February 8th, 2024

KongBasileConsulting partnered with Campfire to modernize accounting for its clients

Profile photo of Campfire Team
Campfire Team
February 8th, 2024
FinanceAccountingCase Study

Background:

  • Accounting Firm: KongBasileConsulting

  • Employees: 120

  • Focus area: Accounting and advisory for venture-backed companies

  • Core Team: 

    • Michelle Arakaki, Accounting Manager

Michelle and team are experts in providing outsourced accounting and consulting to venture-backed companies.  

“Finally, an accounting software that truly understands and caters to the needs of accounting professionals. Campfire is dedicated to actively addressing the challenges and shortcomings found in existing software alternatives while building new features to empower users.”

The Challenges

Michelle and team are constantly evaluating new software providers to better serve their clients. There have been a few common themes when performing the accounting for their clients: 

  • Managing revenue in spreadsheets: They typically manage the revenue accounting and reporting for their clients in spreadsheets because traditional accounting software does not provide this functionality.  

  • Financial reporting: Preparing monthly reports for clients such as ARR, cash burn and other key metrics are typically prepared manually in spreadsheets.

  • Multi-entity support: Clients that have multiple entities are typically consolidated in spreadsheets because their general ledger does not support multiple entities and the migration to a mid-market ERP is too large of a resource investment. 

  • Dashboard for clients: QuickBooks and Xero do not provide a dashboard that has relevant metrics for their clients that are typically CEO’s and CFO’s at venture-backed companies.

“We’ve been working with Campfire for 9 months now and have been impressed with how quickly they incorporate our feedback into the product and have been adding new features.” 

Campfire’s Solution: Provide a purpose-built accounting ledger for technology companies that scales with the growth of clients

They began using Campfire and immediately noticed improvements over traditional accounting software:

  • Automated Revenue reporting and accounting: Campfire's revenue reporting and recognition solution ensured that revenue is correctly recognized while automating the revenue reporting process such as ARR waterfall, and revenue by product line and customer segment. This has allowed for additional reporting that was not previously being performed. 

  • Dashboards: Bryan and Michelle can meet with a client and review all of the reporting directly in the accounting software, or let their clients access the dashboards on their own for an updated view of the state of their company for improved executive decision making. The conversations have shifted from reports to recommendations.

Results from Campfire

  • Significant time savings: Tasks that were previously manually performed such as revenue accounting and ARR reporting are now completed automatically and are always up to date.

  • Improved reporting: Additional financial metrics are now made available such as ARR waterfalls and cash burn on a weekly basis.  

  • Improved user experience: The Campfire team has incorporated so feedback into the product that Michelle and Bryan have noticed a material improvement in their workflows relative to other accounting software.