Business Operating System — Amara's Company

How Amara's company
runs.

Three tools which are not complex thus the team can learn them, are not the most expensive and they actually work. This is the operational infrastructure built for a 12-person fintech company running across Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos, London, and Masaka.

Excel — numbers Google Drive — documents Notion — operations 5 locations · 3 currencies Built by Ferrister Mirembe

Section 01

What happens without a system.

Before the Business OS, Amara's company ran on memory, WhatsApp threads, and scattered files. Here is what that actually looked like.

💸
No financial visibility
Revenue and expenses tracked in someone's head or a single disorganised spreadsheet. No one could answer "how much did we make this month" with confidence.
📂
Documents everywhere
Contracts in email threads. Meeting notes in WhatsApp. Proposals in someone's Downloads folder. Finding anything took longer than creating it again.
🌍
Five locations, no coordination
Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos, London, and Masaka all working in silos. No shared visibility on projects, deadlines, or who was doing what.
🔁
Everything went through Amara
Every question, every decision, every request landed on her desk. All because there was no system to route them anywhere else.

Section 02

The three tools. Click each one.

Each tool has a specific job that is known, and do not overlap. They simply just connect. Click any card to see what lives there and why.

📊
Excel
The numbers layer — every financial figure lives here
Explore ▼
What lives here
Income Statement
Monthly revenue from five clients in five currencies, direct costs, operating expenses, net profit and margin
Cashflow Tracker
Actual cash movement — what came in, what went out, opening and closing balance every month
Payroll — All Locations
11 team members across Johannesburg, Masaka, Nairobi, Lagos, and London. Local currency converted to ZAR automatically
Invoice Tracker
Every invoice, its due date, payment status. Overdue flags automatically. Paid, due soon, or outstanding at a glance
Currency Rates
ZAR, UGX, KES, NGN, GBP. Update once a month — every formula across the workbook updates automatically
Year Summary
12-month P&L building across the year. Revenue, costs, gross profit, expenses, net profit — all months in one view
📸 Screenshots of the financial model — coming soon
The rule: Numbers live here and nowhere else. No financial decisions are made from memory, WhatsApp, or email. If it is not in Excel, it has not happened.
📁
Google Drive
The documents layer — every file has one home and are saved the same way that is date/month/version. NB; If a document has more than 3 version then version 1 and 2 are automatically deleted.
Explore ▼
What lives here
01 — Finance
Invoices sent and paid, monthly reports, payroll records, tax and compliance documents
02 — Clients
One folder per client: contracts, deliverables, meeting notes, invoices. Everything in one place, always findable
03 — Team
Contracts, offer letters, onboarding packs, policies, performance records — confidential and organised
04 — Projects
Active and completed projects. Each folder: brief, deliverables, meeting notes. Nothing gets lost when a project closes
05 — Board and Leadership
Board meeting folders by date: agenda, deck, and minutes. The board always has what they need before they ask
06 — Operations
Email and proposal templates, subscription records, NDAs, supplier contracts. The infrastructure of how the company runs
📸 Google Drive folder structure — coming soon
The rule: Every document lives in one place. Share the link, never the attachment. No five versions of the same file floating in email threads.
🗂
Notion
The operations layer — where work is tracked and coordinated
Explore ▼
What lives here
Command Centre
Amara's home page. Tasks this week, projects in flight, upcoming deadlines, recent meeting notes — everything in one scroll
Projects Database
Every project: client, status, owner, due date, Drive folder link. Board view, table view, active-only view
Tasks Database
Every task assigned to someone with a deadline. Filtered by person, by project, by due date. Nothing falls through
Client CRM
Every client: contact, contract dates, retainer, Drive folder, projects, renewal date. Renewals flagged 60 days out
Meeting Notes
Every meeting documented: agenda, attendees, decisions, action items, Fathom recording link. Searchable forever
SOPs and Templates
How to raise an invoice, onboard a client, run a team sync, prepare a board deck — written once, used every time
📸 Notion command centre and databases — coming soon as Notion is built
The rule: Work is tracked here. Not in someone's head, not in WhatsApp, not in a to-do list on a sticky note. If it has no Notion entry, it has no owner and no deadline.

Section 03

How information moves between the three tools.

The tools only work because they are connected. Here is how three common moments in Amara's company flow across all three.

