RunSmart allows venture capital firms, accounting firms, and financial advisors to securely connect businesses to their projects without requesting or sharing QuickBooks Online or Stripe login credentials.
Using RunSmart's team collaboration features, you can invite a business owner or founder to join a project as a Team Lead, allowing them to securely authorize their own financial and subscription data connections while maintaining control over those connections.
This approach simplifies onboarding, protects sensitive account credentials, and makes it easier to manage financial intelligence across multiple businesses.
How Does It Work?
Rather than requesting a founder's QuickBooks Online or Stripe username and password, you can invite them directly to their company's RunSmart project.
Once invited, the founder can create a RunSmart account (if they don't already have one), accept the invitation, and connect their company's financial accounts.
Follow these steps to get started:
Create or open a RunSmart project. Sign in to RunSmart and navigate to the project associated with the portfolio company or client you want to connect.
Invite the founder as a Team Lead. Navigate to the project's Team Member section and add them as a Team Lead. An email invitation will then be sent.
Have the founder accept the invitation. The invited founder receives an email invitation to join the project. If they don't already have a RunSmart account, they'll need to create one before accepting the invitation.
Connect QuickBooks Online and Stripe. Once the founder has joined the project, they have to navigate to the Teams page from the sidebar menu first, then under the appropriate project, authorize their company's QuickBooks Online and/or Stripe connections using their existing account credentials through the respective providers' secure authorization processes.
Start analyzing the business. Once the accounts are connected and the data is synchronized, RunSmart can begin transforming the company's financial and subscription data into financial analysis, forecasts, health insights, and emerging risk signals, based on the project's subscription plan.
Important: Founders never need to disclose their QuickBooks Online or Stripe passwords to the VC firm, advisor, or other RunSmart team members.
How Does This Benefit Venture Capital Firms?
Venture capital firms often need access to reliable financial information from portfolio companies for ongoing monitoring, financial due diligence, and strategic planning.
Traditionally, obtaining this information can involve requesting financial statements, exchanging spreadsheets, or coordinating with founders to collect and update financial data.
With RunSmart, VC firms can streamline this process by inviting founders to securely connect their own accounts.
This provides several advantages:
No credential sharing: Founders authorize their own QuickBooks Online and Stripe connections without disclosing login credentials to investors.
Faster onboarding: Portfolio companies can connect their accounts directly rather than coordinating manual data transfers.
Centralized portfolio visibility: VC firms can monitor financial performance, forecasts, financial health, and emerging risks across multiple portfolio companies in one view.
Greater founder control: Founders retain the ability to disconnect their financial accounts whenever necessary.
Reduced administrative work: Automated data synchronization helps minimize the need to repeatedly request updated financial statements and spreadsheets.
This approach allows VC firms to access the financial intelligence they need while giving founders greater control over how their business data is connected.
What About Accounting Firms, Advisors, and Fractional CFOs?
The same Team Lead invitation process is available to accounting firms, financial advisors, and fractional CFOs managing RunSmart projects on behalf of their clients.
However, many accounting professionals already have authorized access to their clients' QuickBooks Online accounts.
In these situations, the accountant or advisor can typically connect QuickBooks Online directly to RunSmart using their existing authorized access, without requiring the client to complete the connection.
For Stripe, or whenever the advisor does not have the necessary account permissions, the client can instead be invited as a Team Lead to authorize the connection themselves.
This provides flexibility based on each firm's existing client relationships and account access arrangements.
Example: An accounting firm manages 15 client businesses in RunSmart. The firm already has QuickBooks Online access via QuickBooks Accountant for all 15 clients, allowing it to connect their accounting data directly. However, five clients also use Stripe, which the firm does not have access to.
Rather than requesting Stripe login credentials, the firm can invite a representative from each of those five businesses as a Team Lead. Each representative can then securely connect their own Stripe account to the corresponding RunSmart project.
Can Founders Disconnect Their Accounts Later?
Yes. Business owners retain control over their authorized connections and can revoke access whenever they choose.
QuickBooks Online and Stripe connections can be disconnected through RunSmart or revoked directly through the respective provider.
Within RunSmart: Disconnect the applicable integration from the project.
Within Stripe: Revoke RunSmart's access through the authorized applications or installed apps area of the Stripe Dashboard.
Within QuickBooks Online: Revoke RunSmart's access through QuickBooks Online's connected applications management area.
Disconnecting an integration stops future data synchronization from that account. Previously synchronized information is handled according to RunSmart's applicable data retention and deletion policies.
Does RunSmart Make Changes to QuickBooks Online or Stripe?
No. RunSmart's access is read-only.
RunSmart is designed to analyze financial and subscription data without modifying the underlying information in the connected accounts.
Its integrations use read-only access to retrieve the information needed for financial analysis, forecasting, subscription analytics, and reporting.
This means connecting an account does not give RunSmart permission to modify transactions, issue refunds, change subscriptions, or otherwise alter the business's financial records.
A More Secure Way to Collaborate
Whether you're a venture capital firm monitoring portfolio companies, an accounting firm managing multiple clients, or a fractional CFO supporting growing businesses, RunSmart makes it easier to collaborate without exchanging sensitive account credentials.
By inviting founders and business owners as Team Leads, you can securely connect financial and subscription data, automate ongoing analysis, and maintain visibility into business performance while allowing account owners to retain control over their connections.