (HubSpot, Stripe, Segment, the warehouse), refresh cadence, user personas and their views, visualization type per metric, and an explicit vanity-metric exclusion list. Includes an acceptance-test checklist and a weekly-review meeting agenda so the dashboard actually gets used.
financeMa Preliminary Analysis
Run the first-pass M&A analysis on a target before you spend $75K on a banker or a legal data room. Use this skill when a strategic acquirer or a founder on the buy side has identified a target and needs a working analysis in two weeks — not a dressed-up CIM. Produces a preliminary memo covering strategic rationale, target business overview, revenue and margin quality, customer concentration, a three-scenario valuation (revenue multiple, EBITDA multiple, DCF sanity check), deal-structure options (all-cash, stock, earnout), synergy categories with skeptical sizing, and top five due-diligence risks. Includes an LOI outline and a board-memo one-pager. Built for US deals $5M to $250M in enterprise value.
financeMonthly Close Checklist
Close the books by working day 10 without your controller calling out sick from exhaustion. Use this skill when you run or support finance at a company between $2M and $50M in revenue and your monthly close has crept from a tidy checklist into a chaotic group chat. Produces a day-by-day close calendar from T-2 through T+10, an owner-assigned task list covering bank reconciliations, AP/AR cutoffs, accruals, deferred revenue, prepaids, payroll journal entries, and inventory counts, plus a variance-to-budget review template. Includes a close-package cover memo for leadership and reconciliation workpapers that stand up to an audit. Built for QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, or Sage Intacct shops.
financePayroll Communication
Communicate a payroll change — new provider, pay-period shift, direct-deposit migration, benefits-deduction correction — without setting off a panic in the company Slack. Use this skill when your finance or People Ops team is about to touch how people get paid and you need clear messaging before the first pay stub lands in someone's inbox with an unexpected number. Produces an announcement email with the what, when, why, and "nothing changes for you unless" block, a manager FAQ, a Slack or Teams reminder cadence (T-14, T-7, T-1, T+1), and a payroll-discrepancy response script for the questions that will come in anyway. Tested against transitions to Gusto, Rippling, ADP, and Paychex.
financePl Narrative
Turn a monthly P&L into a two-page narrative the CEO will read before the board meeting, instead of a raw export from QuickBooks. Use this skill when you are a controller or fractional CFO and want to explain why revenue moved, where gross margin compressed, and which line items drove the variance — not just show the numbers. Produces an executive summary, a revenue-by-segment commentary, a gross-margin bridge, an opex narrative with month-over-month and budget-variance explanations, a cash-position update, and a three-item "things worth watching" list. Includes a board-ready chart pack specification and reconciliation notes tied to your close package.
financeTax Prep Checklist
Hand your CPA a clean tax package in February instead of a shoebox of receipts in April. Use this skill when you run a small business, an LLC, an S-Corp, or freelance full-time and need to walk into tax prep with every document the return requires. Produces a tax-year checklist grouped by income (1099s, W-2, K-1s), expenses (categorized by Schedule C line), assets (depreciation schedule), home office, vehicle mileage, retirement contributions, and estimated tax payments. Includes a quarterly-estimated-tax forecasting worksheet, a year-end tax-loss-harvesting prompt, and a CPA handoff email. Written for US federal returns with state-tax callouts for CA, NY, and TX.
financeVc Term Sheet Guide
Read and negotiate a VC term sheet without paying Cooley $8,000 to tell you the liquidation preference is standard. Use this skill when you have a term sheet for a priced round (seed through Series B) and need to understand each clause, know what market terms look like in the current cycle, and identify the three to five items worth pushing back on. Produces a clause-by-clause annotation covering valuation, option pool, liquidation preference, participation, anti-dilution, protective provisions, board composition, and pro-rata rights, plus a counter-proposal email draft and founder-friendly redlines mapped to current NVCA model documents. Built for US-based SAFE and priced rounds.