Yoto makes the screen-free audio player that sits on children's bedside tables around the world. Behind a fast-growing hardware and content business sits a finance team small enough to fit around one table, running roughly 46 bank accounts across four subsidiaries and 20 currencies on NetSuite.

Spreadsheets and disciplined coordination had carried the close through several years of growth. Then volumes climbed again, more entities came online, and Lucy Rutherford, Financial Reporting and Insights Manager, found herself spending month-end tracking down where the work stood.

Yoto took Stacks live for the February 2026 close, in the middle of audit season. With the easy Stacks roll out and with every task and reconciliation now tracked in one place, the team got through that month end with less effort than the year before. 

The close now runs on a single set of records: reconciliations completed in-period, journals posted in bulk, and every task and sign-off evidenced as it happens. For a team of Yoto's size, that is the difference between coordinating a close and controlling one.

A small team that punches above its weight

Ask Lucy to describe Yoto in three verbs and the answer comes straight back: inspires, discovers, grows. The finance team behind it works the same way.

"We're a small team that punches well above its weight. We work across a lot of worlds and a lot of tasks, so we need to prioritise well. We can't afford to waste time on processes that are too manual."

- Lucy Rutherford, Financial Reporting and Insights Manager

Prioritising that well is a real skill in a team of that size, and Yoto's team had been doing it for years. What they wanted was tooling that could help them do the monthly reporting faster without compromising on quality.

The challenge: growth arriving faster than the tooling

Two things were compounding at once. Transaction volumes were rising, and so was the number of entities behind them.

Volume on its own was manageable. The bigger cost was that the workpapers, the checklist and the sign-off were held separately, so close status could not be read off the records. The only way to get it was to ask. For a reviewer, that adds an investigation to the front of every month-end.

"I felt like I was chasing the process rather than actually reviewing the work. It was a lot of detective work and asking around to find out what was in progress, what was blocked and what was still being worked on."

- Lucy Rutherford

Why Yoto chose Stacks

Yoto's criteria followed directly from its operating environment: high transaction volumes, four subsidiaries, 20 currencies and roughly 46 bank accounts to reconcile every period. Yoto needed a platform that could carry that volume and serve as the system of record for the close.

"We were looking for something that could handle a large amount of transactions, multi-entity, but also something that gave us that centralisation and visibility that we needed that we hadn't had in the past."

- Lucy Rutherford

Three things settled the decision. Stacks understood how Yoto worked from the first conversation, the implementation team knew the domain very well, and the product roadmap was visibly active.

"They were immediately understanding from the start about how we functioned as a business. They were also very knowledgeable and very friendly and welcoming, and they completely understood all of our questions. On top of that, I could see clearly that they were coming out with new product features. There was always something new, so they clearly listened to their customers."

- Lucy Rutherford

Implementation: live through peak

Yoto was onboarded to Stacks in November 2025 and went live for the February 2026 close. That window ran straight through Yoto's busiest trading period, and the team chose to push on through it.

"The implementation period we struggled with a little bit, due to the size of our company and the fact that it happened during peak. That being said, Stacks were really helpful in that time and completely understood any delays we had and any complexities, and were always there to help."

- Lucy Rutherford

The first close, run alongside audit

Yoto's first close on the platform coincided with audit, so the team was running a live month-end and responding to auditor requests at the same time. Changing the mechanics of a close in that window is not a decision most finance teams would take, but it went very well for Lucy and the team.

"Our first month-end close on Stacks was during a really busy period for us, during audit. So there was the worry that it would be hard or that it would cause more issues, but it actually did the opposite. It made our life so much easier, just to be able to track the work that we had."

- Lucy Rutherford

Adoption was quick as well, which says as much about the team as it does about the software.

"The team took to it a lot easier than I thought they would. They were really receptive to trying out a new software, even during such a busy period. So you could see the effect it had on our team straight away."

- Lucy Rutherford

What changed: the three biggest differences

1. Bank reconciliations: 1-2 days back every month

Bank reconciliations were routinely completed outside the close window, carrying over into the following weeks. Stacks' agentic bank reconciliation now takes the manual work out of the reconciliation: statements are ingested and matched against the ledger automatically, leaving the preparer with the exceptions and the reviewer with the sign-off.

