Kishen Patel
Founder, Consult EFC | ICAEW Chartered Accountant
Kishen helps SaaS founders move from messy spreadsheets to investor-ready finance functions. As a Chartered Accountant, he specialises in de-risking the Seed to Series A transition by implementing robust controls and clean KPI reporting. He ensures your financial story stands up to professional scrutiny, protecting your runway and your equity.
Table of Contents
🔍 Key Takeaways: 90-Day SaaS Finance Roadmap
- Confidence over Complexity: The goal of a 90-day transformation is not to build an enterprise department. It is about creating a repeatable routine that produces clean books and clear cash visibility.
- The Single Source of Truth: Successful Series A rounds require one chart of accounts and consistent KPI definitions. Without these, every board report becomes an argument rather than a strategy session.
- Cash as Oxygen: A simple 13-week forecast updated weekly is more valuable than a complex five-year model. It allows founders to identify risks early and make calmer hiring decisions.
- Investor Readiness: By Day 90, your finance function should act as a “seatbelt” for growth. Professional reporting and basic controls de-risk the business and protect your valuation during due diligence.
It starts the same way for most UK SaaS founders. You have a handful of customers, cash flowing through Stripe or GoCardless, and a spreadsheet that mostly works for basic tracking. However, as you scale from Seed to Series A, the complexity shifts. New hires join the payroll, annual pre-payments distort your cash position, and sudden refunds mean the numbers no longer tie out. Cash flow feels healthy on Monday but becomes a source of anxiety by Friday.
At this critical growth stage, the primary risk is not a lack of data. The risk is a lack of trusted financial reporting. This is when cash surprises jeopardise your runway, SaaS KPIs like CAC and LTV are debated in board meetings, and investor due diligence questions take weeks rather than hours to answer.
What is SaaS Financial Transformation?
In this context, SaaS financial transformation does not involve recruiting a massive enterprise department. Instead, it is about moving from reactive bookkeeping to a repeatable finance function that delivers:
- Clean Books: Accurate accrual-based accounting that reflects true performance.
- Cash Visibility: Real-time insights into your net burn rate and runway.
- Investor Readiness: Reporting that stands up to the scrutiny of Tier 1 VCs.
This 90-day financial roadmap provides a structured plan to achieve operational clarity without slowing your business down. If you require hands-on support to implement these systems, Consult EFC specialises in partnering with founders to turn theoretical plans into a robust, functional reality.
Build a Function Investors Trust
Cleaning your books is the first step. Protecting your equity is the second. Spend 30 minutes with Kishen Patel to stress-test your SaaS KPIs and ensure your finance function is ready for the scrutiny of a Series A fundraise.
Identify the “red flags” in your deferred revenue and payroll controls that VCs use to justify lower valuations or aggressive term sheets.
Ensure your MRR and Churn definitions are bulletproof. Avoid the board-room arguments that happen when sales and finance numbers do not tie out.
● Next Availability: Only 3 Finance Function Audits remaining for this month.
Defining Success: Financial Benchmarks for Series A Readiness
A 90-day plan only works if “done” is clear. Otherwise, you’ll stay busy but not get safer. The goal is confidence, not complexity: numbers you can use in decisions, and a routine that survives growth.
Here’s what “good” looks like by day 90:
| Outcome | In Practice | Why it Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Accurate monthly close | Close within 5 to 8 business days | Investors stop doubting the basics |
| Trusted cash view | 13-week forecast updated weekly | Fewer surprises and calmer decisions |
| Simple SaaS KPI set | One definition for each metric | No more debates in board meetings |
| Basic controls | Spend approvals, access, audit trail | Protects cash and reduces errors |
| Board pack | Clear story with risks and actions | Makes fundraising easier |
Before you begin, do a quick readiness check. If two or more of these hurt, start there:
- You can’t state cash runway without checking three places.
- Billing data and accounting don’t match (even roughly).
- Founders spend more than two hours a week “doing finance”.
- Sales and finance disagree on what counts as churn or MRR.
- You can’t answer “what changed this month?” in five minutes.
