Finance work rarely lives in one system. A recurring report may begin in a payment portal, supporting documents may sit in email or vendor sites, and the latest model is in a spreadsheet. Pulling together the current picture can take longer than answering the question that prompted it.

A chat tool can summarize a file after you upload it. Strawberry can work through the visible browser and connected apps where the records already live, follow the team's reporting method, update a reviewable spreadsheet, and carry trusted definitions into the next review or forecast.

What Strawberry can help you do

Not sure where to begin? Your companion can look at the finance work you have open and suggest a useful skill to try first. See the skill

Prepare reports and records

Some recurring finance jobs begin with a report that must be downloaded from a portal, transformed into the team's format, and checked before anyone relies on it. Strawberry can work through the logged-in source, follow the accepted mapping, update the file, and show the totals and exceptions that need review.

Other jobs start with the supporting records themselves: invoices in email, receipts in vendor sites, payment evidence, and an existing spreadsheet. Those belong in a traceable register that keeps missing documents, possible duplicates, and ambiguous matches visible.

Understand what changed

A useful financial review starts with the comparison that could change a decision: actual versus budget, the latest forecast, last month, or last year. Strawberry can check that the periods and definitions match, calculate the important movements, and use operating context to test what may have caused them.

That keeps a calculated change separate from a plausible story about it. Supported explanations can point back to a contract, headcount plan, sales result, or accepted meeting decision; unresolved explanations remain questions rather than becoming facts.

Skill

Review financial performance

Validate the latest figures, explain the material movements, and show what needs attention.

Build forecasts and test decisions

A forecast is most useful when someone can inspect the actuals, change an assumption, and understand the result. Strawberry can work in the existing spreadsheet, bring in the operating drivers that matter, and keep inputs, assumptions, formulas, and outputs distinct.

Start with the decision. A hiring plan, runway discussion, and annual budget need different horizons and scenarios. Strawberry can update the model and check the roll-forward without replacing a model the team trusts or changing the approved plan.

Skill

Build or update a financial forecast

Build or update an assumption-led forecast around the cash, runway, and scenarios that matter.

Prepare finance updates

The same reviewed numbers may need to become a weekly team update, a board note, material for the next finance review, or part of a fundraise. Strawberry can carry the figures and their source context into the right format instead of making the team rebuild the story for each audience.

Make finance work repeatable

Once a recurring report, review, or forecast holds up, the team should not have to reconstruct the method from the finished file. Strawberry can preserve the sources, mappings, definitions, ownership, and review points behind it.

Skill

Set Up a Shared Team Workflow

Turn a trusted finance workflow into a shared team method with clear sources, ownership, review points, and stop conditions.

Share the reviewed result when teammates only need the output. Save the method as a team skill when they should follow the same process. A Routine makes sense when its period, sources, destination, reviewer, and stop conditions are stable.

This bundle prepares records, spreadsheets, analysis, forecasts, and communications. Payments, accounting entries, filings, and final accounting judgment stay with the people authorized to make them.

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Official Strawberry skill
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name
getting-started-with-finance-in-strawberry
description
Help people who own recurring finance work get started with Finance in Strawberry across report preparation, bookkeeping support, financial performance, forecasts, and follow-through. Use when someone asks what Strawberry can do for finance or has a broad finance request without a clear starting workflow.

Getting Started with Finance in Strawberry

Help the user see how their companion can support a practical finance system, then complete one useful piece of the work. This first release is designed for people who own recurring finance work, especially owners, operators, and lean finance teams. It prepares records and analysis for review; it does not replace an accountant, controller, tax adviser, or authorized approver.

Paint the finance system

Explain briefly that Strawberry can work across the places where a company's financial picture is assembled: email, vendor and billing portals, approved payment records, spreadsheets, planning models, meetings, files, and connected apps. The browser stays visible, so the user can inspect the sources or take over. Accepted definitions, assumptions, and corrections can carry into the next cycle.

Show the system through four connected lanes:

  • Prepare recurring finance work: turn approved portal or export data into a validated report, or gather invoices, receipts, and payment evidence into a traceable register for review.
  • Understand the position: review cash, runway, income, costs, and performance against the baseline that matters.
  • Plan ahead: build or update a forecast and test the assumptions behind an operating decision.
  • Communicate and follow through: turn accepted evidence into a founder, team, accountant, board, or fundraising update and keep unresolved questions visible.

These lanes reinforce one another without forming a required sequence. Start where the current decision or recurring burden is clearest.

Choose a useful first result

Understand the company or entity, period, immediate decision, available evidence, deadline, and reviewer. Use approved context already available before asking the user to reconstruct it.

If the user is unsure where to begin, recommend a small, situational set such as:

  • prepare a recurring payout, revenue, transaction, cash, or cost report from the approved sources;
  • collect this month's invoices and receipts and prepare them for the next reviewer;
  • explain what materially changed in cash, income, or costs;
  • update a cash or operating forecast for an upcoming decision; or
  • prepare a financial update from figures that have already been accepted.

Explain why each suggestion fits the work in front of them. Suggest a connection only when it would materially improve the chosen result; do not make a complete finance stack a prerequisite.

Route each job to its owner

  • Prepare a recurring operational report: read strawberry/finance/prepare-a-recurring-finance-report. Use it when approved portal or export data needs to become an accepted report file with visible checks and exceptions.
  • Gather invoices, receipts, and payment evidence: read strawberry/operations/organize-receipts-bookkeeping. Use it to build a traceable register, separate exceptions, and prepare a clean review or handoff without changing financial records.
  • Understand financial performance: read strawberry/finance/review-financial-performance. Use the comparison and materiality that matter to this decision rather than imposing a generic reporting pack.
  • Build or update a forecast: read strawberry/finance/build-a-financial-forecast. Keep actuals, assumptions, calculations, and scenarios distinct.
  • Research a company, market, or investment: use strawberry/research-analysis/getting-started-with-research-analysis-in-strawberry when the job is gathering current external sources into a cited brief, comparison, spreadsheet, or map.
  • Prepare a general founder or team update: use strawberry/operations/prepare-a-status-update once the financial evidence is accepted.
  • Prepare for fundraising: use strawberry/founder-executive/prepare-fundraise when the financial view is part of the wider investor story and process.
  • Prepare, debrief, or follow through: use strawberry/operations/prepare-for-meetings, strawberry/operations/debrief-a-meeting, or strawberry/operations/close-open-loops when the horizontal coordination job is the main result.

If no focused skill fits, help normally rather than forcing the request into the closest package.

Learn through the work

Start with a bounded period, source set, comparison, or model when the definitions are new. Let the user or qualified reviewer correct the first result before expanding the scope. Preserve accepted source hierarchies, report mappings, definitions, assumptions, spreadsheet fields, exception rules, and review preferences only after they prove durable.

Share the approved artifact when that is enough. Save a team method when colleagues should use the same definitions and review points. Offer a Routine only after a recurring collection, review, or forecast is trusted, with named sources, cadence, output, reviewer, permissions, and stop conditions.

Keep financial work reviewable

Preserve the entity, period, currency, source, as-of date, definition, assumption, and unresolved difference behind consequential numbers. Keep actuals, forecasts, proposed changes, and recommendations distinct.

This bundle may read approved sources, retrieve documents, and prepare spreadsheets, models, analysis, exception lists, and communications. It does not initiate, approve, schedule, or alter payments; post, reverse, categorize, or approve accounting entries; change ledgers, bank, payroll, invoice, or source records; file taxes or statutory reports; or share sensitive financial material beyond the accepted audience. Stop for review when identity, entity, period, account, access, data scope, or audience changes.