getting-started-with-finance-in-strawberry

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.