Executive summary

Epidemic Sound - the global soundtrack platform powering content for creators, brands, and broadcasters - runs a finance operation that punches well above its weight. A team of roughly 16 members over 100 bank accounts across 13 legal entities, closing the books in just four working days.

That speed is the result of a deliberate, five-year finance transformation. But as the business continued to scale, the manual processes underpinning the close were becoming a ceiling. Reconciliation tools were disjointed. Task visibility was fragmented. The approval process was buried in document downloads. The team had optimized everything it could - and needed a platform that could carry them into the next phase.

Epidemic Sound implemented Stacks in five weeks. In their first month-end close on the platform, 713 tasks were tracked, assigned, and completed across all 13 entities - a 100% completion rate. The value is not measured in days shaved off an already fast close. It is measured in the confidence that the close will hold as the business doubles again.

A finance team built for speed

Epidemic Sound's accounting team is lean by design. Under VP of Accounting Jessica Lindholm, the team has spent the past five years transforming finance operations - reducing the close from 20 working days to four, doubling revenue without adding headcount, and building a culture of continuous automation.

As Jessica explains:

"Our finance team at Epidemic Sound is incredibly agile and forward-thinking. We're known for doing a lot with a lean team, constantly seeking innovative solutions to support the business's ambitious goals."

But optimization has limits. The team had reached a point where the existing tools could not absorb further growth without either adding people or accepting risk.

The challenge: process fragmentation at scale

Before Stacks, Epidemic Sound's month-end close was managed through a combination of a reconciliation tool and manual coordination. The system worked - but it was disjointed.

Tasks lived in one place. Reconciliations lived in another. There was no way to build dependencies between them, meaning the team had to manually track what needed to happen before what. Visibility into close progress required asking people directly, adding noise during an already intensive week.

"You never really had a real-time bird's eye view. You had to ask someone to know where things stood, which just adds more noise to a busy week."

 - Alexander Österlind, Revenue Accounting Manager

The approval process was particularly painful. Reviewers had to download every supporting document individually - hundreds of files per close - open them, verify, and then approve. Jessica estimates this alone consumed roughly 5 hours each month.

Meanwhile, the reconciliation tool itself was slow to navigate and lacked the workflow logic the team needed. Everything sat in a flat list with no sequencing - no way to enforce that Task A had to finish before Task B could begin.

"In the old system, everything just sat there in a big pile. Now with Stacks, it actually flows naturally - we can't do Task B until Task A is finished, which is how the work actually happens."

- Alexander Österlind

With over 100 bank accounts across 13 entities, these friction points were compounding. The team was reaching a ceiling.

"We were reaching a point where sustaining our rapid growth without adding headcount was very challenging and risked impacting the quality of our close."

- Jessica Lindholm

Why Epidemic Sound chose Stacks

The team was not looking for another legacy tool. They wanted a platform that matched their ambition: modern, automation-first, and built for the way they actually wanted to work.

"We didn't want another clunky legacy tool. We wanted a partner that understood automation and actually made our lives easier, not more complicated."

- Alexander Österlind

During evaluation, Stacks stood out because it reflected how the team envisioned their future state - not just how they worked today.

"A lot of tools promise the world but are a nightmare to set up. Stacks felt like it was built for the way we actually want to work. It just felt intuitive."

- Ida Salmén, Cost Accounting Manager

Implementation: contract to go-live in five weeks

Epidemic Sound signed with Stacks on August 29, 2025, went live 4 weeks later and closed the books using Stacks on October 6 - a five-week implementation covering 102 bank accounts across 13 legal entities, full NetSuite integration, SSO configuration, UAT testing, and team training.

The speed came from alignment. The Epidemic Sound team had a clear internal vision of their target state. Stacks brought the expertise and a flexible platform to match.

"This close alignment between our internal vision and their technology empowered us to move decisively and progress from contract to a successful go-live in just 5 weeks."

- Jessica Lindholm

First month-end: 713 tasks, 100% completion

The first close on Stacks set the tone. All 713 tasks across 13 entities were tracked, assigned to the right people, and completed - a 100% completion rate.

"It was actually kind of exciting to see everything clicking into place. The whole team really enjoyed using the platform."

