Open standard · MIT

Finance deserves professional standards.

Code has CLAUDE.md. Design has DESIGN.md. Finance still runs on institutional memory — EBITDA definitions in emails, FX policies in heads, restatements explained once on a call.

FINANCE.md is the standard that fixes this. One file. Versioned. Readable by any agent, any tool, any analyst.

View spec

v0.1 · Published May 2026

What it looks like

One file. Front matter + prose.

FINANCE.md — front matter

# FINANCE.md
organization: Distrib SAS
units: thousands
sign_convention: costs_positive

context:
  activity: "Food distribution, B2B — 12 warehouses in Île-de-France"
  purpose: annual_budget
  workflow_type: recurring_closing
  closing_frequency: monthly
  closing_lag_days: 10
  reporting_standard: "French GAAP (PCG)"

glossary:
  - term: Marge brute commerciale
    definition: "Revenue minus purchase cost only. Excludes logistics."
  - term: CA Frais
    definition: "Cold-chain revenue — separate margin profile from dry goods."

FINANCE.md — body

## Closing calendar

Books close on the 10th of the following month.
Management review on the 20th.

## Units and sign convention

All amounts in thousands EUR. Costs appear as positive numbers.
Net income = Revenue − Costs (both positive).
An entry of 1 200 means €1.2 million.

Front matter is machine-readable. Body is human-readable. Both travel with the model.

Where it lives

Next to your other conventions. At every level.

Alongside

AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md   — AI and coding conventions
DESIGN.md               — visual and product standards
FINANCE.md              — financial modeling conventions

At each scope

Sector template   FINANCE.md  — PE LBO, SaaS FP&A, infrastructure...
  └── Organization FINANCE.md  — group-wide (currency, reporting standard)
        └── Team   FINANCE.md  — team overrides (M&A vs FP&A)
              └── Model FINANCE.md  — deal or file-specific

An AI agent traverses the hierarchy automatically — it knows which convention applies, at which scope, and why. No re-explanation across sessions.

What you can define

Context, glossary, EBITDA, and more.

Business activity and model purpose — what this entity does, what the model is for
Units — amounts in units, thousands, millions, or billions
Sign convention — costs shown as positive or negative numbers
Closing calendar — frequency, lag days after period end, review cadence
Reporting standard — IFRS, local GAAP, management accounts, cash basis
Glossary — company-specific terms, sector KPIs, redefined metrics
Adjusted EBITDA — what is included, excluded, and why
FX conventions — rate source, period, applicable lines
Restatements and normalization — per deal, per year, with rationale

Per file. Per team. Per organization.

Read the spec. Or generate yours.

FINANCE.md is open under MIT. Layerz generates one automatically from your model and versions it alongside your model history.

View spec