Modern finance tech stacks: 23 tools for your business

When it comes to growing a startup, choosing the right tools for your finance tech stack is critical for scalability and establishing efficient financial processes from the start. In general, the more a business can automate repetitive finance processes, like data entry and transaction tracking, the better.

“There is so much accounting and finance work,” says Jeff Caron, previously CFO at Eco. “The day-to-day activity, payroll, and reimbursing employees. All of that is the lifeblood of a startup from the finance and accounting operational perspective. So to the extent that we can automate that activity and the entries that need to go into our books, it makes it so much easier for us.”

The best software solutions for a small and medium-sized business (SMB) is likely different from what an enterprise business needs. Additionally, knowing when to switch vendors as your business evolves is just as important as selecting the right partners to begin with.

We spoke with numerous Ramp customers across a wide range of business sizes to find out more about the tools in their fintech stack and how those tools help them reach their goals.

What is a finance tech stack?

These tools help automate day-to-day accounting tasks, like categorizing expenses, to long-term strategic projects, like financial forecasting for the coming year. A well-oiled tech stack will improve your finance team’s efficiency, reduce human error, and make room for big-impact projects. But as your business grows, your financial stack will need to grow with it.

Components of a modern finance tech stack

A tech stack for finance looks like an integrated system of tools that supports every function within your finance team, from daily operations to long-term strategic planning. A modern SaaS finance stack typically includes:

• Accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for tracking revenue, expenses, and generating financial reports
• Expense management tools to simplify employee reimbursements and control company spending
• Business intelligence platforms to help analyze business trends, performance, and real-time financial data
• Payroll and HR software for accurately managing pay, benefits, and other people management needs
• Vendor and contract management tools to help organize contracts and save on procurement
• Financial planning and modeling tools to help build budgets and financial forecasts
• Equity and capitalization table management solutions to manage company ownership, track employee equity, and support fundraising

Finance tech stacks for early-stage startups (small SMBs)

When you’re in the early stages of a startup, your finance stack should support basic operational needs, but the specific tools you’ll need will depend on your goals.

For example, Capchase, a growth financing firm, is very focused on international expansion. It relies on tools that support cash flow visibility and can help manage its liquidity following a recent funding round.

“A lot of our tools come together to make sure that we’re controlling spend and we have visibility into the future. These tools enable us to take action and tweak our position accordingly,” says Jonah Remz, previously VP of Finance at Capchase.

Accounting tools

As your startup grows, you may find your internal accounting and bookkeeping needs become more complex. While many businesses start out with QuickBooks for their ERP systems, they often transition to NetSuite as the business grows. That was the case with Capchase, says Remz.

Making the switch has paid off, as the company is going through its first audit, a process that Remz says has been easier thanks to NetSuite.

“NetSuite really helped us throughout that audit process, allowing the auditors to access information from our eight different entities,” he says. “And NetSuite kind of forces you to do it the right way, versus how you can sometimes scrap it together with QuickBooks.”

Expense management tools

Automated expense management tools can help eliminate manual, time-consuming financial tasks and give you time to focus on work that impacts your bottom line.

Cometeer, a specialty coffee company known for its flash-frozen brewing process, uses Ramp to simplify employee travel expense tracking. The flexibility of automatic uploads and categorization of expenses allows the team to focus on the things that matter most: the coffee. Ramp’s solution to expense management for startups can also help automate your busywork and save your business time and money.

“Ramp saves us a massive headache from all kinds of manual accounting work,” says Matt Roberts, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Cometeer. “And anything that lets us spend more time on Cometeer’s coffee and customers is a huge win for our business.”

Business intelligence and reporting tools

Business intelligence software helps collect and process large amounts of data so businesses can unearth insights for better decision-making.

Capchase uses Looker for business intelligence, Remz says. He likes it because it provides a user-friendly, granular view of the business.

“It has various types of dashboards and visualizations, just lots of data pools,” says Remz. “It essentially allows business users like myself to interact with data, even though we don’t know tech or can’t code.”

HR and payroll tools

Setting the right foundation for your hiring and payroll needs can help your business grow without experiencing unnecessary friction.

Capchase works with a variety of vendors for HR and payroll, including Worksuite for freelancer management, Deel and Papaya Global for hiring, QuotaPath for sales compensation, and BambooHR for managing headcount and other reporting.

However, Remz believes Justworks, a platform that helps businesses handle payroll, benefits, and HR tasks in one place, provides the best value.

“It’s pretty basic, but it saves a ton of time and money,” says Remz. “It’s so automated that you really don’t need to do too much, and it kind of handles itself. I would pay so much money to not have to deal with any of that.”

Vendor and contract management tools

Managing vendors and other third-party relationships is key as your technology stack grows. Capchase uses Contractbook to track its contracts and Sastrify for procurement savings.

“When we’re signing up new contracts, having them represent us in negotiations helps us make sure that we’re getting market rates,” says Remz.

Finance tech stacks for growing businesses (large SMBs)

As your company grows and matures, your financial operations should scale, too. At Air, a creative operations system for marketers, much of the focus has been on replacing single-function tools with more holistic solutions that can do multiple tasks at once.

“We recognize that we need to grow, but we also need to grow efficiently,” says Jeff Wang, VP of Finance and Business Operations at Air. “Part of that efficiency is framework, and it’s the ability to have the right guardrails and controls on spend across the org without finance teams spending all day on it.”

Accounting tools

The SMB stage is where more and more businesses make the transition to a more advanced ERP.

Crypto platform Messari also uses QuickBooks, but the company is in the process of transitioning to NetSuite. Many SMBs also rely on Stripe for their billing needs.

