company-cfo

/company-cfo — Monthly company CFO workflow

The standing analysis leadership uses to make distribution / cuts / hiring / runway decisions. Primary cadence is monthly (run on the 1st for the closed prior month). Weekly and scenario modes cover the in-between.

Anonymized team-scope sibling to personal-cfo (households). Same discipline (transaction-sum EOM, categorization traps, scenario modeling) applied to company books.

Step 0 — Load company config + prior run

Before starting work, read these in order:

1. ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT:-$HOME/code/company-cfo}/CLAUDE.md — your company's specific methodology, data source map, categorization rules, distribution mechanics. This is the source of truth for HOW your company computes things. Don't invent your own methodology.
2. The most recent report in ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT}/reports/monthly/ — last month's snapshot. Tells you what leadership decided + what was open.
3. The most recent *-followup.md in that folder (if one exists) — supplementary decisions, scenario analysis.
4. Any relevant memory notes in ~/.claude/memory/ — running context: known anomalies, leadership constraints, current churn state.
5. git log --oneline -10 in ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT} — what's shipped since the last run.

If the COMPANY_CFO_ROOT dir doesn't exist yet: first-run walkthrough asks the user to mkdir it, seed a CLAUDE.md from references/company-config-template.md, and set the env var.

Step 1 — Parse mode

Invocation	Mode	Cadence
/company-cfo monthly (default)	monthly	Once per month on the 1st for the closed prior month
/company-cfo weekly	weekly	Thin cash pulse — current cash + next 2 weeks of expected flows
/company-cfo scenario <question>	scenario	Ad-hoc modeling in the projector
/company-cfo pickup	pickup	Resume where the prior run left off (checks git log + last report + open items)

Below sections walk through monthly in detail. Weekly + scenario are summarized at the end.

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Monthly workflow

Ask the user: Which month are we reporting on? (Default: prior calendar month.)

Then walk through these phases. Pause and confirm before moving to the next.

Phase 1 — Pull raw data

For the target month, pull raw data from each source. Standard source categories (each company's actual tools live in their CLAUDE.md):

Source category	What it gives	Common tools
Bank / cash accounts	Cash truth, internal vs external transfers, distribution recipients	Mercury CLI, Plaid, direct bank export
Payment processor	Revenue, subscriptions, churn, payout timing	Stripe API, Paddle, LemonSqueezy
Payroll / contractors	W-2 payroll, contractor pay	Plane, Deel, Gusto, Rippling
Expense management	Reimbursements, corporate cards	Ramp, Brex, Divvy
Alternative revenue	Non-primary billing sources	Direct invoice tools, alternative payment platforms

Save all pulls to ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT}/data/YYYY-MM/<source>-*.json[l] (gitignored — raw data doesn't get committed).

Also pull the current cash balance from the bank source for the "today" starting-cash figure.

If a source isn't wired yet: use /toolify <source> to wire it up before running the CFO workflow. First-time integration is a one-time cost.

Phase 2 — Categorize and reconcile

Bucket all cash-account outflows into the categories your company uses. See references/categorization.md for a starter category set and the discipline of maintaining categorization.

Universal traps to check (see references/traps.md for full list):

• Cash-vs-credit double-count — if the bank shows a "credit card autopay" outflow AND the credit card account shows individual charges, don't count both. Filter to cash accounts only OR treat the CC as a debt account.
• Internal transfers — Checking ↔ Savings transfers net to zero. Exclude them (usually via a kind=internalTransfer filter or account-pair match).
• Currency mismatches — contractor payment tools often return destination_amount in the worker's payout currency. Always use source_amount (or equivalent) for USD/base-currency cost analysis.
• Distribution counting — if leadership has N partners who should get a monthly distribution, verify N distributions exist. If N-1, flag the missing partner — often one is deferring their draw to balance cash.

Cross-checks before writing the report:

• Total payroll debits in bank ≈ payroll-tool API total + fees (within a small residual for held deductions)
• Payment processor payouts arriving in the month ≈ bank inflows from that processor (within timing lag)
• Expense-management outflows in bank ≈ approved expenses in expense-mgmt tool (with cash-basis lag)

Phase 3 — Compute EOM cash (the transaction-sum method)

Use transaction sums, not the walkback-from-current-balance method. Walkback has bitten CFO workflows repeatedly — a bank API balance snapshot at pull time can be off by tens of thousands, and that error propagates into every historical EOM value.

