Books vs bank
Is the cash really there? Do booked sales turn into deposits?
FOR VENTURE LENDERS AND INVESTORS
Investor reporting
that can’t be faked.
Founders connect their bank, books and Stripe once. Investors and lenders get monthly numbers pulled from the source and marked verified. No more reports to write, no more numbers to trust blindly.
01 / The problem
Lenders and investors fund companies on numbers nobody checks.
How it works today
- 01Founders type revenue, cash and burn into a monthly report.
- 02Lenders and investors copy those numbers into their systems and take them on trust.
- 03A wrong number, honest or not, surfaces at the next audit or default. Often a year later.
- →Assay checks every number against the bank, books and billing, every month.
What’s at stake
$68.8B
US venture debt lent in 2025, a record.
Runway Growth & PitchBook, 2026
~6×
Rise in VC-backed startups with alleged fraud underway, 0.10% to 0.63%, 2003–2021.
NBER Working Paper 34868
58%
Of 26 lender fraud cases involved fake or inflated invoices.
SFNet, Mar 2026
$54M
ARR HeadSpin claimed to investors. The real figure was closer to $10M.
US DOJ · SEC
02 / How it works
Other tools check the PDF. We check the money.
- 01
Connect once
The founder links their bank, accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite) and billing (Stripe, Chargebee). Read-only. About ten minutes.
- 02
We rebuild the numbers
Revenue, ARR, cash, burn, runway, money owed by customers and customer concentration, calculated from the raw data using open definitions.
- 03
Cross-check three ways
Books against bank. Books against Stripe. Stripe against deposits. Anything that doesn’t tie out gets flagged, with the transactions behind it.
- 04
Everyone gets the report
Days after month-end, every investor and lender the founder approves gets the same verified report. The founder never writes one again.
03 / The monthly report
Every number labelled. Every flag has proof.
Click any number to see the bank transactions, invoices or Stripe charges it came from. Founders can add commentary. They can’t change the numbers.
VerifiedMatches the bank, books and billing.
Doesn’t tie outSources disagree. Here’s the difference and why.
Founder-reportedNumbers a founder adds that no system can confirm, like pipeline. Shown, never marked verified.
Assay
Northwind Labs · Monthly report · March 2026
AVAcme Ventures
Search companies, metrics, transactions⌘K
Export
Share report
JD
Overview
Portfolio
Reports
Flags3
Covenants
Sources
Settings
Companies
Northwind Labs2
Halcyon Health
Brightloop
Kestrel AI1
Ostara Bio
Lumen Freight
All sources syncing
Portfolio / Northwind Labs
Northwind Labs SaaSSeries AVenture debt
Overview
Monthly report
Flags 2
Covenants
Sources
Activity
Cash in bankVerified
$3.02M
Matches Chase ····4412
Revenue−$80K
$332K
Books say $412K
ARRFlag
$4.0M
Books imply $4.9M
RunwayVerified
9.5 mo
At $318.5K net burn
Books vs bank and billing5 metrics · 4,812 transactions checked
MetricBooks sayBank & billing showDifferenceSourcesStatus
Cash in bank$3,020,400$3,020,400$0ChaseVerified
Revenue$412,000$332,000−$80,000QuickBooks, Stripe, ChaseMismatch
ARR$4.9M$4.0M−$0.9MStripeMismatch
Net burn$310,000$318,500+$8,500ChaseWithin 3%
Pipeline$2.1MNo sourcen/aFounder noteReported
FlagRevenue · March 2026
−$80,000
Booked as revenue, but no matching charge or deposit was found.
Evidence
QB
Journal entry JE-8812
Mar 31 · “Enterprise, Acme Co” · $80,000 · manual entry
ST
Stripe
No charge to Acme Co, Mar 1 to Apr 15
BK
Chase ····4412
No deposit from Acme Co, Mar 1 to Apr 15
Covenant impact
§6.2 Minimum revenue $350K / month
Books: passVerified: fail
Request explanationMark reviewed
Synced 2 min ago · Read-only · Chase, QuickBooks, Stripe connected
Shared with 4 investors, 1 lender
04 / What we check
Faking one system is easy. Faking all three at once isn’t.
Books vs billing
Does revenue in the ledger match what customers were actually charged?
Billing vs deposits
Did Stripe payouts land in the bank, or did the charges get refunded?
Hidden accounts
Every bank account in the books must be connected. Missing ones are flagged.
ARR that holds up
Contracted, billed and collected ARR kept separate, under one published definition.
Edited documents
If a company only sends PDFs, we check them for tampering before anyone relies on them.
05 / Who it’s for
One connection. Everyone who funds the company.
Know before the covenant breaks.
- Covenants tested on verified numbers, every month
- Compliance certificates pre-filled
- Alerts the day cash or revenue drifts
- A continuous check between field exams
See the portfolio as it really is.
- Verified dashboard across every company
- A verified snapshot before you invest
- Same definitions across the whole portfolio
- Sends into the tools you already use
Never write an investor report again.
- Connect once, report to everyone
- You choose who sees what
- Revoke access anytime
- Verified numbers make your next raise faster
06 / Why Assay
Collected isn’t the same as verified.
Typical reporting toolsAssay
Where numbers come fromThe founder’s PDF, spreadsheet or typed entryBank, books and billing, directly
What “verified” meansMatches the documentMatches the money
Bank cashRarely connectedEvery account, read-only
Founder work each monthWrite and send updatesNone. Add a note if you want.
Many investorsOften one portal per investorOne profile, shared by the founder
Built for lendersRarelyCovenants and compliance certificates
07 / Security
The founder’s data. The founder’s call.
Read-only, always
We can see transactions. We can never move money or edit the books.
Shared by consent
Founders choose each viewer and what they see, and can revoke it. Loan-required access lasts for the life of the loan.
Never sold, never traded
We don’t use company data to sell anything else. Not secondaries, not leads.
It flags. You decide.
We show the evidence. Credit and investment calls stay with people.
08 / Pilot
Try it on three borrowers you already know.
We check last quarter’s reporting packages against the source data and show you what we find. If it doesn’t surface anything useful, you’ve lost an hour.
- 01Pick three borrowers and one past quarter
- 02They connect read-only in minutes
- 03You see their books against the bank, with proof
09 / FAQ
Questions
What does a company connect?
Bank accounts, accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite) and billing (Stripe, Chargebee). Payroll and CRM are optional. Everything is read-only.
Does the founder still have to report anything?
No. The numbers build themselves. Founders can add a short note on what happened this month, but they can’t edit the figures.
What can’t you catch?
Lies that never touch money: whether the technology works, user counts, or revenue cycled through a friendly partner. We label those numbers as founder-reported, so nobody mistakes them for verified.
Who sees the data?
Only the people the founder approves, and only the parts they’re allowed to see. Lenders keep access for as long as the loan requires it.
Do we have to replace our current tools?
No. Verified numbers can flow into the portfolio and loan systems you already use, or into Excel.
What does it cost?
Free for founders. Investors and lenders pay per company they follow. Pricing on request.
Trust the founder.
Verify the numbers.
Thirty minutes. One real borrower or portfolio company. You’ll see the difference.