Stack Overflow Optimizes Finance & Scales Globally for its Next Stage of Growth

HQ New York, NY
Customer Since 2019

Industry Online Marketplace & Software

• Saved 5 days on the accounting close process
• Implemented seamless Intacct integration with 100% accurate data matching
• Eliminated the need to hire 2 additional finance resources

Learning is always better together. Stack Overflow provides the largest online community for developers to share their knowledge and build their careers. More than 100 million professional and aspiring programmers visit Stack Overflow
to solve coding problems, develop new skills, and find work—making it one of the 50 most popular websites in the world. Stack Overflow partners with businesses to help them understand, hire, engage, and enable the world’s developers, and recently launched Stack For Teams, a private collaboration & knowledge sharing SaaS platform for companies.

Specifically hired to build out the European accounting and finance function, Brad Clifford—Assistant Controller at Stack Overflow—found that transitioning manual processes to automation was a top strategic priority.

We’re a tech company, we sell Cloud products, and we take that approach with the way we build out our financial processing systems.

With transaction-based products, advertising revenue, and its core SAAS technology, Stack Overflow wanted to build its business operations around automation, global growth, and optimizing for the future. To make that possible, Clifford first reviewed their financial operations in the United Kingdom.

Everything was being done manually, and there were limitations to our previous system. We needed a solution that we could use for the entire organization—a multicurrency, multi-entity technology that we could roll out for our international operations.

That solution was Tipalti. Starting with its UK entity, Stack Overflow decided to implement Tipalti across the entirety of the organization due to its international set-up, multiple payment options, and overall ease of use.

Plus, Clifford was now able to capitalize on the robust integration with ERP, Intacct, which allowed the finance team to seamlessly send data back and forth between the two systems.

The amount of time that’s been saved from moving to an automation process is very significant. We’ve removed 90% of the manual elements from the process, and we’re making it super easy for everyone at each stage to understand what’s going on.

And understanding the financials is imperative for a business that views its operations like a public company. For Clifford and the finance team, preparing for a potential IPO drives all of their decision-making. Ensuring they have the right financial processes and controls in place is critical to Stack Overflow’s IPO-readiness when they get to that stage.

Automation is a massive win from an audit perspective. It’s a massive win for knowing that the data being produced in our financial statements is as accurate as possible.

For the next stage of its journey, Stack Overflow has the right tools in place for continued global expansion and increased operational effectiveness. Whether Clifford and his team return to the office or continue remotely, Tipalti keeps pace with their financial processes—all systems are united to do their job.

It’s important to look at your potential growth and try and plan in advance. If you can get a system in place that you can use in the future, that’s worth investing in.

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