The Series A Finance Ops Cash Visibility Crisis

## The Series A Finance Ops Cash Visibility Crisis: Why You're Blind to Your Own Burn

You just closed your Series A round. Congratulations. You have $5M (or $10M, or $20M) sitting in your bank account, and for the first time since launch, you don't feel like you're running on fumes.

But here's what we see happen at almost every Series A startup we work with: founders who can tell you their runway to the day suddenly can't tell you where their cash actually goes each week.

The paradox is brutal. You had perfect visibility when you had $200K left. Now that you have millions, that visibility vanishes.

This isn't a small problem. The startups we've worked with that lack real-time cash flow visibility waste an average of 15-25% of their Series A capital on inefficiencies they never see coming. That's not a process gap. That's a $750K to $5M problem, depending on your round size.

And unlike most Series A finance ops challenges (which you can patch with better tools or hiring), cash visibility blindness compounds. Every week you can't see exactly where money flows, you're making decisions on stale information. By month six post-close, you're not just flying blind—you're flying blind in a multi-million dollar aircraft with a team that's doubled, vendors you can't track, and expenses that hide in ten different systems.

## Why Series A Breaks Your Cash Visibility (Even When You Think You're Prepared)

### The Transition from Scrappy to Scaled

When you're pre-Series A, your cash management is almost religious. You know every dollar because you have to. Your team is 5-8 people. You're paying rent, maybe one vendor platform, salaries, and AWS. Total operating expenses fit on a spreadsheet you check weekly.

Series A changes this in ways that aren't obvious until month three:

**Velocity increases.** You're now hiring aggressively. Every new hire brings payroll cycles, onboarding costs, equipment, and tools. These don't all hit your bank account at once—they spread across your system over weeks.

**Expense complexity explodes.** You now have procurement processes, departmental budgets, and multiple spend categories that didn't exist at seed stage. Engineering has dev tools. Sales has Salesforce, compensation, and travel. Operations needs recruiting platforms and office space. HR needs benefits administration.

**Vendor proliferation happens.** We typically see Series A companies go from 8-12 vendors to 40-60 vendors within the first year post-close. Each vendor integration creates a new cash flow timing issue. Some bill monthly, some annually, some on usage. Some get paid by credit card, others by ACH. Some have payment terms you're not tracking.

**Multiple people now touch cash.** Pre-Series A, the founder (usually you) approved every expense over $500. Now you have a VP of Sales approving software purchases, an Engineering Lead buying infrastructure, an Operations Manager handling vendor relationships. Each of these people has a different understanding of what "approved budget" means.

### The System Fragmentation Problem

Most Series A founders approach this by layering new tools on top of existing ones:

- You keep your old accounting system (Xero, QuickBooks)
- You add a dedicated expense management tool (Ramp, Brex, Divvy)
- You implement a budgeting layer (Lattice, Planful)
- You use Stripe for payment processing
- You handle payroll separately (Guidepoint, ADP)
- You have a spreadsheet pulling data from all of these

The problem: these systems don't talk to each other in real-time. Your accounting system updates daily (if you're lucky). Your expense tool updates as charges post. Your payroll system batches weekly. Your spreadsheet is always three days behind.

When money moves, it moves through this system in waves of stale data. By the time you see that you've overspent on recruiting fees, you've already allocated that money in next month's plan. By the time you realize your cloud infrastructure bill is 40% higher than last month, you're already locked into a contract.

We worked with a Series A SaaS company that thought they were running at a $320K monthly burn. Their accounting system said so. What they discovered after implementing real-time cash visibility: their actual weekly average was $380K, but it hit $450K+ in weeks where they made quarterly vendor payments, paid bonuses, and processed stock option exercises. They weren't overspending by 15%. They were experiencing $200K+ cash flow shocks they couldn't see until it was too late.

They'd burned through 18 months of runway in what they thought was 24 months, simply because they were managing off incomplete data.

## What Real-Time Cash Visibility Actually Requires

### It's Not Just Better Reporting

This is the first mistake founders make: they assume the solution is a better dashboard or a more complete financial report.

It's not.

Real cash visibility requires three interconnected systems working together, and most Series A startups are missing at least two of them.

### 1. The Cash Timing Layer

This is the part nobody thinks about until it breaks them.

