Case Study
a back office, rebuilt- Stage
- Series A
- Timeline
- Weeks to full transition
- Engagement
- Accounting rebuild, AR/AP, financial modeling, compliance, recurring reporting
Rebuilding the back office while growing ARR 3x
Ian Cohen
CEO, Lokker
Ian previously led Credit.com through its acquisition and served as Chief Product Officer of Experian’s consumer division. This is his account, in his own words.
Lokker had outgrown a back-office setup that worked when the company was smaller. The books took weeks to close, the financial model had fallen out of date, invoices required CEO approval, receivables were not being actively managed, and gaps in compliance had gone unnoticed.
The problem became impossible to ignore as Lokker grew and began preparing for a new equity raise. Quill rebuilt the accounting structure, connected actuals to a live financial model, centralized AR, AP, expenses, and revenue recognition, cleaned up state registrations, and introduced recurring reporting.
Within weeks, invoices were going out on time and Ian had a consistent view of cash, receivables, and payables. Today, Lokker closes its books within three business days and operates from a financial model tied directly to actuals.
Monthly close, down from 3 weeks
3 days
ARR growth year over year
3x
Variance, model vs. actuals
50%→10%
The Old Setup
Fragmented Financials
For years, Lokker worked with a bookkeeping firm that provided a solid foundation for the basics.
As the business grew, however, Lokker’s financial and operational needs became more sophisticated. Closing the books took several weeks, and the accounting system was not integrated with the company’s financial model. As a result, key metrics such as ARR were not always presented consistently across reporting tools.
The company also needed greater visibility into the mix of subscription revenue, one-time revenue, and cash collections. From AP and AR management to collections and onboarding new employees, too many critical processes were being handled manually or across disconnected systems. Taken together, it had become an unmanageable way to run the financial and administrative side of a growing company.
The CEO as Final Checkpoint
As CEO, Ian was still the final checkpoint for routine finance work. Every invoice came to him before it was sent because no one downstream had enough context or ownership to confidently approve it. It was the kind of work that could consume two hours of his time simply because there was nobody else in the system who could make the call.
Things Getting Missed
One invoice to a major customer went out 30 days late, extending what should have been a 90-day collection cycle to 120 days.
Then, at the end of 2025, its cloud provider said the company owed hundreds of thousands of dollars on an account Lokker had repeatedly been told was fully billed and up to date by the cloud provider. Nobody on Lokker’s side had caught the issue either.
“There was no one looking across the entire system and it was overwhelming. As we scaled, things started to break and switching was no longer an option.”
The Turning Point
For a long time, switching providers felt more painful than staying put. The existing firm was familiar and inexpensive. Moving finance and HR systems would be another project for a team that already had more important things to do.
But as Lokker grew rapidly and began exploring an equity raise, the tradeoff changed. There were multiple versions of the company’s financial model circulating.
Preparing for investor calls was a manual process of combining data from different systems to present consolidated financials. This was obviously prone to error.
“At that point, the risk was no longer switching. The risk was continuing to operate the same way.”
The Rebuild
Starting Fresh
Rather than inheriting the existing accounting structure as-is, Quill rebuilt Lokker’s books from a fresh chart of accounts that gave more granular insight over their spending and brought customer transactions into a single ledger with one ID per account.
That process immediately surfaced problems. Quill found six figures of active ARR recorded as churned revenue. It was one example of a broader issue: the financial records, operational reality, and financial model had drifted apart.
Centralizing Operations
The rebuild brought them back together. Receivables, payables, and expenses moved into one operating system. Revenue recognition was rebuilt properly. Someone was now actively following up on collections rather than waiting for invoices to age. State registrations were reviewed and cleaned up.
Invoices also stopped depending on the CEO.
The Results
the numbers arrive firstAn Operating View of the Business
The change was not simply faster bookkeeping. Ian began receiving an AR/AP report and cash summary every Friday, giving him a recurring view into money coming in, money going out, and issues that required attention.
For the first time, Ian had a finance team at his fingertips, available on a call or async, ready to jump on whatever came up.
At month-end, the books now close within three business days. Those actuals flow directly into a live financial model rather than being manually reconciled against a separate spreadsheet. The model now tracks within less than 10% variance to actual performance.
The monthly reporting layer goes further than producing financial statements. It includes analysis of the period, the trends that matter, and the areas that need attention next.
Growth without strain
Lokker went on to grow ARR 3x year over year while improving the internal operations that had previously been strained by that growth.
For the first time in months, Lokker had one current view of the business rather than several versions of it.
In his own words
from our conversation with IanWhat was the tipping point that made you switch?
What was switching like?
What changed most about how you operate day to day?
Ian Cohen
CEO, Lokker