Correct method (see references/eom-cash-methodology.md for the full recipe):

# 1. Pull ALL transactions for each cash account (Checking + Savings + any other cash-holding):
#    <bank-tool> transactions list --account-id <id> --format jsonl --max-items 100000
# 2. Sum the amount field across all transactions in each account.
# 3. The sum should equal that account's CURRENT available_balance exactly.
#    (Sanity check — if not, missing data or a pre-history baseline deposit exists.)
# 4. For any past date T: balance_at_T = sum of all transactions posted on or before T
#    (plus any pre-history baseline, which should be ~$0 if the sanity check passes).

Cross-check EOM: last month's EOM + this month's net cash change should equal this month's EOM, to the dollar.

If transaction sums don't reconcile with current balance, do not proceed with walkback as fallback. Investigate the gap first — missing pulls (timeout, paging), an unknown account, or a legitimate pre-history baseline.

Phase 4 — Update the scenario projector

Most CFO workflows benefit from a scenario projector — an interactive forecast that projects EOM cash forward N months under adjustable assumptions (revenue growth, expense scenarios, hiring plans, distribution changes).

Common structure (see references/scenario-projector.md for the reference implementation):

• HISTORICAL (trailing 3 closed months) — provides context before TODAY
• TODAY — actual current cash balance (calendar-positioned within current month)
• Mo 1 — current calendar month EOM (partial — remaining-month activity)
• Mo 2-7 — next 6 full calendar month EOMs (scenario settings apply from here)

Each month: starting + revenue − expenses = profit → ending

Intramonth cycle low (for weekly cash pulse relevance): most CFO systems care about the low point of the month (when you might hit a cash floor), not just the high (EOM). Formula depends on payout cadence — see references/scenario-projector.md.

Update the projector each monthly run:

1. Append the just-closed month to HISTORICAL with all category fields; drop the oldest.
2. Update startingCash to today's actual bank balance.
3. Update expense baselines for any category that materially shifted.
4. Update baselineMrr (net of processing fees).
5. Verify presets still make sense (scenarios may need updating if comp structure or hiring plans changed).

Phase 5 — Write the snapshot report

Create ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT}/reports/monthly/YYYY-MM.md following the template in references/report-template.md. Sections (adapt as needed):

1. TL;DR — headline + status table (net cash, ending balance, current MRR, trailing-N-month, recommendation)
2. Cash In — by source (payment processor, alt revenue, one-times)
3. Cash Out — by category (matches the projector's category structure)
4. Payroll breakdown — verified contractor + W-2 split
5. Distributions — who got paid, who didn't (flag anomalies)
6. Revenue metrics — active subs, MRR delta, recent cancels with $ and customer
7. Forward projection — 1-3 scenarios from the projector (link the projector state)
8. Recommended actions — concrete for leadership to decide on
9. Open items — questions to resolve next month

Write the why-paragraph in plain English: what happened and why. Reference the previous month if there's continuity ("Vendor X churn from last month finished hitting June payouts").

Phase 6 — Update memory

Update ~/.claude/memory/company_cfo_<company-slug>.md (or wherever your memory system lives) if any of:

• Distribution/comp structure changed
• Active sub count or MRR shifted materially
• New revenue stream (new billing platform)
• New partner / contractor decision
• New cash floor or distribution constraint

Don't bloat the note. Replace stale facts; don't append indefinitely.

Phase 7 — Review and ship

Follow your company's git workflow:

Before the first-ever run, verify .gitignore at the repo root excludes raw exports — Phase 1 dumps sensitive bank / payroll / payment-processor data to data/ and that MUST NOT be committed. If missing, seed it:

cd ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT}
# Verify .gitignore excludes raw data + secrets
if ! grep -q '^data/' .gitignore 2>/dev/null; then
  cat >> .gitignore <<'GITIGNORE'
# Raw financial data — never commit
data/
*.jsonl
*.env
*.env.local
.mcp.json
GITIGNORE
  git add .gitignore
  git commit -m "Seed .gitignore for raw financial data"
fi

Then ship the report + projector changes ONLY (never git add -A in this repo — targeted adds only, so a stray data/ file can't slip in):

cd ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT}
git checkout -b feature/YYYY-MM-snapshot
git add reports/monthly/YYYY-MM.md scenarios/index.html CLAUDE.md   # targeted
git status --short                                                    # verify no data/ or .env files staged
git commit -m "YYYY-MM monthly snapshot"
git push -u origin feature/YYYY-MM-snapshot
gh pr create --base main --title "YYYY-MM monthly snapshot"

Never git add -A in ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT}. A silent data/ file leak would push bank transaction history + partner distribution ACHs to a git remote. Targeted adds only.

