finstory
AI financial storytelling for CFOs

The numbers are closed.
Now tell the story.

finstory turns your month-end close into a board-ready story. Every figure traces to the source. Every variance comes with its reason. The first draft is written for you, in Claude.

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Your systems
  • NetSuite
  • Adaptive
  • QuickBooks
  • Ramp
  • Excel
  • Other
Your financial semantic layer
  • Data
  • Reports
  • Company memory
  • Built to SOC 2 standards
Board-ready story in Claude
Gross margin up 1.4 pts
Driven by marketplace mix and corporate sales.
EBITDA $354K ahead of budget
Higher sales and a richer margin split the beat; opex on plan.
Bend $62K behind budget
Early freight on June's road-bike range. Timing, not trend.
Full narrative · Key drivers · Trace to sourceSee it on a real close
01 · Live story

How Claude builds a board story with finstory, on the May close of Born2Cycle, our demo company.

Claudefinstory connectedBorn2Cycle May 2026 board story, built in Claude
May 2026 board story
Follows the April 2026 board story
  1. 01Summary
  2. 02EBITDA bridge
  3. 03Stores
Summarized P&L · May 2026

May EBITDA $1.32M, $354K Ahead of Budget.

Revenue of $12.70M beat budget by 5.0% and gross margin widened to 33.0%, while opex held within 0.5% of plan.

Year to date, EBITDA is $3.23M: $228K ahead of budget and 2.6× last year.

Net result: a sales and margin beat, with costs on plan.

$KActualBudgetΔΔ%
Gross sales13,01512,377+638+5.2%
Discounts(310)(277)−33−11.9%
Revenue12,70512,100+6051+5.0%
Cost of sales(8,511)(8,274)−237−2.9%
Gross profit4,1943,826+368+9.6%
Gross margin33.0%31.6%+1.4 pts2
Operating expenses(2,870)(2,856)−14−0.5%
EBITDA1,324971+3543+36.4%

Summarized P&L, May 2026, in thousands of US dollars, actual against budget.

Annotations
  1. 1 Revenue +$605K

    By store, Vancouver Superstore added $305K. By channel, marketplaces added $171K and corporate sales $114K.

  2. 2 Margin up 1.4 ptsYour answer

    Marketplace and corporate sales mix: marketplace gross profit ran $95K over plan and corporate sales added $62K.

  3. 3 Year to date

    EBITDA is $3.23M for January to May: $228K ahead of budget and 2.6× the same months of 2025.

EBITDA bridge · May 2026 · Budget to Actual
Sales +$191KMargin rate +$176K

Sales and Margin Rate Split the $354K Beat.

Higher sales added $191K: $605K more revenue at the budgeted 31.6% margin.

The richer 33.0% margin added $176K, and opex ran $14K over plan.

Net result: the beat came from gross profit, not from cost cuts.

$971K
Budget EBITDA
+$191K
Higher sales
+$176K
Margin rate
−$14K
Operating expenses
$1,324K
Actual EBITDA
Annotations
  1. 1 Higher sales

    $605K of extra revenue at the budgeted 31.6% margin. Vancouver Superstore alone was $305K over budget.

  2. 2 Margin rate

    33.0% against 31.6% budgeted. Marketplaces (+$95K gross profit) and corporate sales (+$62K) led; the direct web shop was $23K short.

  3. 3 Opex on plan

    Operating expenses landed $14K (0.5%) over budget, so the beat came from gross profit.

P&L by store · May 2026 · Operating income vs Budget
Vancouver +$174KBend −$62K

Vancouver and Seattle Carry May, Bend Is $62K Behind.

Operating income beat budget in 11 of the 13 stores that reported. Vancouver added $174K and Seattle $104K.

Bend Flagship ships the web orders: revenue −$37K, with cost of goods +$13K and inbound freight +$10K against plan.

Net result: a timing miss at Bend, not a trend.

  • Vancouver Superstore+$174K
  • Seattle Downtown Flagship+$104K
  • Olympia North Market+$34K
  • Yakima Valley+$23K
  • Ellensburg+$23K
  • Anchorage Midtown+$22K
  • 5 smaller stores+$25K
  • Mercer Island Boutique−$6K
  • Bend Flagship−$62K3
Annotations
  1. 1 Vancouver Superstore

    Revenue $305K over budget. The shop, the rental counter and the café all trade from this site.

  2. 2 What the numbers show

    Bend: revenue −$37K, cost of goods +$13K and inbound freight +$10K against budget. Direct web orders ship from here.

  3. 3 Freight timingYour answer

    “June’s road-bike range landed early, so its freight hit May. Timing, not trend.”

Born2Cycle is finstory's demo company, a 14-store bicycle retailer on NetSuite. Figures are from its May 2026 close.

02 · The problem

Your board pack is still a copy-paste job.

The close takes days. The pack takes longer. You export from NetSuite, paste into slides, reconcile the one number that moved and write the commentary at midnight.

The figures are right. The story arrives late, and the questions arrive after the meeting.

Pasted by hand
Six files feed one deck. One broken link and the board reads a wrong number.
Written last
Commentary comes at the very end, from memory, when you are most tired.
Asked too late
The questions come after the pack is sent, and the answers end up in someone's inbox.
Board_Pack_May_v14_FINAL.pptx · 41 slides · edited 23:48 by you
Feeding the deck
  • NetSuite_TB_export_May.xlsx
  • Budget_2026_v3.xlsx
  • Store_contribution_May.xlsx
  • EBITDA_bridge_workings.xlsx
  • Cash_KPIs_rolling.xlsx
  • Commentary_draft_v6.docx
CEO 23:48
Why is Bend down? The web shop looked busy.
You 23:52
Checking. The export doesn't split freight by store.
03 · The shift

It finds the variance. You tell it why.

finstory reads your close and drafts every page of the story. When a number moves and the ledger can't say why, it doesn't guess. It asks you, in plain English, and pins your one-line answer to the exact figure it explains.

