Finance & operations setup
Your companies across Asia, well lit.
A fixed-fee, three-week finance and operations setup for businesses running across more than one Asian market.
Across the region
Hoi An photo: cropped from “Lanterns in Hoi An 3” by Christophe95, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; this crop is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who it's for
Lantern Street is for founders, operations and finance leads who:
- Run a business across two or more locations or sites, whether an office, a delivery center or an entity being registered.
- Are seed funded, bootstrapped or already earning revenue.
- Live in one Asian market and own a company registered in another, such as Hong Kong or Singapore.
- Keep the books in separate places, with money moving between companies that nobody has written down in one place.
- Don't yet have a full-time finance lead, or have one who is stretched across every entity at once.
- Want the finance and operations setup done properly once, before the next raise, audit, diligence request or expansion makes it urgent.
A typical client might have a holding company plus operations in markets like Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand or Indonesia.
Running one company on your own? Talk to us anyway. Plenty of solo founders need the same groundwork before they add a second location or their first hire. If what you need is legal, tax or company-secretary work, we'll say so on the fit call and point you to a licensed provider.
The problem
Having companies in more than one market is the easy part. Running them is where it gets messy.
Each entity has its own bank account, its own books and its own deadlines. One company pays the engineers, another holds the IP, a third invoices customers, and money moves between them whenever someone needs it to. Month-end becomes a scramble of spreadsheets and chat messages. When an investor, auditor or adviser asks how the pieces fit together, the answer lives in the founder's head.
None of this is unusual at seed stage. It just gets more expensive to untangle the longer it waits.
What you get in three weeks
You finish with an entity map covering every company, a month-end routine your team can run, and a list of what goes to your lawyers and tax advisers.
Week 1
Map the street.
We walk through every company, bank account, payment tool and set of books you have. You get an entity map showing who owns what, who pays whom and why, plus a short list of the gaps and risks we find.
Week 2
Design how it runs.
We set out a shared chart of accounts across your companies, a month-end close checklist and calendar, a spending and approval matrix, and a simple cash view across all entities. We document how money moves between your companies today and the flows you want going forward. Your tax adviser sets the pricing between your companies; we record the method they choose and don't recommend rates or methods.
Week 3
Hand it over.
We walk your team through the first close using the new routine, hand over a finance and operations playbook, and give you a referral list of what needs a licensed provider (lawyer, tax adviser, company secretary) and the questions to take to them.
You'll need to give us a named owner on your side, read access to your books and bank accounts, and decisions within a few business days so the three weeks hold. The three-week timeline assumes these are in place.
Two ways to work with us
Plan — $4,500
The full three-week finance and operations setup above.
Included
- Up to three companies in two countries
- Entity map and gap list
- Shared chart of accounts, close checklist and calendar
- Approval matrix and cross-entity cash view
- Finance and operations playbook
- Referral list for licensed providers
- Each extra company: $750
- Companies in a third country: quoted on the fit call
Not included
- Setting up or configuring software
- Intercompany term sheet
- Support after the handover
- Anything in "What we don't do" below
Build — $7,500
Everything in Plan, plus we put it to work.
Included
- Everything in Plan (up to three companies in two countries; each extra company $750; companies in a third country quoted on the fit call)
- Tool setup: we configure the accounting, bill-pay and expense tools you choose to match the new structure
- Intercompany term sheet: a plain-English summary of the business terms between your companies — scope of services, service levels, pricing method and invoice flow — for your own counsel to turn into final agreements for each country
- 30-day check-in after handover to review your first full close and fix what's not working
- Build clients can choose to continue on our monthly Operating retainer, with the scope, hours and fee set out in your proposal. You can stop at any time on the notice set out in your proposal.
Not included
- Final intercompany agreements, legal opinions or local-law review
- Software subscription costs (billed by the vendor to you)
- Anything in "What we don't do" below
What we don't do
We're an operations and finance setup team, not a law firm, tax firm or company secretary. These go to licensed providers and are quoted separately by them:
- Legal work, including drafting, reviewing or finalising intercompany or other agreements
- Transfer pricing advice, studies and documentation
- Company secretary services and statutory filings
- Tax filings and tax advice
- Licensing opinions or applications
If you don't have these providers yet, we can introduce firms we know. They contract with and bill you directly, and we don't take referral fees or commissions from them.
FAQ
Start with a short fit call.
Tell us how your companies are set up today. If Lantern Street is a fit, we'll recommend Plan or Build and send a fixed-fee proposal. If it isn't, we'll say so.
Or email contact@lanternstreetco.com
— Gregory Dunham, Managing Director