Monthly Runway Review SOP.
A monthly founder review that turns cash, burn, commitments, hiring, revenue, and fundraising timing into decisions before the bank balance becomes the strategy.
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Operating standard
Control without the corporate sludge.
Owner
The finance owner prepares the review; a founder owns the resulting decisions.
Response
Complete within five working days of month end. Escalate immediately if runway falls below the company's threshold or a material cash discrepancy appears.
Metric
Forecast cash balance remains within 10 percent of actual cash over the next three months, with actions completed by their deadlines.
If nobody owns the process, the founder owns every emergency.
Purpose
Maintain a current view of cash runway, explain changes, and trigger cost, revenue, hiring, or fundraising action early.
When it applies
Run every month after financial close and immediately after a material financing, hiring, revenue, or cost change.
Do not start blind.
Trigger to outcome. No meeting required.
- 01
Reconcile every bank, payment, debt, and investment account to the review date.
- 02
Calculate actual revenue, cash collections, gross burn, net burn, and closing cash for the month.
- 03
Update committed costs, hiring dates, annual payments, debt, taxes, and known one-time expenses.
- 04
Refresh the base, downside, and upside cash forecast using explicit assumptions.
- 05
Calculate runway and the date each action threshold will be crossed.
- 06
Explain material variance from the prior forecast and assign corrective actions.
- 07
Decide hiring, spending, collection, revenue, and fundraising changes with owners and deadlines.
- 08
Store the approved review and update the investor report and board materials where required.
Authority must be explicit.
Know when to stop.
Notify all founders when runway crosses the warning threshold, collections materially slip, cash cannot be reconciled, or obligations may not be met. Seek qualified finance, tax, or legal support where needed.
If it is not recorded, it did not happen.
Make the generic parts real.
How teams break the process.
Calculating runway from an average that ignores future hiring
Treating booked revenue as collected cash
Waiting until runway is short before changing the fundraising plan
Related startup SOPs.
Make the process executable.
Download it, assign the real owners, set the thresholds, and test it with someone who did not write it.