Finance & AccountingFree
Board Meeting Finance Question Prep Brief
River reads the pack you are about to send and works backwards to the ten questions it invites, with the figure ready for each.
River reads the pack you are about to send, then works backwards from your own numbers to the questions they invite. Each one comes back with the figure to have ready, where that figure comes from, and which director asks it. The three you genuinely cannot answer are listed separately with what is missing, who owns it and the date it arrives. You get all of that before the pack goes out, not during the meeting.
A direction is not an answer. Gross margin fell, revenue missed, cash went somewhere: the board already read that. The disclosure rule public companies work to requires the underlying reasons for a material change described in quantitative and qualitative terms, including where movements inside one line item offset each other. That last clause is the whole game. Two hundred and eighty basis points of margin is never one thing, and the director who asks how much of it is mix wants a number.
Written for the CFO or finance lead with forty-eight hours between the pack going final and the meeting starting. The pack itself grows out of the board slide and flux commentary work already done. Metric definitions hold across meetings through the investor update note, and the covenant slide reconciles to the covenant headroom forecast. Every cash question traces back to the 13 week forecast, which is where the bridge in the room comes from.
Three you cannot answer beats ten you can
Credibility in a board room is not built by having every answer. It is destroyed by appearing to have one you do not. A director who hears a confident number and finds out later it was a guess discounts everything you say for a year afterwards. The brief separates the questions you can close in the room from the ones you cannot, and gives you a sentence for each of the second kind: what you know, what is missing, who owns it, and the date.
The questions are predictable because the shapes are. A number that moved with no cause attached. Two slides that cannot both be true. A total that hides offsetting movements. A metric with no definition. Staff reviewers generate these professionally: told that revenue grew from new and existing customers, one asked the company to quantify the relative contribution of each of these factors. Your operating director asks the identical question in plainer language.
Everything the brief promises sits in a sheet behind it. Margin bridged into its three causes with basis points on each. The cash movement bridged from operating profit down to the closing balance. Inventory split by what it is and why it is there. Receivables split by the customers who moved terms. You are not building an answer while the question is being asked, and the sheet goes in the appendix so the pack closes half of them before anybody speaks.
How it works
Add the pack
Drop in the board deck, the financial exhibits and anything going out alongside them.
Say who is reading
Which directors, what each of them pushes on, and what happened at the last meeting.
River works backwards
From every number to the question it invites, then to the figure that answers it.
Take the gaps
Assign the three open items and their dates before the meeting rather than during it.
What you get
- Ten questions ranked by how likely they are to actually get asked
- The figure ready for each one, with the source it was pulled from
- Every material move bridged into its causes, with the size of each
- Contradictions between two slides caught before the pack ever leaves your outbox
- The three you cannot answer, with what is missing and who owns it
- A holding sentence for each gap, so a gap does not read as evasion
Common questions
Is this just a generic list of questions boards ask?
No. It reads your pack and the questions come out of your own numbers, which is why the list changes completely between quarters. A generic list gives you strategy questions nobody asks. Your margin falling 280 basis points with no breakdown on the slide produces one specific question, and it gets asked every time.
How does it know which director asks what?
You describe the room and it maps the questions accordingly. An operator from a growth fund goes at capacity and unit economics, an audit chair goes at the balance sheet and controls, a founder director goes at the plan. Same numbers, different order of attack, and the order tells you what to have on top.
Why put the things I cannot answer in writing?
Because the alternative is answering them anyway. A gap you name with an owner and a date reads as control. The same gap discovered by a director two months later reads as something you hid, and then every other number in the pack gets checked. The naming is the whole point.
Can it change the pack rather than just prep me?
It tells you exactly what to add, and most of it is one line. A bridge under the margin slide, a working capital line under the cash slide, a headroom number beside the covenant tick. Half the questions on the list stop being asked once the answer is on the page that raised them.
What if two slides in my pack contradict each other?
That is the first thing it looks for and it is more common than anyone expects, because different people write different sections. Capacity constrained on one page and capex deferred on another is the classic pair. You get the contradiction, both sources, and the sentence that reconciles them.
Where do the backup figures come from?
From whatever you upload with the pack, which is usually the close output. The bridges get built from the same ledger the deck was built from, so the appendix always ties to the front. The close itself runs through the monthly close pack and the numbers arrive already reconciled.
Board Meeting Finance Question Prep Brief
Fill in the form and your workspace opens with the work already underway.