Sending monthly figures to investors and the board
How a start-up shares monthly management accounts with investors and board members by expiring link, without giving them a login to its books.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Software (SaaS) businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
After the round closes, the term sheet's information rights kick in. Your investors expect a monthly update, your board wants the numbers before each meeting, and the angel who wrote the first cheque would like to "just see the dashboard". Giving everyone a login to the books feels transparent. It is also how a board member ends up scrolling through payroll journals, or an investor's analyst exports your full ledger to a spreadsheet you never see again.
There is a better pattern: a short monthly pack built from your own books, shared by a link that expires, with full access reserved for the few advisers who genuinely need it. This article sets that routine up.
What investors usually want each month
A good update is short and consistent. Most investors look for:
- Revenue for the month, beside the previous month.
- Recurring revenue, as monthly or annual recurring revenue, if you sell subscriptions.
- Gross margin, especially where hosting costs rise with usage.
- Operating costs and burn, and the cash left at month end.
- Runway, in months, at the current burn.
- Headcount, hires and departures.
- A few lines of commentary: wins, losses, risks and what you need from them.
For definitions investors commonly use, including bookings versus revenue, recurring revenue, contract value, churn and burn rate, see Andreessen Horowitz's guide to startup metrics. Agree with your board which of them you will report, and then keep reporting the same ones the same way every month.
Be clear about which figures come from the books and which you calculate yourself. Recurring revenue, churn and runway are worked out from contracts and cash, not printed by the ledger. Say so in the pack and keep the working.
Exporting the income statement and balance sheet
Management accounts in Achekam show an income statement for a chosen period beside the period before, and a balance sheet at period end. Both are added up from your own journals and can be exported as PDF or CSV.
Use the PDF in the pack and keep the CSV for your own working. Choose the month as a custom period; the year-to-date preset starts on 1 January, not your own year start, which matters if your financial year begins elsewhere.
One gap to know about: the books do not produce a cash flow statement. Investors care more about cash than profit at this stage, so add a short cash summary of your own, opening cash, money in, money out and closing cash, taken from your reconciled bank accounts. Tracking burn and runway shows how to build it.
Close the month before you export. A closed month refuses postings from every source, so the figures you send cannot change underneath the board after the fact.
Budget beside actual
A business can set a budget per account and per period and compare it with the actual figures from its ledger. If the board approved a budget for the year, load it by account and month, and compare each month's actuals before you write the commentary.
Investors do not need every account. Pick the lines that tell the story, usually revenue, hosting, salaries, sales and marketing, and total operating costs, and explain any variance that matters in a sentence. "Hosting above budget because the largest customer onboarded early" is more useful than a table of percentages.
Sharing the pack by an expiring link
Store the month's pack in Document Centre, then share it. A document can be shared by e-mailing a personal link to each recipient, with an expiry, an optional one-time code, and download allowed or not. The share can be revoked at any time.
A sensible default for board packs:
| Setting | Suggested choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Expiry | After the board meeting | Old packs stop circulating |
| One-time code | On | Adds a second step before the pack opens |
| Download | Off for drafts, on for the final pack | Directors may need a copy for their records |
Because each link is personal, you know who was sent what. If a board member steps down, revoke their open shares.
When an adviser needs review access instead
Some people do need to see the books themselves: your accountant, an auditor, or an adviser appointed by the lead investor. For them, use an appointment rather than a link. A business appoints an accounting firm by its Achekam address or firm code as accountant, auditor, tax practitioner, payroll provider or adviser, with an access level, and the firm accepts or declines.
Review access is read-only. Bookkeeping access covers the accounting but not the business's users, settings or gateways. An investor's finance adviser almost never needs more than review access. Management accounts for partners shows how another kind of business uses the same reports internally.
Keeping each month's pack on file
Document Centre keeps files in folders, with tags and search, and a new version of a document keeps the earlier ones. Make a folder per year, file each month's pack under its month, and tag it "board pack". If you resend a corrected pack, upload it as a new version rather than a new file, so the history is clear.
These packs earn their keep later. When the next round begins, investors will ask for the last year of updates, and they go straight into your due diligence folder.
Setting up the routine
Agree the list of metrics with your board, build the first pack from last month's closed figures, and set the share defaults once. Then put a recurring reminder in the founders' calendar for the same working day each month, after the month is closed, and send the pack on time even in a bad month.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
