Parafin is a financial infrastructure company that provides platforms with embedded financial products for their small businesses by abstracting the complexity of capital markets, underwriting, servicing, compliance, and customer support. By powering the financial services of marketplaces and payment processors, small businesses can run and grow themselves despite uncertain economic conditions.
John Quine, Parafin's Head of Accounting and first accounting hire, embodies the company's forward-thinking ethos. He declares:
"The old accountant is dead. The modern accountant is almost like a data engineer who needs to figure out how to take business transactions and work with data & systems to translate things into an accounting outcome."
This belief in championing innovation for better accounting outcomes resonates across Parafin's finance team. So, when faced with the challenge of optimizing their month-end close and enhancing the team’s capabilities without adding headcount, they knew they needed a solution that matched their forward-thinking mindset. Fortunately, that's when Numeric entered the picture.
Parafin's accounting team wasn't starting from scratch when it came to leveraging and evaluating finance technology. Their team, composed of Quine, Accounting Ops Analyst Charley Gow, Accountant Michael Hoopes, and Accounting Lead Tracy Monaco, has been intentional about building scalable processes from day one.
"We've been super ruthless since the beginning about taking on 'accounting debt' — not accepting stuff that's not going to scale," explains Quine. For example, the team learned Python and SQL in order to build their own MVPs of automation solutions while waiting for engineering support for more robust implementations.
However, as transaction volumes grew, the team encountered several pain points. For one, their close process lacked structure; at the time, they were relying on an engineering-centric project management tool for close management, as opposed to something more tailored to accounting workflows. The limitations were significant, and as Gow explains, "We were creating each monthly checklist from scratch. Basic tasks like updating instructions or changing assignees took up more time than they were worth."
Beyond the close, reconciliations became increasingly time-consuming, requiring repeated spreadsheet exports and manual updates. The same was true for flux analysis, which depended on these same exports and an array of pivot tables to track month-over-month variances. Given these persistent pain points, the team sought out a product that could provide them with the necessary efficiencies and robustness.
Charley Gow discovered Numeric via the company’s blog posts about month-end close best practices. Coming away impressed, he decided to trial Numeric’s free checklist offering and quickly realized that this checklist was a perfect antidote to their pain points with their existing solution: it addressed their immediate need for a well-organized close process, allowing recurring tasks, version tracking, and access control to be managed with ease.
The checklist was just the start; Parafin eventually upgraded to Numeric's premium version due to several key features. For one, the reconciliation module helped to eliminate any need for repeated spreadsheet exports, providing real-time accuracy and reducing manual work. Secondly, AI-powered flux analysis helped to automate explanations for month-over-month variances, significantly cutting down the time spent on variance reviews.
Parafin's search for the right solution was driven by their philosophy of embracing cutting-edge technology. Therefore, as Quine states, they deliberately looked beyond established incumbents in their search:
"We didn't even think about those close tools that have been on the market for a while. Those tools were built by legacy incumbent companies who have processes that we actually didn't want. We wanted a tool where we were going to have input on its product functionality and create a real partnership."
Since implementing Numeric, Parafin's accounting team has transformed their month-end close from a manual, time-consuming process into a more real-time operation with enhanced visibility and controls.
For Gow, the reconciliation module has been game-changing: "I genuinely sleep better at night now, not having something in the back of my head like 'maybe something in one subsidiary's accumulation account is off.' It eliminates any number of manual, tedious steps that are error-prone."
This benefit extends beyond peace of mind. The ability to continuously monitor reconciliations has added rigor to Parafin's accounting processes, ensuring they can be trusted to generate complete and accurate information for their lenders and auditors each month.
For Tracy Monaco, the AI-powered flux analysis has dramatically improved their financial review process: "AI-powered draft explanations in Numeric do a really good job of investigating and explaining month-over-month differences which I was previously doing manually. Even our bookkeepers are able to enhance and expedite their work using the AI-powered explanations."
The real-time nature of the flux analysis has changed how the team approaches month-end. As Gow explains, "I've fallen into a habit of constantly looking at versions of the operating expense flux throughout the close process. I can immediately see if something was misdated or if we're missing invoices from vendors."
Michael Hoopes appreciates how Numeric reduces the need to bounce between different systems: "Numeric makes it so effortless to find everything I need for month-end. I don't need to wait for NetSuite reports to load and I don't need to dig through different folders trying to find files. I can easily reference prior months' journal entries and documents all from the same screen making it a seamless and fast process."
Numeric’s deep integration with NetSuite has also helped reduce the need to run reports in the NetSuite platform itself, consolidating workflows into a single system and streamlining access to critical financial data. Instead of spending what Hoopes says could be “quite literally eight hours” building reports in NetSuite, the team is able to jump into Numeric and immediately manipulate the same style of reports to their liking.
Perhaps most importantly, Parafin values the partnership they've developed with the Numeric team. From implementation to ongoing support, they've experienced a level of responsiveness that stands out. "Anytime we raise a problem, someone's immediately on top of it, and it usually disappears within the hour," says Gow.
This partnership extends to product development, with Parafin regularly providing feedback that helps shape Numeric's roadmap. "We often try to throw in feature feedback or ideas, and it always is a positive response," Gow notes.
For Parafin, the value of Numeric isn't primarily about saving time—though they've certainly eliminated hours of manual work. Instead, it's about adding rigor to their processes and positioning their accounting team to be more strategic.
"As I see it, Numeric is an accounting organization intelligence platform," Quine explains. "It's something that is able to drive real-time insights on our data as it's happening, as transactions are getting processed. The more that we can pull out of month-end close time and into day-to-day, the better. It allows our team to focus on the very few things that really matter, and we can let AI, bookkeepers, or more junior team members work on the lower leverage things."
By partnering with Numeric, Parafin has found a solution that aligns with their vision of the modern accountant—one who leverages technology to eliminate manual work and focuses on providing strategic insights to the business. As Hoopes puts it, Numeric is "really expansive—it does way more than we could have ever done with Linear alone, or even with four different pieces of software."
For a team committed to staying lean while scaling exponentially, that's exactly what they needed.
AI-assisted. Operationally efficient. Audit ready.
