Case study · 14 min read
How a 65-person SaaS uses AethelLayer with Stripe + Ramp
A growth-stage finance team was drowning in exports across entities and cards. In three weeks they had live runway, duplicate SaaS cuts, and a Monday brief the whole exec team actually read.
Series B B2B SaaS, 65 employees, ~$18M ARR, US + UK entities. Controller, two FP&A analysts, Ramp for cards, Stripe for billing.
Executive summary
With 65 people and two entities, runway math lived in four places. After Stripe, Ramp, and QuickBooks synced into AethelLayer, the COO got one Operations Score, FP&A stopped rebuilding Sunday models, and AR chases ran through Slack approvals. The board deck finally matched what Finance sent leadership on Monday morning.
Background
Headcount had doubled in fourteen months. Stripe handled product billing, Ramp handled most vendor spend, and QuickBooks was still the ledger the accountant trusted. FP&A spent most of Sunday reconciling CSVs because UK and US cards rolled up differently. Duplicate SaaS showed up in audits, not in weekly ops. The CEO wanted runway and burn in the same brief as hiring and compliance, but finance, people, and legal each had their own slide deck.
The challenge
At 65 people the questions got harder, not simpler. Leadership needed runway by entity, a ranked list of duplicate tools, and AR aging across mid-market customers, not just logos. They had tried a dedicated FP&A platform and a BI layer on top of the warehouse. Adoption stalled because execs would not log into another dashboard and analysts could not keep semantic definitions in sync.
Key pain points
- Runway and burn were 5 to 10 days behind Ramp and Stripe when cards spiked
- Duplicate SaaS spend was over $14k/month across teams and regions
- AR over $50k was chased in inbox threads with no exec visibility
- Board prep took 2+ days because numbers were rebuilt from scratch each month
Before AethelLayer
- Two FP&A analysts spent 6+ hours each weekend on exports and manual checks
- COO and CEO kept separate scenario models that rarely matched
- No finance risk signal shared with hiring or vendor approval workflows
- Slack had #finance, #leadership, and DMs; no single digest
After AethelLayer
- Stripe, Ramp, and QuickBooks sync daily; score refreshes when data goes stale
- Monday brief hits #exec-team with runway, AR top ten, and duplicate SaaS by cost
- Finance Brain drafts chases; COO approves in Slack; Resend sends with audit log
- Monthly board appendix generated from the same context as the weekly brief
Implementation timeline
Wire revenue, spend, and ledger
Week 1- ·Connected Stripe (US + UK accounts); ingested subscriptions and MRR by segment
- ·Connected Ramp; pulled 12 months of transactions with department tags
- ·Linked QuickBooks for expense categories; mapped entities for rollup
- ·Replaced sample data; Operations Score moved from 42 to 58 on first live sync
Scale Finance Brain rules
Week 2- ·Surfaced 11 duplicate or overlapping SaaS tools (~$14.2k/month combined)
- ·AR rules flagged 7 invoices past 30 days; total exposure ~$186k
- ·First batch of agent drafts: 5 chase emails approved in Slack same afternoon
- ·Added AWS Cost Explorer for infra line in runway narrative
Exec rhythm in Slack
Week 3- ·Rolled out Slack app to #exec-team and #finance-leadership
- ·Briefing schedule: Monday 07:30 US / 14:30 UK for distributed leadership
- ·COO retired the master burn workbook; FP&A validates against Ramp weekly
- ·Trained department heads on reading duplicate-SaaS flags, not raw exports
Board and governance
Week 4- ·First board appendix exported from synced context (finance section only)
- ·Documented runway definition: consolidated MRR, Ramp T30 burn, infra from AWS
- ·Set approval policy: COO for AR chases over $25k, controller for vendor cuts
Workflows in production
Enterprise AR chase
Trigger: Invoice past 30 days and amount over $10k
- 1Finance Brain drafts chase with customer tier and prior payment history
- 2Approval routes to COO in #exec-team with Approve / Edit / Reject
- 3On approve, email sends; execution log ties to customer record
- 4Monday brief rolls up collections closed and still outstanding
Duplicate SaaS at scale
Trigger: Weekly sync finds overlap across departments or regions
- 1Ops Platform ranks duplicates by monthly cost and seat overlap
- 2Finance Brain assigns suggested owner (IT, Eng, G&A)
- 3Department head confirms cancel or consolidate in Slack
- 4Operations Score finance component updates; savings tracked in briefing
Monday exec brief (65 FTE)
Trigger: Scheduled Monday brief per timezone
- 1Pulls MRR delta, burn by entity, infra trend, open AR, top 5 duplicate tools
- 2Posts digest to #exec-team; archives full brief for board packet
- 3CFO and COO reply in thread; Finance Brain answers follow-ups with synced data
Strategic approach
- Connected Stripe and Ramp first because they answered weekly CEO questions.
- Brought QuickBooks in for categories without asking execs to learn a new UI.
- Treated duplicate SaaS as continuous ops, not a yearly procurement exercise.
- Pushed consumption to Slack and the Monday email the exec team already opened.
- Kept analysts in Ramp and QBO for detail; leadership read the brief and score.
What changed in practice
Runway and burn by entity now update from live feeds. The Monday question "where do we stand after last week's card spike?" gets answered before the exec staff meeting.
Finance Brain flagged $14k/month in overlapping tools in week two. Three contracts were canceled or consolidated within the quarter.
Seven overdue accounts got chase drafts in the first month; $120k+ collected after Slack approvals without a writing marathon in finance.
Board finance section prep dropped from about two days to half a day because the appendix reused briefing data.
Hiring and vendor leads started checking Operations Score before approving new tools or reqs.
Metrics
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| FP&A weekend reconciliation | ~12 hrs/week (2 people) | ~2 hrs validation |
| Runway visibility lag | 5-10 days | Under 24 hours |
| Duplicate SaaS spend addressed | $0 until audit | $14k/mo identified, $9k/mo cut |
| Operations Score | 42 (sample) | 64 (live, 65 FTE band) |
12 hrs/week
Analyst time back from manual reconciliation
Monday brief
Full exec team digest by 07:30 local
Ops score
42 to 64 with Stripe, Ramp, and QBO live
Lessons for similar teams
- At 50+ headcount, wire entities and departments early or runway lies.
- Do not wait for perfect categorization before turning on Slack approvals.
- Let FP&A keep QuickBooks; give executives the brief and the score.
“At sixty-five people we had too many spreadsheets, not too little data. The brief tells us what moved, and I approve the big chases without another meeting.”
“My team still lives in Ramp and QuickBooks. We just stopped rebuilding the story for leadership every Sunday.”
Composite narrative based on Private Pilot patterns; details are illustrative.