Designing a finance tech stack for a scaling business

The finance tech stack that got your business here probably won’t get you to the next stage. And in most cases, the longer you wait to fix it, the harder it gets.

Most scaling businesses reach a point where the finance stack is holding them back before anyone’s willing to admit it. Reports still go out, the numbers look right, but behind the scenes there’s a quiet struggle to hold it all together, with processes which should have been automated years ago.

Month-end runs long. Board questions take days to answer. The spreadsheet that “works fine” is actually a single point of failure that only one person really understands.

We see this constantly at InfiniteCFO.

The issue isn’t usually a lack of tools, it’s that the stack was built reactively, solving the problem in front of the business at the time, and nobody stopped to redesign it when the business grew around it.

Start with Xero – and make it count

For most of the SaaS and high-growth businesses we work with, Xero sits at the core of the finance tech stack.

But there’s a difference between using Xero and using it well. We regularly take on clients who are on Xero but have drifted into running their real reporting out of Excel, because the Xero setup wasn’t structured to support how the business actually operates.

That might mean the wrong chart of accounts, inconsistent coding, limited use of tracking categories or processes that make it difficult to produce reliable financial information quickly.

Whichever accounting platform you use, getting it right is the foundation of a scalable finance function because every other finance system and reporting process else connects to it.

Build around your accounting platform, not inside it 

Once the core is solid, our philosophy is to extend the stack using best-in-class third-party tools rather than trying to force Xero to do things it wasn’t designed for, or building custom solutions that someone has to maintain.

In practice might look something like this, depending on the client:

• Management reporting and consolidation – Syft: Giving leadership a clean view of performance without the manual assembly work; supplemented with Excel for anything requiring bespoke logic or client-specific modelling.
• Bookkeeping & working papers – Briefcase: The newest tool in our stack. This AI native tool uses invoice recognition to speed up processing and manage working paper schedules.
• Spend management – Pleo (UK/Europe) vs Payhawk (global): Pleo handles cards and expenses well for UK and European teams, cutting out the end-of-month receipt scramble and giving real-time visibility on committed spend. For businesses operating across multiple countries and entities, Payhawk does the same job but adds multi-currency card issuing and consolidated reporting across your whole group structure.
• Payments – Telleroo (UK) vs Airwallex (global): Telleroo handles batch payment runs well for UK businesses, integrating with Xero so approvals and reconciliation don’t need manual re-keying. For companies paying suppliers or staff across multiple countries, Airwallex does the same job but adds multi-currency accounts and local payment rails.
• Purchase and invoice approvals – Dext & ApprovalMax: Putting proper controls around purchase orders and bills without slowing the business down.
• Month-end close – automated close packs: We use automation to roll forward and manage each month end review. That way the team spends less time chasing and more time analysing the numbers .

The principle is consistent: buy the best tool for the job, integrate it properly, and supplement with process and automation rather than spreadsheets and manual reconciliations.

That said, the landscape is constantly shifting, and keeping pace with it is part of the job. It can be tempting to back the newest tool, or the platform which is moving the fastest, but the honest reality is that isn’t always possible or even desirable. 

Our approach is to test tools we genuinely trust by using them internally first. That way we become experts before we embed them into a client’s finance function, and we know exactly where the edges are.

Beyond that, we’ve found that the relationship with the people behind the technology matters as much as the tool itself. Vendors who engage with their user community, take feedback seriously, and give partners a real line into the roadmap are the ones worth building around. 

It means we’re not just consumers of the product. We can shape where it’s going.

Where AI fits in – and where it doesn’t yet

We’re an AI-first finance team, and that shapes how we think about technology. But AI readiness is only as good as the data underneath it. 

If the chart of accounts is a mess and revenue recognition is inconsistent, AI will take you away from the desired path and produce inconsistent results.

We use Claude extensively across the finance function including; 

• Drafting financial commentary.
• Reviewing management reporting packs.
• Sense-checking financial models.
• Supporting client communications.
• Helping to manage internal operations including engagements with organised projects and structured workflow skills. 

We run regular hackathons across the iCFO team to explore new tools and automated workflows. That culture of experimentation is how we stay ahead of what’s becoming possible.

AI-native finance tools are developing fast. Some reporting platforms already have AI-generated commentary and anomaly detection built in, and the billing and ERP vendors are following quickly. 

Our approach is to evaluate these as they mature, adopt where they genuinely add value, and not get distracted by the demo.

There’s also a real opportunity in the layer between tools; partnering Claude with n8n to automate the manual steps and connect systems that don’t talk to each other natively. 

That’s where a lot of the reporting and month-end friction lives, and it’s an area we’re actively developing.

What we’re equally conscious of, though, is not going down a rabbit hole trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s easy to spend time designing dream processes and building custom automation that a well-funded software team is already releasing as a polished product. 

Bookkeeping and accounting automation tools are moving particularly quickly in areas such as:

• Transaction categorisation.
• Anomaly detection.
• Supplier matching.
• Invoice recognition.
• Automated reconciliation.

The native AI built into platforms like Xero is already doing things better than any workaround we could build ourselves. 

The developers behind these tools have the time, resources, and data scale to do it properly. Our job is to know when to build and when to adopt – and increasingly, the answer is to adopt.

The real cost of waiting

The businesses that redesign their finance stack proactively, before the fundraise, before the move into new markets, before the headcount doubles, have a significantly smoother experience at those inflection points.

Investors ask hard questions about unit economics, cash burn and forecasting assumptions. The answers need to come from systems, not from someone pulling a spreadsheet together over a weekend. It’s how our clients can be on the front foot during due diligence processes.

A properly designed stack also frees up the finance team to do the work that actually matters – analysis, scenario planning and commercial support, rather than spending the first two weeks of every month cleaning data.

That’s what we’re building towards with every client. Not just better tools, but a scalable finance function that can keep pace with the business.

Frequently asked questions