From 15-day close to 5-day close — under audit prep.

The setup¶

A venture-backed creator platform at $100M ARR, running subscription billing plus creator passthrough payments. Brands pay for campaigns; the platform pays out commissions to thousands of creators across multiple affiliate networks and direct rails.

What was broken¶

The previous bookkeeper was running cash-basis books. Deposits came in as lumps — revenue by type was miscoded, affiliate commission flows weren't reconciled against network reports, and the billing tool wouldn't import credit notes against invoices without a manual refresh per invoice.

The books closed around day 15. When they did close, the underlying data wasn't GAAP-ready.

What we built¶

• Connected Stripe directly to the accounting system via Fivetran, so actual invoice-level data flows through instead of just deposit summaries.
• Set up a daily reconciliation cadence — variance gets flagged as it appears, not at month-end.
• Built an affiliate-payment tracking system across six affiliate networks, reviewed daily and applied in both the billing system and the accounting system.
• Migrated them from Xero to NetSuite when they scaled into audit prep — we supported the migration through the close cycle rather than hand them off.
• Implemented Ramp for automated receipt collection, closing the last manual gap in month-end reconciliation.

How it runs now¶

Every month: ~4,000 invoices reconciled, multi-system revenue tied out against the bank, affiliate payouts tracked across all six networks. Soft close lands by day 5 — not "day 5 in ideal conditions," day 5 consistently. That held through the period when the client's controller introduced GAAP complexity (deferred revenue, prepayments, accruals, lease amortization).

The outcome¶

• Monthly close: from 15 days to 5 days, held through audit prep.
• ~4,000 invoices reconciled per month.
• Eight payment systems reconciled monthly (Stripe, PayPal, and six affiliate networks).
• Successful Xero → NetSuite migration, no close delay during the transition.
• The controller owns GAAP and audit; Let's Ledger owns the operational data.