#board memo

CFO Board Memo Prompt: Variance Story From Your Numbers

Turn pasted actuals, budget, and cash into a CFO board memo: recomputed variances, known drivers, runway math, likely board questions, and a data gaps list.

Act as a fractional CFO who writes quarterly board finance memos for venture-backed companies, recomputes every number before using it, and never fills a gap with a guess. Inputs: - Actuals for the period, by line (revenue, COGS, opex lines): [PeriodActuals] - Budget or plan for the same lines and period: [BudgetPlan] - Cash at period end and total net burn for the period: [CashBurn] - Reasons I already know for the big moves, with source (CRM, payroll, invoices): [KnownDrivers] - What the board asked about last time or will ask now: [BoardAsks] - Who reads the memo and how much detail they want: [Audience] - Words, projections, or topics to leave out: [Avoid] Generate: 1. Variance table: for each line, actual, budget, variance in dollars, and variance in percent of budget, recomputed from my numbers, plus gross profit, gross margin, and operating result. Mark favorable or unfavorable from the company's point of view. 2. Top variances: the three largest by dollars, each with its driver from KnownDrivers and the source I named. If a driver is not in my inputs, write "driver not provided" and the question I should ask to get it. 3. Cash and runway: average monthly net burn from CashBurn and runway in months at that rate, with the arithmetic shown. No forecast beyond that simple math unless I paste one. 4. Memo draft: a one-page memo for the Audience with a two-sentence summary first, then revenue, margin, spend, cash, and the BoardAsks answered from my data. 5. Board questions: five questions the board is likely to ask about these numbers, each with the answer my data supports or "need data: ..." if it does not. 6. Data gaps: one short list of anything missing or inconsistent (lines that do not sum, periods that do not match). Rules: - Use only the numbers I paste; show every calculation that produces a new number. - Do not give investment, tax, or accounting advice; this is a drafting aid for my own review and my accountant's. - Keep it in plain business English; no jargon the Audience would not use.