Finance Office Hours: Batch Questions, Reduce Interruptions, Build a Finance Wiki

Finance Office Hours: A Framework for Answering Team Questions

The Slack notifications pile up. A direct message from engineering about a software trial, a query from marketing about an event budget, and a note from a new hire asking how to submit expenses. Each question is small, but together they create a constant stream of interruptions that pulls you, the founder or head of operations, away from strategic work. The answers you give are often inconsistent, leading to confusion and small but meaningful mistakes.

Team members, worried about asking “basic” finance questions, make assumptions that result in miscoded expenses or unapproved vendor commitments. This isn't a crisis, but it's an efficiency drag that signals your startup is outgrowing its informal processes. It’s a problem that needs a system, not just more of your time. For more practical context on this topic, see our Team Finance Literacy hub.

Why Ad-Hoc Finance Communication Breaks Down

For early-stage startups in the UK and USA, particularly within Biotech, SaaS, and Deeptech, the journey from five to fifteen employees introduces new friction. The casual, “just ask me” approach to financial queries that worked for a small, co-located team begins to fracture. You find yourself answering the same questions about vendor payments, expense categorization in QuickBooks or Xero, and budget availability on a loop.

This ad-hoc communication model is not only a drain on founder time, but it also creates a culture of inconsistency. One team member gets one answer, another gets a slightly different one, and soon, no one is sure what the official process is. While many companies are embracing asynchronous work practices, financial processes often lag behind, remaining highly reactive. The reality for most Pre-seed to Series B startups is that there is no full-time CFO or dedicated finance team. A founder or an operations lead is juggling these responsibilities with a dozen others. The 'Finance Office Hours' approach becomes useful when a company reaches 10-20 employees, providing a simple framework to restore order without premature hires.

The Simple Fix: What "Finance Office Hours" Actually Is

So, how can you stop answering the same finance questions all day without hiring a finance manager? The solution is a simple, low-ceremony habit: Finance Office Hours. This is a recurring, scheduled, open-door session where anyone in the company can get answers to their non-urgent finance questions. The core idea is question batching. Instead of dozens of random interruptions spread throughout the week, you create a single, focused time block to address everything at once. This structure provides a predictable forum for the team and protects your own focus time.

More importantly, it creates psychological safety. By establishing a dedicated space for these topics, you signal that no question is too “basic.” This encouragement prevents the costly errors that arise when team members are reluctant to ask for clarification. The setup involves a public “Question Catcher,” typically a dedicated Slack channel or a shared Google Doc, where questions are logged ahead of the session. This is not a complex, bureaucratic process. It’s a lightweight system designed to bring consistency to team finance communication and serve as a foundation for future, more robust financial operations.

Part 1: How to Launch Your Finance Q&A Framework in 30 Minutes

Many founders hesitate to implement new processes, fearing a time-consuming setup. The key question is: how do I launch this without creating a lot of work for myself? The beauty of this framework is its simplicity. The initial setup can be implemented in under 30 minutes using a three-step launch that prioritises function over formality.

1. Create the “Question Catcher” (10 minutes): This is the centralized, public place where questions live. The best tool is the one your team already uses. Create a public Slack channel named #finance-questions. A public channel is preferable to a private one or a direct message because it allows others to see questions and learn from the answers, reducing future duplicate queries. Alternatively, a simple Google Doc or a page in Notion titled “Finance Office Hours Q&A” works just as well.
2. Schedule the Recurring Session (5 minutes): Open your company calendar and create a 30-minute recurring event. Schedule it weekly or bi-weekly, depending on your team's size and expected question volume. Title it “Finance Office Hours” and invite the entire company. The description can be simple: “An open session for any questions on expenses, budgets, vendors, and other finance topics. Please add your questions to the #finance-questions channel beforehand.”
3. Announce the Initiative (15 minutes): Draft a brief, clear announcement in your main company-wide channel. Explain the “why” before the “what.” Frame it as a way to provide everyone with faster, more consistent answers and to make financial processes clearer for all. Direct them to the new channel to start logging their questions for the first upcoming session. The goal is a quick launch to start collecting data on what your team needs to know.

Part 2: Explaining Finance to Non-Finance Staff in Your First Session

With the system in place, what do you actually do during the session? And what if you don't know the answer? The meeting itself should be straightforward and action-oriented. Open your Question Catcher, share your screen, and address the questions one by one. As you provide an answer, take a moment to explain the reasoning behind the process. This helps build financial literacy across the team.

The most common early-stage finance questions often fall into a few categories:

• SaaS: “Can my team sign up for this new $50/month analytics tool?”
• Deeptech: “How should I categorize this lab equipment purchase in Xero to align with our grant reporting?”
• E-commerce: "I'm not sure how to account for shipping costs and Stripe fees when calculating our product margin."