Roles also need to be explicit. Founders set targets and approve trade-offs. Ops owns process and follow-up. Sales owns pipeline hygiene. Your accountant keeps compliance tight. A fractional CFO or finance lead (often part-time at this stage) ties it together and builds a cadence.
Finally, set a few non-negotiables: one source of truth, one chart of accounts, and consistent definitions. Without these, every report becomes an argument.
From Foundation to Full Exit
Professional finance is not just about staying safe. It is about building a scalable asset that is ready for a premium valuation when the time comes.
1. Scalable Foundations
Our Fractional CFO services clean your data and install the controls needed to survive the hyper-growth phase between Seed and Series B rounds.
2. Valuation Protection
We leverage your clean accounts to defend your multiple through professional Business Valuation, ensuring no “price-chipping” occurs during an exit.
“Messy accounts are the biggest drain on founder equity. We fix the data today so you can protect your wealth tomorrow.”
The Essential SaaS Finance Stack: Tools and Processes for Growth
The Minimum Finance Stack for Early-Stage SaaS
Avoid These Three Common Traps
- Software Over-buying: New tools cannot fix messy inputs or a lack of clear financial definitions.
- Metric Confusion: Mixing cash and accrual views often leads to total reconciliation failure during diligence.
- Over-complexity: Building heavy models that no one updates creates a dangerous, false sense of truth.
Choose your core metrics once, then stick to them
The Tight SaaS Metric Set
Four questions every Seed to Series A founder must answer with clean data.
Monthly Recurring Revenue at month-end, then annualised to show your current scale and growth trajectory.
Churn: Revenue lost through cancellations.
NRR: Performance of an existing cohort after churn and expansions.
Margin: Total revenue minus direct delivery costs.
CAC Payback: Months required to recover sales and marketing spend.
Burn: Net cash outflow (3-month average).
Runway: Total available cash divided by your monthly burn rate.
Then lock definitions. Decide what counts as churn (downgrades, cancellations, pauses). Decide how you treat discounts (reduce MRR, don’t hide it). Decide how annual pre-pays show up (cash now, revenue over time). If you change a definition, write it down and restate history, otherwise trend lines lie.
UK basics matter too. VAT can inflate “revenue” in casual reporting if you’re not careful. Keep VAT out of revenue metrics. Also, be clear on revenue recognition at a basic level: cash received isn’t always revenue earned, especially with annual contracts.
Phase 1 (Days 1-30): Data Integrity and Cash Flow Visibility
The first month is foundations. It’s tempting to jump straight to dashboards. Resist that. If the books are messy, your KPIs will be messy too. Speed matters, but accuracy matters more.
Start by choosing your “close line”. Pick the last month you’ll fully clean, then lock earlier periods unless there’s a real risk. Next, tidy the chart of accounts so costs land in the right buckets. You don’t need 200 accounts. You do need consistency, especially for payroll, contractors, hosting, marketing, and professional fees.
At the same time, install a weekly cash rhythm. Cash is your oxygen at Seed to Series A. You want a view you trust, updated often enough to guide hiring and spend timing.
By day 30, you should be able to produce these deliverables without panic:
- A reconciled bank balance that matches accounting.
- Clean coding for the top 80 percent of spend.
- A clear view of deferred revenue (especially annual pre-pay).
- A first-pass KPI sheet using agreed definitions.
- A working 13-week cash forecast, updated weekly.
Tidy the finance basics fast: chart of accounts, cut-off, and revenue hygiene
“Clean books” sounds vague. In practice, it’s a handful of repeatable actions.
First, reconcile bank and key payment platforms (for example Stripe, PayPal, GoCardless, or card processors). Then clear suspense accounts and stop posting new items to “misc”. If something doesn’t fit, fix the structure, don’t hide the problem.
Next, get cut-off right. Cut-off just means: what belongs in this month? If you invoice in February for a March service, it doesn’t all belong in February. If you receive cash in February for an annual contract, it’s not all February revenue. That’s where deferred revenue comes in, and it matters a lot in SaaS.
