Case Study

How Inscribe put their FP&A processes on autopilot with Causal

Learn about how Inscribe replaced their entire Excel operating model with Causal
3 days saved per month
Time saved via live data integrations and modelling automation.
Self-serve reporting
Stakeholders have access to their financial KPIs and targets, self-serve.
More time for strategic work
Time freed up to focus on strategic, value-add work.
Industry
B2B SaaS
Employees
27
Stage
Series A
Inscribe (YC S18) helps companies detect fraudulent documents so they can trust their customers and grow faster.

The company operates across the US and the UK.
Technologies

The problem

As Inscribe’s Chief of Staff, Aidan wanted to minimise time spent on building & managing the financial model day-to-day, as well as maximising the team’s visibility into their performance.

This was tricky in spreadsheets:

  • Difficult comparing forecasts, budget and actuals — pulling Inscribe’s financial metrics from their accounting software and comparing against the company budget was manual, time-consuming, and error-prone.
  • Difficult to manage changes — forecasts need to be updated regularly without losing track of historical versions. This was impossible in spreadsheets.
  • Difficult to engage the business — because of sensitive employee salary data, the company couldn’t be given access to the spreadsheet model, so static outputs had to be manually created and shared, quickly going out-of-date.

The solution

Rapid financial modelling

Aidan was able to set up Inscribe’s full financial model (revenue, headcount, expenses) in Causal on his own, using the product documentation and guides. It took 4 days from start to finish, compared to the 2 weeks it previously took to build Inscribe’s spreadsheet model.

Budgets and versions tracked against data

Causal’s version control functionality let Aidan lock in the company’s annual budget, as well as save new versions as the model evolves. Causal is connected directly to Inscribe’s accounting software, pulling in actuals and comparing them against the budget and forecast every month.

Reporting

Aidan has set up Causal dashboards showing key financial KPIs (revenue, burn, runway), which are shared with the company and investors without revealing sensitive salary data. This has let Inscribe be much more transparent with the team, aligning everyone towards the company’s business goals.

The outcome

More time to focus on wider responsibilities

Causal has put Inscribe’s financials on autopilot. Aidan no longer has to manually perform day-to-day finance tasks, and can focus on using the model to help the executive team make better decisions.

Stakeholders are now using the financial model self-serve, to see how the company is tracking against its goals — Aidan no longer has to serve these requests manually.

27 Employees, Series a
“Causal has let me automate our routine finance processes to give me a lot more leverage in my role, and the Causal dashboards have increased transparency and alignment throughout the company.”
Aidan Davies
Chief of Staff

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