How Public.com Leveraged Automation to Shave 2 Days off Month-End

Public.com helps people keep track of their portfolio all in one place – across stock, equity, crypto and more – while also giving them the tools to make informed investing decisions. 

Yet, when CFO Sruthi Lanka joined the company in 2020, “all in one place” certainly didn’t characterize their close process. Having info stashed across documents, software, and spreadsheets indicated a clear need for revision so Lanka went searching for one solution to supercharge her team’s productivity.  

She chose Numeric and hasn’t looked back since. 

Before: Lean Teams + Lost Time – A Need for Change 

Public’s pain points were characteristic of issues common to accounting teams at fast-growing start-ups: between few employees, cluttered spreadsheets, and a labor-intensive manual process, Lanka and her team – Director of Accounting Yifei Wang and Senior Accountant Mary Caiello – knew that the current close model was unsustainable long-term. At the same time, a resulting lack of confidence and understanding of the numbers pulled management and executives away from more strategic initiatives. 

As described by Sr. Accountant Mary Caiello, the former process “was not a good way to show auditors that the right work is getting done every month. And there was no formal documentation of any reviews taking place.” 

The team needed a fast, intuitive, and user-friendly product – a solution that could optimize lean headcount and give the team some hours back to focus on more big-picture planning. 

Why Public.com put trust in Numeric’s product and people 

After an initial demo, Public was convinced that Numeric could offer a dramatic upgrade from their status quo.

Wang and Caiello confirmed that after entrusting the Numeric team with their Netsuite integration, “we didn’t have to do much. [Numeric] really did all of the configuring, we got the email to sign up for our accounts, and we moved from there. It was really, really easy… Numeric took a lot of the load off our shoulders.” 

When talking about getting other team members involved, Mary extends this sentiment:

Beyond that, they’ve been impressed with their ongoing relationship with Numeric’s support teams; whenever issues arise, a quick Slack message to Numeric yields improvements and changes in short order. 

After: A better and faster close that’s built for company growth  

So after taking the leap, how is Public’s month-end close faring now? 

Since implementing Numeric, Public has been able to realize meaningful improvements to their business and bottom line. More specifically, across month-end closes, they’ve 

• Saved 2 or more days per month on their close 
• Realized 25-35% efficiency gains 
• Tripled their working capacity 

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With Numeric’s centralized month-end playbook and automation, Public’s accountant can handle more complex accounting workflows while effortlessly coordinating on open tasks. Their favorite features? Automatic journal entry population from Netsuite combined with the ability to seamlessly integrate Excel workpapers for reconciliations. 

“It makes it really, really easy and saves us a lot of time since we can see automatically whether or not our schedules tie to the Netsuite balances.” – Mary Caiello, Sr. Accounting Mgr

On top of the time savings from streamlined reconciliation workflows and report verification, Public is now able to consistently deliver accurate data to their executive and FP&A teams. 

And for Yifei, it has allowed her to take a substantial step back in terms of her day-to-day involvement which in turn has encouraged greater autonomy from more junior members. To stay informed on her team’s progress, a quick look at the Numeric dashboard tells her exactly where her team is in the close process. 

While still a startup, Public’s accounting engine now resembles those of far more mature companies. With the efficiency of task automation and a powerful NetSuite integration, they have built a close process that will scale as their company reaches new heights. 

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Working on a month-end process built for scale? Schedule a conversation with our team here.