Finance: Stripe + Sheets reporting hub

Context

Bootstrapped SaaS; finance lead part-time. Needed investor-ready numbers without ChartMogul fees.

Challenge

• Manual CSV exports missed mid-week spikes; board saw stale numbers.
• Multiple Stripe products made pivot tables fragile when SKUs changed.
• Payout reconciliation against bank deposits was a monthly fire drill.

Approach

1. Stripe REST API with cursor-based pagination stored in Script Properties.
2. Normalized Charges, Subscriptions, and Payouts into separate sheet tabs.
3. Daily trigger at 6 AM; error emails to finance on API failure.

Solution

UrlFetchApp + Stripe secret key in Script Properties + summary KPI tab with QUERY() views.

Outcome

• Leadership opens one Sheet for daily MRR and cash view — no exports.
• Monthly reconciliation time cut by ~70%.
• Investor updates pull live numbers instead of week-old CSVs.

Technical approach

Scheduled trigger → paginated Stripe API calls → upsert by ID → refresh KPI tab → optional email if row count anomaly detected.

Lessons learned

Store Stripe object IDs for idempotent upserts. Version your KPI tab separately from raw imports. Monitor API failures — silent failures erode trust fast.

Related on this site

• Stripe integration guide →
• API integrations →