Volt.io is revolutionizing merchant payment solutions with real-time transaction speed and seamless user experiences. Since launching in 2019, they have grown their customer base exponentially and they were recently named UK Fintech of the Year in 2024.

As the story goes with many companies in the hyper-growth stage, Volt’s finance team was spread thin performing an ever-growing list of critical tasks. As a result, the monthly close cycles were drawn out and increasingly became a pain point. Seeking a technological solution, Volt partnered with Stacks to take their close process to the next level.

The Challenge

Volt’s finance team managed a financial close process that took a significant amount of time each month, taking away precious time to perform other value-added activities. Key challenges included:

• Manual journal entries, cumbersome and error-prone process to load large numbers of manual journal entries to Netsuite.

• Time-consuming reconciliations, requiring extensive manual intervention.

• Lack of standardized workflows and audit trail, resulting in unclear task ownership, review bottlenecks, and longer audit cycles. 

With ambitious growth targets, Volt needed a scalable solution to reduce its close timeline while keeping the team lean and maintaining high levels of accuracy.

Goals for the Stacks Partnership

1. More Efficient Close: Reduce the close timeline by 33%:

2. Introduction of the Stacks Workspace: Establishing clear roles and responsibilities of users, preparer-reviewer approval workflow for tasks, and visibility on close status.

3. Increase audit readiness: Reduce time spent on audits through improved account reconciliations, centrally stored documentation, and a clear audit trial of internal controls.

Implementation with Stacks

Implementation of the Stacks platform was a quick and intuitive process for the Volt team. Integrations to their accounting ERP, installation of Excel Assistant, and their month-end close checklist were all set up within a few hours. The Stacks team has dedicated engineers and customer success resources that were with the Volt team every step of the way.

One-click journal uploads with Stacks Excel Assistant

Prior to using the Stacks platform, the average manual journal entry took 37 clicks from initiation to successfully posting the record in NetSuite. Since go-live, all of Volt’s manual journal process has been simplified to a few clicks. The Stacks Excel Assistant eliminated the back-and-forth of manual journal uploads and real-time error deduction, saving several days of busy work for the Volt finance team each month. Finally, journals are connected to tasks within the Stacks Workspace so work is performed in a logical flow and supporting materials are stored centrally.

Roks S., Accountant, shared:

“I can now upload multiple entries directly from Excel without worrying about errors. It’s a huge time-saver as a preparer every month.”

Automated account reconciliations with AI transaction matching

Stacks introduced their powerful AI-driven reconciliation engine, automating over 95% of bank statement matches in the first close on Stacks. This process of reconciling and transaction matching was previously done manually in Excel and was a cumbersome monthly process lasting 3 to 4 days for the Volt team. By the third close together, the AI engine matched 97% of all transactions at Volt, a testament to the platform AI agent’s ability to learn and develop together over time.

The Stacks Workspace - focused on controls and workflows

The Stacks Workspace enables preparer-reviewer relationships for all key month-end close tasks, providing a clear audit trail and an enhanced control environment. The workflow dashboard allowed Volt’s management to monitor close progress in real time, identify bottlenecks, and assign tasks more effectively. This function is particularly valuable given the distributed nature of the team and the challenge faced managing their close process with the limitations of Google Sheets.

Results summarized

By January 2025 (3 closes post-implementation), Volt already realized the following wins:

Close Cycle Reduction:

Monthly close reduced by 3 days (33%).

Efficiency Gains - elimination of many manual tasks and reconciliations:

Journal entry automation via Stacks Journal Assistant

Automated Reconciliation via Stacks AI transaction matching

Improved Audit Readiness and Trial 

Stacks Workspace serving as the central repository for audit deliverables such as reconciliations and internal controls documentation. 

Graham B., SVP of Finance, summarized the experience:

“Stacks has transformed how our finance team operates. From automating manual tasks like journal uploads and bank reconciliations to streamlining our month-end process with real-time workflows, it’s saved us time and reduced frustration. We’ve already reduced the time to close by 3 days since implementation. Our target with Stacks is to be able to close the books in three days by the end of 2025.”

Looking Ahead

Volt’s partnership with Stacks laid the foundation for continued growth and an AI-forward approach to solving accounting problems. Volt’s finance team has also provided valuable feedback for the Stacks platform to further expand their product offering to what high-achieving finance teams find valuable.

Graham B., summed up the experience:

“With our team spread across Poland and the UK, Stacks ensures everyone knows what’s done and what’s next—seamlessly. Beyond that, it’s helping us maintain a lean team while hitting growth targets and even simplifying audits with built-in documentation. We’re excited for the future together.”  

Volt’s journey with Stacks highlights the power of collaboration and innovation to achieve operational excellence.

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