New client signed
Weekly team sync
Month-end close
F
Contract signed and filed
The signed contract is uploaded to the client's folder in Google Drive immediately. Named correctly: YYYY-MM-DD — Client Name — Contract — v1.
Google DriveMe
N
Client and project created in Notion
New Client record added to the CRM. New Project record created and linked to the client. Tasks assigned with owners and deadlines. Drive folder linked directly in the Notion entry.
NotionMe
E
Invoice raised and cashflow updated
First invoice entered in the Invoice Tracker. Expected revenue added to the Cashflow sheet. Income Statement updated with the new client retainer.
ExcelMe
F
Welcome email and onboarding sent
Onboarding email sent from the templates folder in Drive. Calendly link shared for first project meeting. Amara briefed in one paragraph on what has been set up.
Drive templatesMe
F
Agenda prepared from Notion task board
I pull the week's overdue tasks, upcoming deadlines, and open blockers from Notion. Agenda drafted in Google Docs and circulated to all team members 24 hours before the call.
NotionGoogle DocsMe
F
Meeting runs — Fathom captures everything
I attend, take live notes. Fathom records and generates a transcript. I review, clean, and extract the decisions and action items while the meeting is still fresh.
FathomMe
N
Minutes filed, action items assigned in Notion
Meeting Notes entry created in Notion with decisions, action items, and Fathom link. Every action item gets an owner and a deadline. Minutes PDF filed in the relevant Drive folder.
NotionGoogle DriveMe
F
Deadline nudges sent to all five locations
Each team member receives a Slack message with their specific action items and deadlines from the sync. No one has to read the full minutes to know what they owe.
Me — SlackNotion source
E
Income Statement and Cashflow closed
All revenue and expenses entered for the month. Cashflow reconciled — every payment in and out accounted for. Payroll confirmed across all five locations and currencies.
ExcelMe
F
Monthly report prepared for Amara
One-page executive summary: total revenue, total expenses, net profit, collection rate, outstanding invoices, and one line on anything that needs her attention. She reviews in 15 minutes.
ExcelGoogle DriveMe
D
Monthly report filed in Drive
Report saved to Finance / Monthly Reports / 2026 / with the correct naming convention. Amara and the finance lead have access. Everything is findable in under 30 seconds.
Google Drive
N
Month-end checklist completed in Notion
The month-end SOP in Notion is checked off line by line. Every step confirmed. Nothing skipped. Next month's checklist auto-populates from the template.
Notion SOPMe

Section 04

What this makes possible.

Six things that are now true about how Amara's company runs that were not true before.

Every month
Amara knows her numbers
Revenue, expenses, net profit, and outstanding invoices — visible on one page, in ZAR, updated monthly. Financial decisions are made from data, not memory.
She only has to review, and give feedback.
Excel
Every meeting
Decisions are documented and tracked
Every meeting produces a Notion record with decisions, action items, owners, and deadlines. Nothing is lost between the conversation ending and the follow-through beginning.
Amara only has to go through her notes (reference;https://mferrister.github.io/tuesday.html), attend the meeting and chair it.
NotionFathom
Every new client
Onboarding takes 30 minutes not 3 days
Contract filed, client record created, project set up, invoice raised, welcome email sent. Done before Amara finishes her first call with the new client.
Amara signs the client and the system handles the rest.
DriveNotionExcel
Across five locations
The team knows what they owe and when
Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos, London, and Masaka — every team member gets their specific deadlines and action items after every sync. No one has to ask what they should be doing.
Coordination happens without Amara coordinating it.
Notion
Every quarter
Board meetings run on time and on substance
Board deck built from Excel numbers. Pre-read circulated a day or two before. Minutes documented and filed. Action items assigned before the call ends. Board members arrive prepared.
Amara presents. The preparation was done.
ExcelDriveNotion
Every day
Nothing falls through
Overdue invoices are flagged. Expiring contracts surface 60 days out. Blocked tasks are visible. Deadlines are tracked. Amara sees the problems before they become crises.
The system surfaces issues. Amara decides what to do about them.
ExcelNotion
Amara runs the company. The system runs everything else.
Three tools that are not complex and actually work together.
📊 Excel — all financial data 📁 Drive — all documents 🗂 Notion — all operations 🌍 5 locations · 0 dropped balls
Build this for your team ↗
Built by Ferrister Mirembe · Administrative Assistant · Masaka, Uganda · pa.mferrister@gmail.com