Inevitably, a question will come up that you can’t answer on the spot. This is not a failure; it’s an opportunity to build trust. The correct response is, “That’s a great question. I need to check our vendor agreement, and I will post a definitive answer in the #finance-questions channel by the end of the day.” Specific rules often apply to topics like accounting for R&D costs and when to capitalise them. Following through on your commitments demonstrates reliability and reinforces the system’s value. The primary goal of these first sessions is to establish a rhythm and make it a no-judgment forum. Every question asked is a data point that helps you understand where processes are unclear.

Part 3: From Q&A to Asset: Building a Self-Serve Finance Wiki

After a few sessions, a pattern will emerge in the questions. This is where the framework begins to scale and reduce your workload long-term. The recurring meeting is the mechanism; the scalable knowledge base is the long-term asset. The documented answers from your initial sessions form the raw material for a self-serve Finance FAQ or internal wiki.

Using a tool like Notion, Confluence, or even a well-structured Google Doc, start organizing the Q&A thematically. This turns reactive answers into a proactive resource. A scenario we repeatedly see is a founder noticing multiple teams asking about different software tools. This consolidation of requests can lead to significant insights. For instance, a SaaS startup we know saved over $10,000 annually by identifying redundant subscriptions during office hours. They discovered three separate teams were paying for tools with overlapping functionality, an issue made visible only through the centralized Q&A process.

A simple Finance FAQ page can be structured with clear headers:

Finance FAQ & Policies

• 1. Expense Policy & Reimbursements
  • How do I submit an expense report?
  • What is our company policy on travel and meals?
  • When are expense reports paid out?
• 2. Vendor Management & Invoices
  • What is the process for getting a new vendor approved?
  • How do I submit an invoice for payment?
• 3. Budgeting & Software Purchasing
  • How can I see my department's current budget?
  • What is the approval process for new software subscriptions?

Once this resource exists, you can start redirecting queries. When a question comes through on Slack, use a simple script: “Great question! We've documented the full vendor approval process. You can find it here in our Finance FAQ under ‘Vendor Management.’ Please let me know if that page doesn't answer everything for you.” This trains the team to self-serve first, preserving the office hours for more complex or unique situations.

Part 4: When to Evolve Your Finance Support for Startups

As your company grows, the nature of financial questions will change. Eventually, you will reach a point where you are no longer the right person to run this session. This evolution is a healthy sign of scaling. The trigger is usually when the volume and complexity of questions, such as those about departmental budget variance or inter-company transactions, exceed the operational capacity or expertise of a founder. At this stage, it’s time to bring in professional help. A first dedicated finance hire, like a Controller or Finance Manager, is typically brought on around the 30-50 employee mark.

The Finance Office Hours framework and the accompanying wiki become invaluable onboarding assets for this new hire. They provide an immediate, unfiltered view into the organization's most common points of financial friction. The handover should be deliberate. The founder should introduce the new finance lead during an office hours session, formally passing ownership of the meeting and the associated documentation. The pattern across both US and UK startups is consistent: this pre-built system dramatically accelerates a new finance hire's ability to be effective in their first 90 days.

From there, the focus of the sessions naturally evolves. The controller-led meetings will likely shift from basic process questions to more strategic topics, such as training new managers on how to read their P&L statements or discussing budget-to-actuals reporting. The simple Q&A session transforms into a forum for building financial acumen across the company's leadership.

Conclusion

Implementing a Finance Office Hours framework is a practical, high-leverage response to a common growing pain for startups. It requires minimal setup yet delivers compounding returns in clarity, consistency, and founder focus. By batching questions, creating a safe forum for inquiry, and systematically building a knowledge base, you replace ad-hoc chaos with a scalable system. This simple habit helps bridge the critical gap between early-stage informal processes and the more structured financial operations required for growth.

The most valuable takeaway is that you can start today. Block 30 minutes on the calendar, create a Slack channel, and announce the first session. You are not aiming for financial perfection; you are building a good-enough system that frees you to focus on what matters most: growing your business. Continue your learning at our Team Finance Literacy hub.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How often should we hold Finance Office Hours?
A: Start with a weekly 30-minute session. If you find that questions are sparse, you can move to a bi-weekly cadence. If the session consistently runs over time, consider increasing the frequency or length. The goal is to match the rhythm of your team's needs.

Q: What if nobody asks questions in the first few sessions?
A: This is common. Use the scheduled time to proactively document a common process, like how to submit expenses or request a new vendor. You can record a short screen-share video and post it in the channel. This seeds the knowledge base and shows the team the value of the initiative.

Q: Who should be responsible for running these sessions?
A: Initially, this role typically falls to a founder or head of operations. As the company scales to 30-50 employees and hires a dedicated finance manager or controller, ownership of the session and the finance wiki should be formally transferred to them as part of their onboarding.