“We rely heavily on Stripe for everything related to revenue and billing,” notes Wang.

Expense management tools

Both Air and Messari use Ramp for expenses. Wang likes it because of the level of control it affords him on spending without having to hire a controller and accountant to reconcile receipts.

“Once I set up the approval workflow and expense policies, I can just let it run on its own,” Wang says. “For the spend management role, Ramp is integral to my ability to manage spend without having to spend a ton of time or money.”

Messari also uses Ramp to issue corporate cards for work-from-home stipends and to support occasional travel for employees.

Invoicing tools

Stripe is also a popular SMB choice for payment processing.

To manage its growing portfolio of digital assets, Messari leverages Coinbase Prime for custody and Bitwave to automate crypto tax and accounting workflows.

“Bitwave essentially consolidates activity across our various crypto wallets and allows us to translate those transactions into journal entries, which get pushed into our ERP,” says Brent Gerundo, COO at Messari.

HR and payroll tools

The SMB stage is the point at which some businesses begin to migrate to a human resources information system (HRIS).

While Air currently uses Sequoia, Wang says the company will likely soon migrate to a more comprehensive system to support both HR and finance needs.

Caron points out that a significant challenge for startups can be onboarding and scaling HR operations effectively.

“One of the biggest opportunities for a startup is hiring and that whole onboarding process can be a ton of work,” says Caron.

Messari is also in the midst of a transition in its payroll systems. The company currently works with Justworks via its professional employer organization (PEO) relationship in the United States (and Deel for international employees), but it’s moving to ADP to handle payroll in-house.

Tools for financial planning and modeling

While many of the tasks in this function remain based in Excel, some SMBs start considering more advanced tools. Wang says he uses Mode for analytics and has also recently onboarded a new tool called Equals.

“It’s sort of the perfect marriage of Excel and SQL, where you get to build Excel model analysis with live SQL queries,” says Wang. “It allows you to query live data from your data warehouse and merge that directly with your spreadsheet.”

Finance tech stacks for mid-market businesses

As a business grows, it may start thinking about the next stage—whether that’s an acquisition or an IPO. That’s when speed and accuracy in managing finances become even more important.

“If we were gearing up for an IPO in three or five years from now, there are a lot of things we’d have to button up before that,” says Alex Song, previously VP of Finance and Capital Markets at Ramp. “We would be looking for increasing sophistication and robustness in terms of things like month-end close and multi-entity support.”

Accounting tools

Like many growing startups, Ramp completed the process of switching from QuickBooks to NetSuite.

“QuickBooks really only supports financial reporting for one legal entity,” says Song. “And because we have many legal entities, the process of consolidation is pretty challenging with respect to QuickBooks. That’s probably the number one reason why we’re switching to NetSuite.”

Expense management tools

Pipe, a recurring revenue financing platform, uses Ramp for bill payment. According to Lukas Wagner, previously CFO at Pipe, this made a big difference. Mid-market companies often have an incredible amount of bills to track and pay, and these tools help alleviate this expense burden.

“We need to keep paying our bills for marketing and professional services providers,” says Wagner. “So half of my Fridays were just paying bills manually, which is not a fun way to live life.”

HR and payroll tools

As Ramp’s hiring and payment needs have grown in tandem with its headcount, there’s been an increased need for tools to help manage this larger team. Ramp now uses several vendors within its HR and payroll tech stack. Those include Paylocity as well as Sequoia for HR and benefits and Human Interest for 401(k) and other financial benefits.

Debt management tools

Debt management tools help with financial management and planning and are especially useful to startups that have gone through several funding rounds. Song says that Finley may be the tool that provides Ramp the most value.

“They’re a great bang for the buck,” he says. “We pay them a reasonable amount, but in exchange, we receive the equivalent of several full-time employees' worth of work.”

Equity and ownership tracking tools

Like every startup interviewed for this piece, Ramp uses Carta for capitalization table management.

“They’re very user-friendly,” Song says. “And they have experience. They’ve done this for a while and have a lot of customers. There’s a great deal of scale and expertise in-house there.”

While choosing the right software solutions for your finance stack can feel overwhelming, keeping your company goals top of mind and performing due diligence around the types of companies you need can help you feel confident in your decision.

Keep in mind that even once you’ve selected the right partners, you’ll likely need to revisit the decision as your company grows. As your goals evolve, your financial tech stack should too.

Build the right finance tech stack with Ramp

As your business grows, having the right tools in place makes it easier to stay organized and reduce manual work. Ramp can help finance teams build a tech stack that grows with your business, from expense management and bill payments to vendor management and real-time reporting—all housed in one platform.

For example, before switching to Ramp, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s finance team was slowed down by manual expense reports and disconnected systems. By switching to Ramp, the nonprofit introduced mobile expense capture, automated accounting workflows, and integrated directly with its existing HR system to streamline onboarding.

Whether you’re building an initial finance stack for your business or updating tools as your business scales, Ramp offers a more efficient way to run your finances and focus on what matters most.

FAQs

What is an example of a tech stack?

A tech stack is a group of tools or software that work together to run an aspect of a business. For example, a finance tech stack would be used to automate the financial operations of a business and might include QuickBooks software for accounting purposes, Ramp for expense management, and Gusto for payroll management.

What is a stack in finance?

In finance, a stack refers to a collection of software or platforms that collectively manage a business’s financial operations. A financial stack can include everything from accounting tools to financial reporting platforms.

What is an accounting tech stack?

An accounting tech stack is a set of software programs or platforms a business uses to handle accounting tasks. This may include software for bookkeeping, invoicing, or generating financial reports. For example, a business may use QuickBooks for accounting needs, Ramp for expense management, and ADP for payroll.