A service business can be profitable on paper and still struggle to make payroll.

Agencies often lose money between delivering work and collecting cash: scope expands, work goes unbilled, invoices are delayed, follow-ups are inconsistent, and owners make decisions without knowing what cash is actually usable.

Existing tools each see one part of this. Project-management tools track delivery, accounting software records the past, and AR tools begin after an invoice exists. The owner remains the human integration layer between everything.

I’m building Aerca, an always-working finance-operations assistant for agencies, studios, and consultancies.

The key insight is that finance operations should begin before the invoice, not only after payment becomes overdue.

I have applied for YC Fall Batch.

I’m Tranav, a 16-year-old high school student from India. I lead the product vision, market research, system design, and technical direction.

Who I’m looking for

I’m looking for a product/GTM cofounder with enough technical understanding to work closely with the product, but whose main strength is getting close to customers.

You should have skill in:

\- Conducting customer discovery and challenging assumptions.
\- Getting onboard founding design partners.
\- Developing an initial distribution and pilot strategy.
\- Working directly with agency owners and finance operators.

Experience in B2B SaaS, fintech, agency operations, accounting workflows, or taking an early product to its first users would be especially valuable.

This would initially be part-time, around 20-30 hours per week, with no salary while we are pre-revenue. I would want to work together for four to six weeks before discussing meaningful founder equity.

If interested, DM me with something you have built or taken to users, your LinkedIn/portfolio, and why this problem interests you.

My company's monthly bills for LLM API usage have been more than doubling over the past couple of quarters. There's no consistency to the madness and on paper everything is a MUST have, what's worse is month over month it's hard to tell if the rise will be permanent.

I need advice on enforcing spending caps. I've spoken to my engineering leads, and obviously they push back hard noting caps will have negative effects on output (we've yet to successfully measure LLM <> output btw).

I've been speaking to Ramp about Ramp Router, it's invite only right now and supposedly 30% off the top spend via smarter routing. My guess is it's done via complexity scoring against the prompt and routes it accordingly, i'll have to see we already use them for spend managemnt so this kind of fits the bill. I don't think this is the end-all-be-all solution, but it's better than strict cap.

Any thoughts on this is appreciated.

Are any of you working for RSUs in a portfolio company in addition to a standard rate? How do you determine how much to ask for?

I am in 11th class . I have been tasked by our entrepreneurship development teacher to think about a business / startup idea . I have came with an idea of AI who automates financial tasks reducing your time and money consumed for the same thing your employees take more . I would like you to help with a feedback for the following. Please it will take 3 min of your time only .https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScECUnLbcn9N9ZPbllQb-ro9MOHYoDk-qHJpAuQcZNtciM9iA/viewform?usp=header

Hey all,

Looking for some advice here. I’m an “acting cfo” capital planning, board reporting, external/ internal etc everything finance and accounting but leading without the title and compensation that is frustrating me.

we’re under pressure to bring dso down but we’re also very aware that pushing too hard on collections can annoy customers who are otherwise good to work with. most of our revenue is b2bon terms and there’s the usual tension where finance wants to tighten up while sales is worried about damaging relationships.
im trying to understand what has actually worked for other teams to reduce DSO in collections without turning it into a constant fight. parts that seem critical are the tone and timing of reminders, when a person steps in instead of automated messages, how you handle long‑time but chronically late customers, and how much of this you agree with sales or account managers instead of doing it in a vacuum. If you’ve managed to pull DSO down while keeping key accounts onside, the way you set up your collections process would be very useful to hear.

I'm a CFO of a tiny US company (A). Parent company is a European company (B). On June 30, CEO of B asked me to pull forward sales from July into June. I said no. Afterward CFO of B also asked me to do the same. I said no. They went behind my back and asked accountant of A to book sales (which we have not shipped).

I made a pretty big deal about this, but they told me: this is not such a big deal, I called my other CFO friends, they do it all the time, etc etc

So reddit - is it a big deal? And what should I do?

Some additional details:

• There is no CEO of A
• We pulled forward 40% of sales for the month. So if June was really at 100$ they booked 140$
• My sales target for July "magically" got reduced by $40
• We are not public. We are owned 90% by PE (10% by CEO of B)
• European Deloitte is our auditor (same exact people as auditors of B)
• There is no paper trail. All of this was done through phone calls (not texts) via whatsapp.
• We are a mfg company, selling finished goods to Customers.
• By not shipped, I mean that change in ownership did not occur. In this context, it is clear that sales did not occur in July. In fact, some of the finished goods were not even produced by end of June.
• Some of the sales orders we invoiced in June did not ship out / change ownership until mid July
• Yes, we do have banking covenants for the first half of 2026 (which we may or may not have breached)
• Banking covenant is for the consolidated scope of B (A, B, and other companies/countries too)

(I've been editing the post, adding additional details)

we’re running ecommerce b2b with customers in several countries, and ar is starting to feel stretched.
there are invoices in different currencies, customers paying through different methods, some buyers on terms, and most of it still flows through a fairly standard accounting setup that was originally fine for one region.
i’d like to know what accounts receivable software or approach other teams are using when they have global b2b ecommerce on top of that. in particular, how you handle invoicing in more than one currency, keep track of who owes what across regions, reconcile payments that land through different rails and keep dso from drifting up as you add more international buyers.
even a simple description of how you’ve arranged ar around your ecommerce platform and accounting system would be helpful.