01
Drafts every page

A headline, the commentary and the right chart for each part of your pack.

02
Asks, never guesses

If the data doesn't show the cause, it says so and asks the person who knows.

03
Your answer on the number

Context sits on the figure it explains, so the board reads the why next to the what.

Claude · finstory connected
Bend Flagship is −$62K against budget on operating income: revenue −$37K, cost of goods +$13K and inbound freight +$10K. Bend ships the web orders, so this may be an online story. What drove it?
June's road-bike range landed early, so its freight hit May. Timing, not trend.
Added as note 3 on Bend's variance, marked as your context. Next: Mercer Island is also behind, by $6K. Worth a note?
Your answer · pinned
On: Bend Flagship · operating income vs budget · page 3 of the May board story
04 · How it works

From ledger to boardroom in three steps.

01
Connect your close

Your accounting, planning and spend systems connect directly: actuals, budgets and forecasts in one governed model.

02
Ask and build in Claude

Ask “How did May go?” and get the finding in a minute. Ask for the board story and it drafts page by page, checking the why with you.

03
Publish and present

Share a secure link, export to PowerPoint, and see which pages your board actually read.

See your own close told this way.

Early-bird customers are live within days, with onboarding by our team.

30 minutes with the founder

Book a demo
05 · A month with finstory

Your close calendar with the story built in.

No new process. finstory fits the month you already run.

  1. Working day 1
    07:10
    The close lands.

    Actuals sync from NetSuite overnight. finstory checks the load before anyone reads it, and flags what looks odd.

    NetSuite sync · complete. Trial balance loaded for 6 entities. Budget and June reforecast present. Note: the Online entity's budget starts in March (new entity).
  2. Working day 2
    09:30
    “How did May go?” answered in a minute.

    The finding first, then the drivers, then the questions worth asking next. No pivot tables.

    EBITDA $1.32M, +$354K against budget. Higher sales and a richer margin split the beat; opex landed on plan. Bend is the one store to watch.
    Where next?
    A) Bend's cost of sales by account, to see where the $62K went
    B) Marketplace against direct web margin, to test the mix story
  3. Working day 3
    14:00
    The story drafts itself. You add the why.

    Page by page, from your own reports. finstory asks about the moves it can't explain, and your answers become pinned notes.

    May board story · page 3 of 5 · draft. Vancouver and Seattle carry May; Bend is $62K behind.
    Your answer: June's road-bike range landed early, so its freight hit May.
  4. Working day 4
    08:15
    The board reads it before the meeting.

    Publish to named board members with a secure link, or export to PowerPoint. See who read which page, and for how long.

    • Board chair · EBITDA bridge · 6 min
    • CEO · All pages · 11 min
    • Lead investor · Cash cycle · 4 min
  5. Mid-month
    16:40
    The reforecast drops in. The story keeps up.

    Load a new forecast from a spreadsheet just by asking. finstory checks the file with you, runs a dry run and keeps a copy to roll back to before anything changes.

    June reforecast.xlsx · loaded. 6 entities · 12 months · 2 questions answered. Dry run passed. Rollback copy saved.
06 · Trust

Every number traces back to the ledger.

A board story is only as good as the figures under it. finstory is built so nobody has to wonder where a number came from.

01
Traceable

Every figure on a page comes from a governed report on your own ledger, and you can drill into the lines behind it.

02
Never invented

The AI sets up your reports and quotes their figures; it never calculates a number itself. When the data can't explain a move, it asks.

03
You decide who sees what

Keep a story private, share it with your company, or send it to named people with a link that expires.

04
Built to SOC 2 standards

Security controls designed around SOC 2. Hosted on Google Cloud, encrypted in transit and at rest.

How we protect your data
07 · Finance leaders

Built with CFOs who present every month.

finstory is shaped week by week with our early design partners. This is what they tell us.

We spend the week after close on the analysis now, not on assembling it. That is the week where the value actually sits.
CFO, PE-backed group, US
The numbers come straight from the source into the report. No rework, no rebuild, no version that drifted. That gives me the confidence to put it in front of the board.
VP Finance, Multi-entity services business, US
The reporting is ready while the team is still closing. When the numbers are final, we refresh and we present. The deadline stopped being a deadline.
CFO, Consumer brand, US
The first draft raises things I had not raised myself. Not a different number, a different question. That is exactly what I wanted from it.
Finance Director, Multi-entity group, EU
Finance teams already do the hard part, a clean close. finstory makes sure the story that follows is just as rigorous, and arrives on time.
Wouter Born, Founder, finstoryWhy we built finstory
08 · Early bird

Start with your next close.

One plan with everything included, at an early-bird price that stays locked for as long as you subscribe. Places are limited.

$2,500/monthusually
Or $800/month billed annually.
Get early-bird accessBook a demo first
Everything included
  • NetSuite connected directly, and Excel uploads for everything else
  • Up to 25 users, 2.5M records and 5 data models
  • Actuals, budgets and forecasts in one governed model
  • Board stories with headlines, commentary and notes pinned to the figures
And 4 more: see everything included →

No. Reports, stories and publishing work in finstory on their own. Claude adds the intelligence and automation, on your own Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise). finstory works inside Claude through the finstory connector; other AI assistants that support custom connectors can connect too.

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