"Now we've saved with Stacks one or two days a month on bank recs. It's a much simpler process, with not having to manually upload bank statements, and the agentic bank recs have really helped our team. It's a much more reliable process."

- Lucy Rutherford

2. Journal posting, in bulk, in one place

Journals for bank transactions were built by hand, separately from the statements they came from. Stacks now creates them off the matched transactions and posts them to NetSuite in bulk, which is the part of the process Lucy singles out.

"My favourite feature on agentic bank recs is the journal posting. Before, it was a very manual process for my team, that they were constantly having to manually create journals separate from the bank statements. Now it can all be done in Stacks. It can also be done in bulk, so it's saved our team so much time."

Lucy Rutherford

3. Reviewing instead of chasing

Status used to be assembled by asking people, and supporting files had to be found before review could start. Close status is now read directly from the platform, with the documentation attached to each item, so Lucy's month-end time goes into the numbers themselves.

"Before Stacks, I spent a lot of time chasing on status, also reviewing work manually, trying to find it. Now I can go straight into Stacks, I can see what's pending, I can find the files in Stacks and be able to review from there."

- Lucy Rutherford

There is a knock-on effect for the team as well. When the checklist is visible to everyone, each task carries a named owner, and ownership sits with the person doing the work.

"I also think it promotes more ownership in my team of their tasks, to be able to see a checklist of what the status is of their tasks and where they're at."

- Lucy Rutherford

Audit readiness by default

Audit preparation used to take quite a bit of time surfacing necessary evidence that had been produced weeks earlier. Supporting documentation is now captured against each reconciliation as the close runs, so audit requests are met from records that already exist.

"Having a full audit trail is a big plus for us. We now have a centralised source for all our recs, checklists and reviews. Before, it was all done in manual spreadsheets."

- Lucy Rutherford

What's next: cash application

The next opportunity is on accounts receivables automation. Currently, Jacques White, Accountant at Yoto, starts his week matching incoming payments to invoices by hand.

"I spend a good chunk of my Monday morning going through the bank statements and matching them off to NetSuite. I then search remittance advices to match those invoices in NetSuite. This requires a large amount of cross-referencing between multiple sources."

- Jacques White, Accountant

Payments that agree to remittance advice are applied quickly. Exceptions take investigation with the B2B team, and in the case of overpayments, a refund back to the customer, which can lead to a lengthy back and forth.

The time is one cost. The other is that unapplied cash has to be traced and cleared before the receivables position can be reported with confidence, which adds a step to every month-end.

"When there is unapplied cash on the ledger, you can't be sure that the receivables balance is telling the full story. This makes month-end reporting much more difficult."

- Jacques White

Yoto is currently testing Stacks' cash application workspace. Jacques is clear about what he wants from it: auto-apply the payments that match, and route the rest to him for review.

"If it can intelligently suggest which invoices the cash payment relates to, it would free up a lot of my time to work on the more difficult payments, which contain early settlement discount or multiple invoices."

- Jacques White

"The ideal cash application process would have all payments automatically applied and, on the same day, we can have an up-to-date ledger. If there were a small list of unmatched payments, it would be an easy solution where I'd see why it hasn't been matched and I'd be able to quickly fix the problem. This would allow a clean ledger, an up-to-date balance and a clean month-end process."

- Jacques White

Where Yoto wants finance to be in a year

The ambition is a finance function weighted toward analysis, with the transactional work carried by the platform. As Yoto adds entities and volume, the expectation is that the close absorbs it without the process becoming harder to run.

"In a year, I want my finance team to be spending time on analysis and decision making rather than the manual and transactional work. As Yoto grows, Stacks is part of managing the complexity of the business without making everything more challenging."

- Lucy Rutherford

Why Yoto recommends Stacks

Lucy's case rests on how quickly the platform earned its place, and on the fact that it keeps getting better.

"In Stacks, the value shows up really quickly. They're constantly coming out with new product developments, new additions to the software."

- Lucy Rutherford