How Paddle Transformed & Streamlined Their Global Close

Paddle is the merchant of record platform for digital product companies, helping businesses sell globally, scale faster and operate with confidence. As the legal seller of record, Paddle manages payments, tax and regulatory compliance, fraud prevention, billing management and buyer support, through one unified platform.

Paddle processes over $2 billion in annual payments, across 245 countries, with a team spanning the US, UK, Ireland, Portugal, Netherlands, Canada, and the Philippines.

As Paddle continued to grow across markets, entities and teams, its finance operation needed a close process that could scale with the business. Supporting this global operation is an accounting and treasury team led by Nate Carbrey, VP Global Corporate Controller and Hattie Nuttall, Assistant Global Controller, alongside Accounting Managers Rose Twigg and Shailen Sheth. 

Together, they've transformed Paddle's month-end-close from a weeks-long, manually coordinated process into a tightly orchestrated operation — and fundamentally changed how accounting partners with the rest of the business.

Building a More Scalable Close Process

When Carbrey joined Paddle in August 2023, he brought deep experience in building scalable accounting operations for high-growth companies. One of his first priorities was to introduce a close management tool that could create greater structure, clarity and accountability across the month-end process.

“I’ve built and scaled accounting operations before,” he explains. "I always start with a close management tool. It structurally pushes the team to document and track what is happening, who is doing it, when is someone doing it — so that we can have clarity on roles, responsibilities, timing, as well as sequencing."

At the time, Paddle’s finance team was managing close tasks through Asana. The process worked, but it relied on a significant amount of manual coordination across people, teams and systems. As the company scaled, the team needed a more robust way to manage ownership, dependencies, reviews and timing across the close.

Choosing Numeric

Carbrey had implemented another vendor's platform at his prior two companies. He could have gone back to what he knew. But an inbound Numeric demo at his previous role had shown him something different: a clean, accounting-operator-oriented UI, a pacing chart that delivered instant close visibility, and native dependency functionality.

He ran a full RFP when he got to Paddle. The decision drivers were clear:

• The pacing chart — instant visibility into close progress, no configuration required
• Dependency functionality — critical for sequencing a complex, multi-team close
• AI capabilities — built-in AI for policy writing and an initial version of AI flux analysis
• Speed of product development — a product built in 2 years that impressed more than his prior vendor’s product that was 10+ years old

"In 2 years, you built what I felt like was a better product," Carbrey says. "And I was with them for 5 years."

Creating Visibility Across the Close

Paddle's first close on Numeric — October 2023 — gave the team a much clearer view of the full scope of the close process.

The team rebuilt its close process from the ground up: defining tasks, mapping dependencies and creating a more structured view of the work involved. Twigg describes the experience as a significant step forward.

"It was a huge maturity step in where we were at compared to where we were prior. We had to decide what our dependencies were and really drill into the processes that we currently had.”

The first month took time as the team adjusted to the new process. But it also created visibility into work that had previously been harder to see.

“It became clear just how much work was happening behind the scenes at month end,” Twigg says."The invisible work that kind of goes under wraps — it was like, actually, there is time spent here and here."

With that visibility came clearer ownership. Before Numeric,  it was harder to see dependencies, blockers and ownership across the full close process.

“It gave us a clearer way to manage accountability,” Twigg explains. "You could see your piece, and everyone else's — what was due, when it was due, and where dependencies sat.”

That accountability extended beyond the core accounting team. Tasks for Treasury, Tax, and other groups could now be tracked, assigned, and escalated within the same system. "If you have to deliver something for us, we need it on this day," Twigg says.

The Orchestration Layer

Today, Paddle's close operation runs through Numeric as its orchestration layer. Ask the team to describe it and the answers come fast.

Twigg: "Efficient accountability."

Sheth: "That one view of everything."

Nuttall: "Everything all in one place."

Carbrey's framing is the most precise: "It is the orchestration layer for close. It enables and coordinates everyone and everything, and we just continue every month-end to refine the system."

That continuous refinement is central to how Paddle uses Numeric. The team recently overhauled their entire flux analysis workflow — rebuilding all P&L and balance sheet fluxes. Nuttall notes they accomplished the rebuild "in one day."

