Month-end shouldn’t feel like archaeology. But when revenue and cash live in different tools, the close becomes a chain of manual reconciliations.
Here’s the pattern we see most often:
- Payments and subscriptions in Stripe
- Accounting truth in QuickBooks or Xero
- Adjustments and planning living in Sheets
The “one-page close pack” leaders actually want
Instead of sending a folder of exports, publish a repeatable snapshot:
- Cash movement: payouts, refunds, disputes, net cash
- Revenue view: gross vs net, discounts, refunds, recognized vs billed (as needed)
- MRR bridge: starting MRR → expansions → contractions → churn → ending MRR
- Variance: actuals vs budget by category/department
- Exceptions: what changed since last close (top drivers)
A simple close checklist (automated)
- Refresh sources daily (or hourly where it matters)
- Reconcile payouts/refunds/disputes against accounting entries
- Lock the period and publish a “close pack” dashboard
- Track and explain deltas week-over-week and month-over-month
This creates a close process that’s repeatable, not heroic.
Why DIY pipelines are risky for finance reporting
Finance reporting needs consistency and auditability. DIY scripts often lack:
- Monitoring (silent failures are common)
- Change control (logic changes without a record)
- Backfills (rebuilds when category mapping changes)
- Ownership continuity (knowledge concentrated in one person)
Our managed data platform gives you dependable ingestion and a stable analytics layer so finance can move faster without sacrificing trust.
Where spreadsheets still fit
Keep Sheets for planning inputs and one-off notes. Don’t rely on them for the automated reconciliation and historical reporting that a close requires.