Watch the common SaaS tripwires:
- Annual pre-pays recorded as revenue in full.
- Refunds and chargebacks not linked to the original sale.
- Usage charges posted inconsistently (or not at all).
- Mixing invoice dates with cash receipts, then treating the result as “MRR”.
If you sell via direct debit, align collection dates to accounting periods. If you bill through Stripe, map fees correctly and separate VAT. Small errors compound quickly when volumes grow, so fix the pattern early.
How to Build a 13-Week SaaS Cash Forecast
A 13-week forecast works because it matches how founders actually manage risk. It’s close enough to be accurate, and long enough to see trouble coming. If you can’t update it quickly, it won’t get updated, so keep the model simple.
A good structure has predictable rows:
- Opening cash (from bank).
- Expected receipts (subscriptions, annual pre-pays, usage, services).
- Payroll (including NI and pension).
- VAT and corporation tax timing (as best known).
- Hosting and key vendors.
- Software subscriptions.
- Contractors and freelancers.
- Loan repayments and interest.
- One-off items (equipment, legal, events).
Set a weekly update routine. One person owns the file. Another person reviews it. Update expected receipts using rules, not hope. For example, assume new deals land two weeks after “commit” stage, unless you have evidence. Use ranges for uncertain items, then show the impact on runway.
Define burn and runway in plain terms and keep them stable. Burn is net cash out per month. Runway is how many months you have if nothing changes. Then add reality: planned hires and contract renewals do change it, so keep those dates visible.
Phase 2 (Days 31-60): Establishing a Monthly Close and KPI Cadence
Once the foundations are stable, finance can help steer the business. This is the month where reporting becomes routine, not a scramble. You’ll set a monthly close cadence, agree a budget, and run a consistent KPI dashboard.
A helpful way to think about it is a satnav. Your KPIs tell you where you are. Your budget tells you where you’re trying to go. Your cash forecast tells you whether you can make the journey at your current speed.
By day 60, you want a predictable cycle: close, review, decide, act. That cycle reduces founder stress because fewer things feel “unknown”. It also sharpens your story for investors, because the team speaks from the same numbers.
Standardising SaaS KPIs: MRR, Churn, and NRR Definitions
You don’t need a big finance team to close well. You need a calendar and discipline.
Aim for a 5 to 8 business day close:
- Reconcile bank and payment platforms (day 1 to 2).
- Review revenue, deferred revenue, and refunds (day 2 to 3).
- Post payroll, then check it against headcount (day 3).
- Book key accruals and prepayments (day 4 to 5).
- Review variances against budget (day 6).
- Final check and sign-off (day 7 to 8).
Materiality helps here. If a small subscription tool is off by £120, don’t burn half a day on it. Focus on the drivers: payroll, hosting, paid acquisition, and the largest customers.
Write down the process as you go. A simple close checklist becomes training later. It also reduces dependency on one person’s memory, which is often the hidden risk in founder-led finance.
Turn your plan into a living budget, tied to headcount and pipeline
Budgets fail when they’re built for the board and ignored by the team. Make yours operational. Tie it to headcount and pipeline, because those are the levers founders actually pull.
Start with headcount, because it dominates early cost bases. Include salary, NI, pension, and any benefits. Add tooling per seat (support, analytics, security). Then model hosting in a way that matches your product, either per customer or per usage band. Marketing can sit in two buckets, fixed spend and campaign spend.
Build three scenarios: base, cautious, and upside. Keep the differences simple, usually hiring dates, conversion rates, and marketing timing. When a month misses plan, don’t just explain it. Decide the action. Pause a hire, shift spend, or adjust targets, but do it quickly so cash doesn’t drift.
A budget should answer one question each month: do we still have a realistic path to our next milestone, without running out of cash?
Phase 3 (Days 61-90): Internal Controls and Investor Reporting
In the final month, you turn good habits into a finance function. That means controls that protect cash, and reporting that stands up to scrutiny. This is where many teams feel friction, because “controls” sounds like bureaucracy. Done well, controls are just seatbelts. They’re there because the business is moving faster now.
