For finance and accounting leaders, it’s a constant challenge to manage complex financial workflows and ensure data accuracy - especially when an overwhelming number of those processes are manual.

The right combination of digital tools and software solutions can save the CFO Suite time and sanity. The modern tech stack can streamline financial operations, automate routine tasks, and provide real-time insights into financial performance. Finance teams can enhance data accuracy, improve collaboration across departments, and transform the finance function into a strategic partner - steering clear of the traditional number-crunching version of the role. 

However with so many options on the market, selecting the right tools can be overwhelming and challenging. 

As a modern general ledger, Campfire serves as the system of record for financial data for mid-sized tech companies, giving our team unique visibility into the full tech stack of modern, high-performing teams. We analyzed the tech stack for over 150 of the fastest growing 50 to 300 employee tech companies to understand the tools they use to achieve success. Here’s what we found:

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Invoicing / Revenue Automation 

• Stripe - Most companies have outgrown Stripe.com invoicing by 50 to 100 employees, and if they have not outgrown Stripe entirely, they are using Stripe’s payment processing built into a third-party or homegrown invoicing/billing engine such as one of the below names.

• Campfire - A modern version of NetSuite’s Advanced Revenue Management (ARM) module, that has everything from contract automation via integrations to CRM’s such as Salesforce, revenue reporting/account, billing and payment processing. 

• Orb - We are starting to see Orb in more tech stacks, and the company is rapidly expanding the product suite into revenue accounting features. Their strength is usage-based billing, which is a common engineering challenge for AI and infrastructure verticals. 

• Metronome - Similar to Orb, Metronome is the hottest billing product right now that handles the complexity of in-product usage data through billing. They have rapidly moved upmarket and power some of the fastest growing companies. Databricks and OpenAI are customers, need I say more?

CRM

• Salesforce - Still very much the gold standard after companies outgrow Hubspot. We are yet to see a sales-led tech company with 100+ employees in any CRM besides Salesforce. 

• Attio - It’s early days, but for smaller tech companies (Series A) Attio is starting to appear, which has a Notion-like interface. We expect to start seeing them in larger companies as their customers scale and the product matures. 

Sales Tax

• Avalara - Avalara is the titan in this category and the most common solution that we see in tech-companies, albeit their strength seems to be narrowing to non-SaaS companies.

• Anrok - Anrok has really made a name for itself within SaaS and quickly moved upmarket. Customers are often impressed by their team's deep expertise on complicated sales tax matters, and that they handle the initial Nexus assessment on your behalf. 

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Banking

This category is extremely fragmented, and in the mid-market, modern often means modern ways of doing business as opposed to the software itself, so the below are highlights of a few banks we see more frequently than others: 

• JPMorgan Access / Connect - Known as a fortress, JPMorgan needs no introduction and was one of the only port’s in the storm during last year’s banking crisis, which only increased its dominance in the market. Customers seem to migrate from Connect to Access at about 200 employees as their needs for global banking and complex credit products come online. 

• Stifel Bank - Stifel is popping up more and more frequently for mid-market treasury, banking and lending. They seem to be filling some of the void left by SVB, and we've heard great feedback from finance teams. They are taking a modern, more flexible approach to banking solutions for venture-backed startups. 

• Arc - With a modern interface and growing fast, they’ve innovated on the traditional banking model by offering a subscription for higher treasury rates and lending products. 

• Rho - A modern interface and popular amongst the Campfire customer base, Rho has a broad product suite from treasury solutions to accounts payable. 

Accounts Payable / Corporate Cards

• Ramp - Ramp is the most popular company that we see in the modern tech stack, including over half of Campfire’s customer base. If a company isn’t already on Ramp, Ramp is often on their roadmap. The end-to-end automation for AP, cards and reimbursements with a consumer-grade interface and 1.5% cash back has set a high bar for the category. Further, the recent push into Travel and Procurement has made them a one-stop shop for corporate spend and supported their recent up-market expansion.   