- Ida Salmén

"When you're staring down 700+ tasks, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. But Stacks made it so much easier to actually manage the workflow. It wasn't just about seeing a list - it was about knowing exactly who was doing what in real-time."

- Alexander Österlind

For Jessica, the shift was about oversight. The fragmented view - checklists in one place, reconciliations in another - was replaced by a single, unified workflow.

 "It completely transformed our oversight from fragmented to holistic. We can mix operational tasks and account reconciliations within the same workflow. For me as a manager, it provides complete, real-time transparency and the confidence that nothing falls through the cracks."

- Jessica Lindholm

What changed: the three biggest differences

1. End-to-end dependencies

For the first time, the team can enforce that tasks happen in the correct sequence across all 13 entities. This is not a nice-to-have - it is the structural foundation that makes a four-day close possible at scale.

"We can now build clear, end-to-end dependencies that show every team member exactly how their work fits into the bigger picture."

- Ida Salmén

"I can see exactly where we stand at the end of Day 1 and know if we're actually ready to move into Day 2. It lets us reprioritize on the fly instead of guessing."

- Alexander Österlind

2. Preview functionality: ~5 hours saved per close

The preview function eliminated the document download cycle entirely. Approvers can now view supporting documents directly in the platform and approve reconciliations in real time.

"Before, we were downloading hundreds of files. Now, I can just peek inside the document right there on the platform. It's saved a massive amount of busy work."

- Ida Salmén

Jessica estimates this saves her roughly five hours per close in the approval process alone.

3. Excel Assistant: journal entries without platform-hopping

The team previously had to format data, save it as CSV, and manually upload it into NetSuite - a repetitive, click-heavy process prone to frustration. The Excel Assistant handles the entire flow from within Excel with a single click.

"It completely cuts out the middleman of manual uploads. It's saved us so much time and, honestly, a lot of frustration, because we're not jumping between platforms anymore."

- Alexander Österlind

Audit readiness as a byproduct

With every task and reconciliation tracked in one place across all entities, audit preparation becomes a continuous state rather than a year-end scramble.

"For audit readiness, having everything in one place through Stacks is highly valuable - a clear, auditable trail for every task and reconciliation across all entities, simplifying the audit process and providing peace of mind."

- Jessica Lindholm

The ROI case: forward-looking by design

Jessica is deliberate about how she frames the return on investment. Epidemic Sound had already optimized its close before Stacks. The value is not in hours saved yesterday - it is in the capacity created for tomorrow.

"The ROI for Stacks is forward-looking. The headline isn't about hours saved in the past, but about enabling our next phase of growth efficiently and with accuracy. The investment in Stacks provides the scalable foundation that allows us to support doubling our revenue again, without needing to double the size of our accounting team."

- Jessica Lindholm

"The real impact is that it sets us up to scale. We can actually grow the business and handle more volume without having to constantly add headcount to the finance team."

- Ida Salmén

What's next: AI and the path to continuous close

Epidemic Sound's vision is a finance function where month-end is just another day. The team is already looking at Stacks' AI capabilities to get there.

Agentic transaction matching

Traditional rule-based matching breaks when a bank description changes by a single character. Stacks' contextual matching learns from the team's patterns and handles near-matches intelligently.

"Rules are great until they aren't. Usually, if a bank description changes by one letter, a rule-based system fails. This is different because it's actually learning our habits. It picks up on the 'close enough' matches and just feels a lot more intuitive."

- Alexander Österlind

Flux AI Agent 

The team plans to use Stacks' new Flux AI Agent to automate the identification and explanation of variances - a task that is currently manual and time-consuming.

"Today we are spending time on populating the data rather than interpreting the data. With Stacks' Flux AI agent, we will be able to significantly reduce the time spent on populating our flux analysis and instead spend time interpreting the results."

- Jessica Lindholm

The bigger picture

"In two years, I envision our accounting function operating as a highly strategic, insights-driven partner to the business, where our energy is focused on analysis, not manual processing."

- Jessica Lindholm

Why Epidemic Sound recommends Stacks

"If you want to achieve an agile, transparent, and significantly faster close without adding headcount, Stacks is the way to go."

- Jessica Lindholm

"It's made our close feel faster and smoother, and honestly, it just works the way it should."

- Alexander Österlind