What do investors check before a Series B?

Multiple full fiscal years plus current year-to-date, so trends are visible, not a single snapshot.

Team structure, responsibilities, daily/weekly/monthly routines, and timelines. A finance function that looks built, not improvised.

A clean, current cap table. shareholders, ownership percentages, options, convertibles, share classes, vesting, and any prior-round terms that carry forward.

Ideally produced every month across all periods under review, consistent in format, not rebuilt for the raise.

How the monthly report is produced, who the stakeholders are, and how board-level reporting is assembled from it.

A complete policy set, with any differences between statutory accounts and management accounts explained and justified.

A defined close calendar. What gets done, by whom, by when, with established closing deadlines.

Reconciled, reported, and traceable to the records across all relevant jurisdictions.

Corporate and payroll tax accounts reconciled, with authority correspondence and any open positions documented.

Purchase-to-pay, order-to-cash, record-to-report, payroll and others. How each runs from trigger to ledger.

How each material transaction type is booked, with the treatment and judgement documented, not held in one person's head.

How revenue is captured, recognised, and controlled from contract to recognised income.

For each material balance sheet account. How it is recorded, reconciled, and by whom.

Recognised on transfer of control, in line with the standard you report under.

And broken down by stream, product, and market.

Cash received ahead of delivery recognised over time, with the deferred balance rolled forward and supported.

New, expansion, contraction, and churn reconciling to recognised revenue.

Decompose margin and explain what moves it across periods. Price, cost, mix.

Not just retention, but whether cohorts are profitable over their life, and how that trends.

Separate sustainable run-rate revenue and costs from one-offs, so adjusted earnings reflect the underlying business.

A current figure for cash on hand across all accounts and entities.

Spend minus revenue, not gross spend, and whether it is rising. Investors read gross-vs-net gaps as a red flag, so it should tie to what actually left the bank.

Cash and net burn translated into a runway figure, and what extends it.

How efficiently the business turns revenue into cash. Working-capital trend and cash conversion as you scale.

Every line supported with backup that would withstand external review.

By someone independent of transaction processing.

Open items listed by customer and supplier, with average collection and payment days, and provisioning that holds.

Fixed asset register, debtors, and creditors tying back to the balance sheet control accounts.

Accruals, prepayments, provisions, and any shareholder or third-party loans, terms, balances, and movement over the periods.

The main lines traceable, not a single lump.

Tied back to headcount.

Material categories broken out, one-offs flagged.

Financial results, tax, and any extraordinary items separated out.

CAC, LTV, payback, and gross margin per unit. Sourced to actual numbers, not assumed.

Retention curves by cohort, churn by segment, in usable form.

Monthly detail for year one, assumptions written down and defensible.

Current-year budget and forward forecast, key sensitivities named, with prior-period forecast accuracy you can speak to.

Including payroll, VAT, and supplier timing.

Why you are raising and what the money funds. Which hires, milestones, and how far it gets you.

Whether you have a statutory or voluntary audit, and if audited, the latest opinion and any findings.

Any management-letter points or findings from earlier audits closed out, not left open.

Support for material balances and transactions organised so an auditor could review it without reconstruction.

Consolidated financials with intercompany transactions eliminated, not just netted in the founders' heads.

Balances between entities agreed and reconciled across the group.

Intercompany pricing set on an arm's-length basis and documented to satisfy each relevant jurisdiction.

Filings and positions current in each jurisdiction you operate in.

Controls over material accounts documented, with owners, frequency, and evidence, compiled into a single register.

A record of where controls were not followed, with how each was resolved.

Accounting/ERP, payroll, expense, invoicing. Where they integrate, where someone bridges the gap by hand, and what is automated or planned.