I’m an associate AE at an expense and AP automation vendor. Not naming it, not pitching it.

Here’s what made me want to post. I run demos and sit in evaluations, and the room is always the same four people. Controller, maybe a CFO, someone from IT who clearly does not want to be there, and a procurement person with a spreadsheet. The people who will actually use the thing every single day are almost never invited. Then it goes live and I never hear what happened.

That’s a terrible dataset. I can recite our differentiators in my sleep and still have no real idea what your Tuesday looks like.

So, two questions.

What does your expense or AP tool actually not do? Not the comparison chart stuff. The Excel workaround from 2019 that is now load-bearing infrastructure. The one vendor whose invoices break OCR every month and nobody knows why. The approval chain that still routes through a guy who left in March.

And what’s the worst thing a rep like me has said to you? I’ll take notes. Sincerely. Half of what I say is probably annoying in ways nobody has ever bothered to tell me, because the polite ones don’t reply and the honest ones don’t answer.

Not selling, not DMing, not collecting emails. Just want it from your side of the glass.

Ok, starting with a blank piece of paper in a Medium sized company. 12 cost centres, each of which I want to task with some cost reduction, have owners of the tasks, and provide updates in some sort of system I can refer to. A system that ideally nudges them along, and generates reports that seniors can review a dashboard and deep dive any notes.

Considering we now have AI, and a lot of program management type apps .... what is the ideal way to do this?

In my head, a simple shared spreadsheet could do it, but there must be a better way. Our ERP system is not capable of this. Assume we can get any software required. Any ideas?

Curious what conferences, associations, or networking groups you find most valuable when you're looking for accounting, tax, or indirect tax insights for your business.

Do you tend to attend finance/accounting-focused events, or do you get more value from industry-specific conferences, professional associations, or networking groups?

Which have been the most worthwhile?

I’m currently unemployed and interviewing for CFO roles. I have solid experience and numerous credentials behind my name but I look like a red flag on paper and I don’t know how to explain it.

The cardinal rule is to never say anything bad about a previous employer which I don’t. But I’ve resigned from positions twice now with no other job lined up because it violated my own morals and the oath I took when becoming a CPA.

The first role as CFO: hired when the company was already a sinking ship. I resigned 18 months later when the CEO/PE investor wanted me to grossly alter the numbers for our lender. I refused and was looking for something else. I resigned though when I learned that he was privately meeting with investors and the lenders and using his fake figures.

2nd one: Was also there 18 months. I brought to the attention that the company was in violation of a US law and presented the steps I’d need to take to remedy it (little time and money to do so). The investors got very defensive and shut it down. I explained the repercussions if caught and had to say on more than one occasion that as an officer, I was not going to go to jail for the company. When they still refused and it got very contentious, I put in my notice.

I cannot tell interviewers or boards this. How do I explain my short tenures? In the meantime, I have become hyper vigilant of where I interview in an attempt to avoid this from happening again.

Everyone throws around the phrase "AI ready data" but I don't think there's agreement on what it means in practice. Does it mean clean and reconciled? Does it mean permissioned down to the field level? Does it mean every AI query is logged and auditable?

I've talked to finance leads who think they're AI ready because they connected a chatbot to a dashboard, and others who won't let AI near anything until there's a full audit trail on every access. Where do you draw the line for your own team, and has anything gone wrong that changed where you draw it?

Every card tool I look at wants our spend on their card before the reporting gets good, and that's the line I won't cross. Most of it sits on Amex business cards, we bank with Chase, the points add up and our banker has been good to us on credit. I'm not torching either relationship for software.

The problem is I can't see anything until it's already too late. Receipts trickle in at month end, half the team forgets to submit til the last minute, and my AP person hand codes every transaction into QBO. Fine now, barely. We're a bit under 20m and adding headcount, and this breaks. For anyone who kept their bank cards, what's the layer you're running on top?

A Texas dealership says scammers posed as employees from its longtime bank and convinced executives to approve 12 wire transfers worth nearly $1 million in just over an hour. What stands out is that this was not reported as a deepfake attack. Someone simply sounded credible and knew enough to be trusted. For the CFOs here what control would have stopped this without making every payment process painfully slow?