Before merging: run a code review (if applicable) or manually review the diff. Then merge + delete branch.

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Weekly cash pulse mode

Thin — designed to fit into a 15-minute weekly sync.

1. Pull current cash balance (bank API accounts list)
2. Pull last 7 days of transactions + next 7 days of scheduled outflows (payroll, known bills)
3. Compute: current cash, next-payroll date + amount, next-Stripe-payout date + amount
4. Flag if cash < next 2 weeks of outflows (below cash floor)
5. One-line status: Cash $X | Next payroll $Y on <date> | Next inflow $Z on <date> | Floor status: OK|WATCH|BREACH

Save to ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT}/reports/weekly/YYYY-WW.md.

Pair with /loopify to schedule the weekly run (typically Monday 9am).

Scenario mode

Ad-hoc — for "what if we hire a $150K/yr engineer in September" or "what if churn ticks up 2%".

Open the scenario projector, adjust the relevant knobs, screenshot or export the resulting cash projection. Save the analysis to ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT}/reports/scenarios/YYYY-MM-DD-<question-slug>.md.

If the scenario decision is material (new hire, distribution change, big expense), also run /decide to formalize.

Pickup mode

Resume from the prior run. Surface:

1. Most recent monthly report (ls -t ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT}/reports/monthly/*.md | head -1)
2. Most recent weekly pulse
3. Latest git log on ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT} (what's shipped since last snapshot)
4. Memory note for current narrative
5. Open items from the last report's §9

Don't assume continuity from training data. Always check the reports + memory + git log first.

Composes with

• personal-cfo — sibling. Personal-cfo handles household finances (house math, monthly cash flow, big purchases). Same discipline (transaction-sum method, scenario modeling) applied to different scope.
• company-brain — the CFO reports get stored + wiki-indexed there. outputs/ in the company brain accumulates monthly reports; wiki pages compile trends across months.
• toolify — wire company-specific data sources (Mercury API, Stripe, Plane, Ramp, or equivalents). First-run integration setup.
• loopify — schedule the monthly run (1st of month) + weekly cash pulse (Monday 9am).
• decide — for material decisions surfaced by the report (distribution changes, hiring, cash floor breach response). Formalize with the 37signals framework.
• deep-research — for benchmark questions ("what's a typical SaaS marketing budget as % of ARR?") that inform scenario inputs.

Notes on quality

• Never invent methodology. Every company computes cash differently — trust the company's CLAUDE.md in ${COMPANY_CFO_ROOT}. If it's not documented, ask; don't guess.
• Transaction-sum method is non-negotiable. Walkback from a balance snapshot has burned CFO workflows repeatedly. Use raw transaction sums, verify against current balance.
• Categorization discipline matters more than accuracy. Same categories every month = trend-readable. Changing categories mid-year = trends become noise.
• Baseline expenses to actuals, not to "safe" estimates. A software line modeled at $8K when actuals run $12K creates optimistic projections that break the model.
• Revenue is net of processing fees, not gross. ~3% Stripe/similar processor fees materially change monthly cash inflow.
• The intramonth cycle low matters more than EOM. With monthly payout cadences, cash dips deep mid-month. Cash floor applies to the LOW, not the EOM HIGH.
• Weekly payouts smooth the cycle dramatically — if your payment processor supports it, switching from monthly to weekly payouts is one of the highest-leverage cash-management moves available. See references/eom-cash-methodology.md.
• When numbers don't reconcile, stop. Don't ship a report with unexplained gaps. Investigate first — a $42K reconciliation gap once propagated silently for weeks before being caught.

When NOT to use this skill

• Ad-hoc single-number lookups ("what's our current cash?") — just query the bank source directly, don't run the full workflow.
• Tax / accounting questions — out of scope; refer to your CPA.
• Personal finance — use personal-cfo instead.
• Investor pitch financials — different discipline (multi-year projections, unit economics deep dives). This skill covers operational CFO cadence, not fundraising narrative.