You’ll also build an investor-ready story. Not a glossy narrative, but a clear bridge from numbers to decisions: what happened, why it happened, what you did about it, and what happens next.
By day 90, you should be able to share a board pack without fear. You should also be able to open a due diligence folder and find what investors ask for, without a week of searching.
Simple controls that protect cash without slowing the team down
Controls should match your stage. Seed to Series A companies need clarity and traceability, not red tape.
Start with approvals. Set a two-person approval above a threshold that matters for your burn. Keep thresholds realistic. A £50 approval slows the team and gets ignored. A £2,000 approval without a second check can hurt quickly.
Then tighten spend mechanics:
- Use a vendor master list, so names and terms stay consistent.
- Limit card access and set sensible per-transaction limits.
- Require receipts and a short business reason for expenses.
- Review subscriptions quarterly, because “small” tools add up fast.
Segregation of duties still matters in small teams. If one person can set up a supplier, approve it, and pay it, mistakes and fraud become easier. Even if headcount is low, you can split steps across founder and ops, or use your accountant to add review.
Finally, control access. Keep a list of who can access bank, billing, accounting, and payroll systems. Remove access quickly when roles change.
Creating a Series A Board Pack That Builds Credibility
A board pack isn’t a data dump. It’s a decision document. Keep it focused, consistent each month, and honest about risk.
Include:
- P&L with commentary on the top drivers.
- Balance sheet highlights (cash, deferred revenue, key liabilities).
- Cash position and 13-week forecast, with runway.
- SaaS KPI dashboard (MRR/ARR, churn, NRR, gross margin, CAC payback).
- Churn or cohort view, simple but consistent.
- Pipeline summary with assumptions (not just a list of deals).
- Key risks and the actions you’re taking.
The most important part is the bridge: what changed since last month, and why. Investors don’t expect perfection. They do expect consistency and a team that knows its numbers.
For due diligence, build a simple folder structure early: customer contracts, pricing and terms, cap table basics, payroll records, VAT filings, R&D claims if relevant, bank statements, security and access policies, and notes on customer concentration. When a process is repeatable, fundraising stops feeling like a fire drill.
Consult EFC often supports teams at this point with investor readiness, reporting, and fundraising conversations, especially when founders want confidence without hiring a full-time finance leader too early.
Conclusion
A 90-day Financial Transformation is achievable when you focus on rhythm, not polish. In days 1 to 30, you clean the books and build a cash view you trust. In days 31 to 60, you move from tracking to steering with a monthly close, KPIs, and a budget tied to reality. In days 61 to 90, you add controls and investor-ready reporting that reduces stress and builds credibility.
You don’t need perfection to raise a strong round. You need consistency, clear definitions, and numbers you can defend. If you want a tailored plan or hands-on support before Series A, Consult EFC can help you put the function in place and keep it working as you grow.
Build a Function Investors Trust
Cleaning your books is the first step. Protecting your equity is the second. Spend 30 minutes with Kishen Patel to stress-test your SaaS KPIs and ensure your finance function is ready for the scrutiny of a Series A fundraise.
Identify the “red flags” in your deferred revenue and payroll controls that VCs use to justify lower valuations or aggressive term sheets.
Ensure your MRR and Churn definitions are bulletproof. Avoid the board-room arguments that happen when sales and finance numbers do not tie out.
● Next Availability: Only 3 Finance Function Audits remaining for this month.
When should a SaaS startup move away from founder-managed spreadsheets?
Ideally, you should transition to a formal finance function between your Seed and Series A rounds. If you find that checking your cash runway takes more than five minutes or your billing data does not match your accounting, it is time to implement a structured 90-day transformation plan.
What is the most important KPI for a Series A pitch?
While investors look at many metrics, Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is critical. It proves that your product is sticky and that you can grow revenue from your existing customer base even before adding new logos.
How often should a 13-week cash forecast be updated?
At the Seed to Series A stage, this should be a weekly routine. It ensures that any “cash surprises” are identified at least two months before they become critical, allowing the leadership team to make calmer, data-backed decisions.