You need to know, every single day, not just what you've spent, but *when that money will actually leave your bank account.* This is different from your accrual accounting (which your accountant is managing) and different from your expense tracking (which your spend management tool is managing).

Example: You approve a $50K annual software contract on the 15th of the month. Your accounting system records this as an expense on the 15th. But the actual ACH debit doesn't hit your bank account until the 20th. If you're managing runway based on accounting records, you've already allocated that money. If you're managing runway based on bank balance, you can't see it coming.

When you have 20 contracts like this, staggered across different approval dates and payment dates, your bank balance swings by hundreds of thousands of dollars in ways that don't match your financial statements.

You need a separate layer that tracks:
- Approved recurring expenses and their actual payment dates
- One-time commitments and when they'll clear
- Payroll cycles (which typically don't hit the bank on payday, but a day or two before)
- Quarterly or annual bills that will surprise you
- Payment terms you've negotiated (net 30, net 60) and when they actually come due

This isn't something your accounting software does natively. Most Series A startups build this in a spreadsheet. We recommend building it in a simple database (like Airtable) that connects to your accounting system for validation.

### 2. The Departmental Cash Accountability Layer

You can't have real visibility without knowing which department is spending what, and what they committed to spend that hasn't hit your bank account yet.

This is where most Series A companies fail spectacularly. They implement departmental budgets (which is good) but don't connect those budgets to actual cash flow (which is catastrophic).

Example: Your VP of Sales approves $200K in recruiting fees for Q2, which your budget system tracks. But recruiting doesn't happen on a calendar—it happens when candidates accept offers. You might spend $0 in week one, then $75K in week three when two offers close. Your budget says you're on track. Your cash flow says you just lost a month of runway in one week.

What you need: a monthly (or ideally weekly) reconciliation that shows:
- What each department has spent YTD (actual cash out)
- What each department has committed to spend (authorized but not yet cleared)
- Where each department is against its annual budget
- What major one-time expenses each department has in the next 12 weeks

This requires someone (ideally your Finance Ops lead or fractional CFO) to own this reconciliation every single week. Not monthly. Weekly. Because cash doesn't move on a monthly cycle.

### 3. The Scenario Planning Layer

Once you can see your current cash flow, you need to see your *projected* cash flow.

Not a financial forecast (which is usually fantasy). A realistic 13-week cash projection that says: "Given what we know about committed spending, payroll cycles, and vendor payments, here's exactly what our bank balance will be on day X."

This is the only projection that actually matters for runway decisions.

We worked with a Series A company that had a 24-month runway according to their financial model. But when we built a 13-week cash projection accounting for their actual payment cycles, vendor commitments, and payroll, it showed they'd hit their minimum cash balance in 18 weeks. Not because they were burning faster. But because they'd made spending commitments (a new office lease, a large annual software purchase, an engineering hire with a signing bonus) that all cleared within a 6-week window.

They thought they had 24 months. They actually had 18 weeks of breathing room before they'd need to make tough decisions about hiring freezes or fundraising.

The scenario planning layer combines:
- Your cash timing layer (when money actually leaves)
- Your departmental commitments (what you've authorized)
- Your historical spending patterns (what your team actually spends vs. what they budget)
- Your revenue reality (not your revenue model, but what you're actually collecting)

This lets you see: if we maintain current spend, hit our revenue targets, and don't make any major new commitments, here's our cash position by week.

Then you can stress-test it: what if revenue misses by 20%? What if we have to hire faster than planned? What if a major customer churns?

## The Implementation Path (Without Paralyzing Your Team)

### Month 1: Audit and Map

You don't need to build everything at once. Start by mapping exactly where your money goes and when it goes there.

This sounds tedious because it is, but it's non-negotiable.

**Week 1-2:** List every vendor, payment method, and cycle. Do this with your accounting team and finance ops person (or your fractional CFO). You need:
- Vendor name
- Monthly cost (or annual cost broken into monthly)
- Payment method (card, ACH, check)
- Payment date in the cycle
- Who approved it
- Contract end date

Total time investment: 20-30 hours. Total value: you'll probably find $20-50K in annual spending you'd completely forgotten about.