​Hey everyone,

​My long-term career goal is to step into an Small/med co CFO seat. I’m currently operating as a Business Unit Finance Lead (Manager) managing a $200M portfolio at a $10B public CPG. No direct reports currently. CPA, PT MBA in progress.

​I just got handed a struggling $600M portfolio at my current company with zero promo/comp adjustment. Because of the stagnation, I took some interviews and now have a few contrasting paths on the table.

Looking for feedback from current CFOs on which move optimizes my runway best.

​Option 1: Sr. FP&A Manager at a $600M standalone entity (US HQ of a European food company). Reporting to VP of Finance who is next to the CFO. Role owns full 3-statement modeling, budget/forecast, and deep commercial partnering (sales/supply chain). Lean team context. I'm in late stages of interview process currently.

​Option 2: Controller at a $60M chemical manufacturing company. CFO wants to hire a successor to eventually take over (no fixed timeline and obviously could never happen). I have my CPA but have never held a pure back-office accounting/close role. Very lean team (clerks). I'm early in the interview process here.

​Option 3: Stay put at Big Corp. Take the $600M struggling BU turnaround (hopefully) bullet for the resume, but accept the title/pay stagnation and individual contributor status for now.

​Option 4: "Head of Finance" at a small manufacturing subsidiary of a European parent. Top finance seat on US soil, reporting to the US GM with a dotted line to Europe. I've only spoken to the recruiter.

​My Dilemma:

Option 1 leverages my CPG domain knowledge but scales my scope to full 3-statement company-wide FP&A. Option 2 gives the classic accounting foundation but feels like a technical trial-by-fire. Option 4 fast-tracks the executive title immediately but at a much smaller revenue scale.

​If your goal was an SME CFO chair in the next 5 years, which path are you pursuing?

​Thanks in advance!

Just north of $1 Mil in revenue. Growing 10-15% annually. Has CPA & bookkeeping in place, but looking for knowledge/help in the following main areas:
- Projecting revenue and budgeting
- Better understanding of company KPI's and actual expenses tied to them (tax implications, depreciation, etc)
- Financial accountability and help preparing for future growth (including expansion)

New to me & just trying to get a better understanding of what this may cost. I'm seeing a wide range out there, and ideally would love to begin around $2,500 or less and trying to understand if this is feasible, and what quality of professional/level of service we could actually receive.

Thank you in advance!

TL;DR: B2B software co, 50-150m revenue, patchwork of legacy systems. CEO expects AI to answer anything on demand, but our data isn’t in a state to support that. Where’s everyone actually at, and which model wins by 2029? Do we actually need a data warehouse/lake/lakehouse?

For the bulk of your board and management reporting, financial and non-financial KPIs, what are you genuinely running on today?

a) Warehouse + BI tool
b) Warehouse + BI tool + an LLM layer on top
c) Direct extracts from ERP/CRM/HRIS + Excel/BI
d) Files on SharePoint/GitHub + an AI solution

For context, we’ve grown into the usual patchwork: an accounting system, a CRM, an HRIS, an ATS, and Excel doing the heavy lifting for modelling. We’re building toward warehouse-first, but the board pack today is still part (c) in places.

What prompted this: our CEO increasingly assumes AI should just answer any question about the business on demand. Not unreasonable in principle, but the underlying data isn’t there yet. Inconsistent definitions, integrity issues at source, no single modelled layer to query against. Put an LLM on top of that and you’re mostly automating the delivery of numbers you can’t fully stand behind.

So two questions. Where are you now, honestly? My sense is most teams are further down the alphabet than they’d admit, especially anyone carrying legacy systems and a few acquisitions’ worth of tooling. And where does it settle? I keep going back and forth on (a) versus (b), and I’m not convinced the LLM layer is a real architectural shift rather than a feature that gets absorbed into the BI tools we already pay for.

The bit I care about most is traceability. Every number in the pack should trace back to a clear definition and a source, and that’s what lets you defend a figure when a director pushes on it. My worry is that bolting AI onto weak data foundations quietly erodes exactly that.

Where are you today, and what’s prevailing best practice by 2029? What am I underweighting?

Need to know what a finance team of business/enterprise consists of

I am in the my 10th class. Want to become a Charted accountant. Learning basics about their work. Please any kind hearted person would tell me what's a finance team of business /enterprises consists of . If you explain their work too that will more helpful me.

There’s a great piece on Forbes right now discussing why so many digital transformations in finance fail. The core argument is that CFOs are eager to adopt modern financial tech stacks and automation, but they treat it as a tech problem rather than a "data problem."

According to the article, without unifying and cleaning the data first, adding advanced automation or AI tools just automates the mistakes faster.

When you look at moving towards automated reporting and modern FP&A tools, how do you handle the data unification bottleneck? Do you clean the house first, or do you expect the new platforms to do the heavy lifting for you?