• Brex - Brex has made product improvements over the past year to push upmarket beyond early stage startups. Series B+ companies have been vocal that they are happier on Brex given these product improvements.

Payroll

• Rippling - The most popular payroll / HRIS provider for tech companies, and one of the most loved products among Campfire customers. Rippling is popular at the early stage and as companies scale, especially as they have rapidly made the platform more robust for mid-size companies. We’re seeing them successfully push into accounts payable and spend management as well. 

• ADP - The titan in the room, although they tend to be more popular upmarket when companies roll out a dedicated HR software provider like Workday / BambooHR alongside ADP. 

• Deel - The most popular solution we’ve seen for international payroll and one of the fastest growing companies ever. Part of the popularity beyond the obvious business acceleration from COVID leading to remote global workforces, is that Deel can often delay the timeline for launching foreign subsidiaries.  

Core Accounting

General Ledger

• QuickBooks - By far the most popular ledger in the early stage, and it seems tech companies are always finding creative ways to extend the life as they scale. QuickBooks really starts to break when companies mature into 1) multi-entity consolidations, 2) advanced revenue and financial reporting, and/or 3) accounting schedules in spreadsheets starts to become unruly. 

• Campfire - High growth startups like Replo outgrew QuickBooks and moved to Campfire, and mid-market companies like CareRev moved from Netsuite to Campfire. Why? Better reporting, multi-entity/currency reporting, transactional accounting automation to accelerate the monthly close, and more scalable architecture with flexible APIs. But hey, we’re biased. 🙂

• NetSuite - Very powerful, yet rigid and archaic. By far the most popular accounting ledger in the mid-market despite its age. Most teams who use Netsuite only find success when dedicating headcount a Netsuite admin to maintain and configure the product, otherwise the initial implementation quickly becomes outdated.

Close Management

A simple spreadsheet will suffice for an early stage startup, but close management quickly requires dedicated software as you move from single-player to multiplayer mode and move into accounting audits and SOX compliance. 

• Spreadsheets - There is nothing modern about spreadsheets, but this is still by far the most common close management tracker. 

• Monday.com - Monday.com is surprisingly common for close management, particularly if the company uses it internally for project tracking.

• FloQast - Very impressed with FloQast because customers seem to bring it with them when they change companies, even when going from public to single-player mode at a Series B tech company. They are most known for their focus on pre-IPO / public companies, but they have a down-market product for smaller teams as well.  

• Numeric - They’ve taken an AI-first approach to close management, including flux analysis and conversational GPT for querying your data.

Cap table management

• Carta - Pioneered the category for private companies, and continues to be the market leader. Everyone knows Carta and Carta seems to know everyone given its ubiquity within this category.

• Pulley - They are starting to show up more and more. Pulley has a very modern, consumer-grade interface that is easy to use. 

Database / Business Intelligence (BI) 

Accounting/finance teams are rapidly becoming more proficient in data analysis and tooling, which are often connected to a company’s accounting software (like Campfire) to stream customer billing and usage data into the ledger for end-to-end automation. As the size and complexity of the datasets grow, teams outgrow spreadsheets for performing simple tasks, which forces them into database / BI software. We’ve seen that accounting teams increasingly want their entire transaction database on the ledger for audit-readiness and higher-fidelity accuracy, leading to scalability requirements for the accounting ledger. 

• Snowflake - They are the most common database software that we see in the tech stack. 

• Looker - Looker is the most common business intelligence software among Campfire clients. 

• Sigma Computing - Have seen recent growth in popularity. 

As you evaluate your own tech stack, we hope you can find the right combination of tools to streamline operations and drive growth. Good luck!

What’d we miss? Shoot us a note at hello@campfire.com with any feedback.

Note: This tech stack is composed of 50 to 300 employee tech companies, headquartered in the US and with accounting teams primarily in-house, between 1-4 people in size.