Automating accounting's end-of-month close process (and passing our first SOX audit) from Coalesce 2023

"This entire process has led to increased communication between analytics engineering, engineering: product, and our accounting team."

Amber Oar, Staff Analytics Engineer at Rocket Money, explains Quote-to-Cash (Q2C), a system built by Rocket Money that their accounting team used to automate end-of-month close and pass their first SOX audit with zero deficiencies. Amber explains how the system works, its benefits, and the process of building and maintaining it.

The Q2C system was developed to automate and streamline accounting processes

Rocket Money developed Q2C to help their accounting team streamline end-of-month close processes and pass their first SOX audit with zero deficiencies. The system aimed to provide a single source of truth for financial information, improve compliance with general accounting principles, and be auditable.

Amber explains, "We wanted our system to be compliant with general accounting principles. We wanted to have a single source of truth for financial information. We wanted to make sure that we had a system that was auditor-worthy and could pass an audit."

She elaborates that the system had to be built from the ground up to track the entire accounting lifecycle process, from purchase orders, invoices, revenue, cash, and accounts receivable. She also emphasizes the importance of understanding different revenue streams and coordinating with product engineering and the accounting team to define what the system should achieve.

Comprehensive testing makes the Q2C system resilient

The Q2C system was designed to be resilient and reliable, largely thanks to a comprehensive testing suite. This suite of tests ensures the system is writing production data as expected, monitors the system daily, and flags any failures to the team for immediate correction.

Amber explains, "That’s where our test suite really comes into play. There have been several instances where our test has failed. We've talked to engineering and they’ve been like, ‘Oh, yeah! Sorry we did that thing, and we didn't think it would have any impact." She further emphasizes the indispensable role of tests, saying, "We have 3,000 tests now. These are not all Quote-to-Cash tests, but having a comprehensive test suite for everything that's running in production is really important to our team."

She also shares that any time a new feature was being built, the team would work with the accounting team to understand any additional tests that could be implemented to ensure everything was running as expected.

The Quote to Cash system improved communication between different teams

The development and implementation of the Q2C system significantly improved communication between the analytics, engineering, accounting, and product teams at Rocket Money. This was largely due to the need for coordination and collaboration throughout the development process.

"Building this in a workflow diagram was a very powerful tool to make sure that everyone else is on the same page, especially folks who aren't very technical," Amber notes, adding that this process has led to increased communication between the various teams.

She also observes that the system has allowed the accounting team to dedicate their brain power elsewhere, as they now use Excel to cross-check what Q2C is outputting, instead of working to ensure all numbers line up going into the close.

Amber’s key insights

• Q2C is a system that tracks purchase orders all the way to payment. It’s used to automate end-of-month close and pass SOX audits
• The system was built with the goals of helping accounting or finance teams, providing a framework for solving complex problems, and demonstrating complex testing that can be added to a dbt project
• The system helps to ensure compliance with general accounting principles, provides a single source of truth for financial information, and is auditable
• Building the system involved understanding the different revenue streams, coordinating with various team members, and meeting with the accounting team
• The system includes a comprehensive test suite that helps to ensure the production data is being written in the way that the team expects