"The autonomy of being able to build things how you want them," she explains. "I want this section to be drilling down by class, and then I want this section to be drilling down by vendor. That wasn't as self-serve before — whereas actually, that's quite easy to do in Numeric."

Meanwhile, the reconciliation and real-time NetSuite integration have eliminated the constant context-switching that used to consume the team's days. Sheth describes the difference:

"It's almost seamless — you don't really have to click outside of Numeric. You can do the checklist, you can do the reconciliation, if you need to dig into a transaction, you can do it there. Rather than having 20 different windows open."

And when errors surface during a review, the correction loop is instant. "In Numeric, you just refresh it, it's there in about 2 seconds," Sheth says. "Those little things help cut out the unnecessarily time-consuming tasks of going into other systems."

From Value-Add Work to Business Partnership

For Twigg, the transformation goes beyond speed. It's about the nature of the work itself.

"We're actually spending the majority of our time doing value-add tasks now," she says. "Rather than the admin, the back and forth with people, the clicking on things, opening separate things."

The impact is especially clear in how the team now works across locations and time zones. Twigg manages her UK-based team from the US, and Numeric gives her the visibility to stay connected to progress without needing constant check-ins.

"I can go a day without speaking to my team during a month-end close, and I know that they're doing their work," she says. "That would be unheard of in the old world."

Sheth agrees: "It gives everyone the independence to go and do what they need to do. They know what they need to do, by when."

But the impact that surprised the team most was how dramatically the close transformation improved their relationship with FP&A.

Previously, too many close conversations were focused on clarifications, follow-ups and late-stage corrections. With clearer ownership, better review workflows and real-time reconciliation data, the Accounting team could identify and resolve issues earlier in the process.

That shifted the conversation with FP&A from reactive questions to higher-value business discussion.

“Finding things earlier and fixing them has helped drive the conversation with FP&A,” Sheth explains. “We’re not just talking about whether we can change XYZ. It’s more of a high-level conversation about larger topics.”

The data shows the progress clearly.  FP&A's close-related questions dropped from 27 in December 2023 to just 8 in December 2025. "That probably shows you how far we've come," Sheth says.

75 Tasks to 2,700 Steps — and Better For It

When Paddle started, they had roughly 75 tasks tracked on an Asana board. Recently, their January close included 2,700 coordinated steps in Numeric.

"The difference is quality," Carbrey says. "Those 2,700 steps are very intentionally decided."

Nuttall reframes the scale: “Managing that level of detail manually would not have been scalable.”

Twigg connects it back to the broader transformation: "The fact that we've gone from potentially 75 tasks in 20 days to over 2,000 tasks in 9 days — the work that actually adds value, the number of people that are here, managing the workload — we would just never have got there without having Numeric."

The Right Call, Confirmed

When Carbrey chose Numeric in 2023, he knew he was backing a newer platform with strong product momentum.

"When I picked Numeric, I felt like I was taking a bet," he reflects. "I was choosing to bet on a new horse. And that bet has paid off."

The product velocity that impressed Carbrey during the RFP hasn't slowed down. If anything, it's accelerated. "As Numeric has grown, the product has expanded rapidly — and we’re always on top of what new functionality arrives," he says. "It’s why we've been able to achieve what we have with the platform."

Carbrey frames the post-purchase experience in terms software buyers rarely get. “It’s a common problem when purchasing software — you become a customer and suddenly feel oversold. That hasn’t been my experience with Numeric. What we saw in the demo is what we got, and the product has only expanded since.”

The team continues to find new ways to optimize — from expanding flux workflows to onboarding FP&A for self-serve access. Sheth captures the partnership dimension:

"It almost feels like we're a partner as well. We give product feedback on existing features, and what new features might be helpful. It does feel like we're on the journey together."

For a company whose values include "Paddle Together," the sentiment fits. A finance team that once had limited visibility across its close now  orchestrates 2,700 steps across multiple continents in 9 business days. The work is visible, the process is scalable, and the team is better equipped to partner with the business.