A finance stack for your first 50 hires

Early-stage companies don’t need a CFO to run good finance. They need a few habits and a handful of tools that keep working as the team grows from five people to fifty, without adding headcount every time the business doubles. The mistake most founders make is not choosing the wrong tool. It’s choosing tools that don’t talk to each other, then spending every Friday afternoon gluing them together in a spreadsheet.

This guide walks through what to set up on day one, what to add around your twentieth hire, and what can safely wait until you have someone whose job title includes the word finance.

Set up on day one

The first version of your finance stack has one job: make sure money comes in, goes out and gets recorded without anyone having to remember to do it. Three pieces cover almost everything.

A business account with local details

Open an account that gives you local bank details in the markets where your customers are. If you sell to companies in the UK, Europe and the US, you want a sort code, an IBAN and a routing number, not one account that forces every customer into an international wire. Local details mean customers pay you faster, and you keep the fees you would otherwise lose on every transfer.

Cards with limits for everyone who spends

Shared company cards are the fastest way to lose track of spending. Give each person who buys software, books travel or pays vendors their own card with a monthly limit. When a card belongs to one person, every transaction has an owner, and every receipt has someone to chase.

Accounting that syncs on its own

Connect your account and cards to your accounting tool from the start. Transactions should arrive categorised, with receipts attached, so that closing the month is a review rather than a reconstruction.

Add around your twentieth hire

Somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five people, the informal approach starts to creak. You’ll notice it when the same question gets asked three times a week: who approved this, and can I spend that?

• Approval rules. Decide which payments need a second pair of eyes. A common starting point is any bill over $5,000, any new vendor and any payment to a new country.

• Bill pay. Stop paying invoices from your inbox. Forward them to one place, match them to a purchase and pay them on a schedule.

• Budgets by team. Give each team lead a budget they can see in real time. People spend more carefully when they can see what’s left.

• A cash forecast. Even a simple thirteen-week view of what’s coming in and going out will change how you plan hiring.

Leave for later

Complex ERP systems, multi-entity consolidation and custom reporting can wait until you have a finance team to own them. These tools are powerful, but they need someone to configure and maintain them. Bought too early, they become expensive shelfware, and the team quietly goes back to spreadsheets.

The same applies to elaborate expense policies. A one-page policy that people actually read beats a twenty-page document that nobody opens. Write down what people can spend on, what needs approval and how quickly receipts are due. That’s it.

Habits that matter more than tools

1. Reconcile weekly, not monthly. Ten minutes every Monday is easier than a full day at month end.

2. Keep at least six months of runway somewhere safe and liquid, and know exactly where the rest of your cash sits.

3. Review every recurring subscription once a quarter. Most startups find at least one tool nobody has opened in months.

4. Share a simple monthly update with the team: cash in the bank, burn and runway. Transparency makes people better stewards of money.

“The best finance stack for a young company is the one nobody has to think about. If your team is talking about the tools, something isn’t working.”

Saro was built for exactly this stage. Accounts, cards, bill pay, approvals and treasury share one ledger, so the stack you start with on day one is the same one you’ll still be using at fifty people, just with more rules switched on.