**Week 3-4:** Map your payroll cycles and payroll-adjacent expenses. This includes:
- Regular payroll (when does it actually clear?)
- Benefits (when do premiums hit?)
- Stock option exercises or bonuses that happen on regular cycles
- Any equity-related cash impacts

Total time: 10-15 hours. Total value: you'll understand your largest and most predictable cash outflow.

### Month 2: Build the Cash Timing View

Once you've mapped everything, build a simple view that shows:
- Week by week, what's the expected bank balance?
- What major expenses hit each week?
- Where are the cash flow shocks?

You can do this in a spreadsheet. You can do it in Airtable. You can do it in a simple Python script. The tool doesn't matter. The view does.

This view is your single source of truth for "how much runway do we actually have?" [The Cash Flow Runway Paradox: Why Founders Confuse Months Left With Decision Time](/blog/the-cash-flow-runway-paradox-why-founders-confuse-months-left-with-decision-time/)

### Month 3: Add Department Reconciliation

Once you can see company-wide cash flow, add a monthly reconciliation that ties each department's spending to their budget.

This requires buy-in from your team leaders. Make it clear: this isn't about catching people spending money they shouldn't. It's about understanding our cash reality so we can make smart decisions together.

One sheet per department. Takes 90 minutes per month to maintain. Gives you visibility you can't get any other way.

### Month 4+: Scenario Planning

Once steps 1-3 are working, you can build realistic scenarios.

Don't do fancy modeling. Do simple math: if X happens, here's what our runway looks like.

Example scenarios:
- Revenue hits 80% of plan
- We hire 5 more engineers in Q3
- A major customer represents 30% of revenue and churns
- We need to move offices

Each scenario is just your base cash projection with different assumptions plugged in. Takes a spreadsheet and 2-3 hours to set up initially, then 30 minutes per month to update.

## Common Mistakes We See Post-Series A

### Mistake 1: Assuming Your Accountant Is Tracking This

Your accountant's job is compliance, not cash management. They're looking backwards at what happened. You need to be looking forwards at what's coming.

They'll have data your accountant will never see: unpaid invoices from customers, committed but not-yet-cleared vendor costs, upcoming annual renewals.

### Mistake 2: Over-Automating Too Early

Don't buy an expensive cash forecasting platform in month two. Use a spreadsheet first. Understand the problem. Then automate.

We see founders who spend $15K on software in month two post-Series A, realize it doesn't actually solve their problem in month four, and then build it manually while paying for unused software.

### Mistake 3: Treating This as Optional

You wouldn't run product without knowing your usage metrics. You wouldn't run sales without knowing your pipeline. But somehow founders think they can run finance without knowing their actual cash flow.

You can't. Cash visibility is a basic operating requirement at Series A. If you don't have it, you're not actually managing your company. You're guessing, and hoping your guess is right.

## The Inflection CFO Approach

We've built this system with dozens of Series A companies. The common thread: the founders who get it right are the ones who treat cash visibility as a competitive advantage, not a compliance requirement.

They know their 13-week cash position to the week. They know what spending commitments will hit in the next 90 days. They know which departments are spending ahead of or behind plan. Most importantly, they know—really know—how much time they have to hit their next milestone or need to fundraise again.

That clarity changes decision-making. It makes the difference between a team that feels like they're in crisis mode ("we need to figure out payroll") and a team that feels like they're in control ("we have 18 months to hit these metrics, let's talk about how we allocate capital to get there").

If your Series A company doesn't have real-time cash visibility, you're operating with a massive disadvantage. Not because your team isn't good. But because you're making decisions without information that determines whether your company succeeds or fails.

## Next Steps

Start with week one: map your vendors and spending. You'll be surprised what you find.

If you'd like help building cash visibility into your Series A operations—or if you want to audit whether you actually have it—[Fractional CFO vs. Startup Accountant: Why They're Not the Same (And Which You Actually Need)](/blog/fractional-cfo-vs-startup-accountant-why-theyre-not-the-same-and-which-you-actually-need/) explains how a fractional CFO differs from traditional accounting and why this specific challenge is one we specialize in solving.

Inflection CFO offers a free financial operations audit for Series A startups. We'll spend 90 minutes analyzing your current cash visibility, identifying blind spots, and giving you a concrete playbook for fixing them. No pitch. No obligation. Just honest feedback on where you stand.

Schedule your audit here, and let's make sure you actually know where your money's going.