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Venture Fund Accounting Simplified Through NetSuite

A venture fund accountant reviewing financial information through NetSuite.

As you’re undoubtedly aware, venture fund accounting processes can be complex, tedious, and labor-intensive.

For decades, this reality has been widely accepted as an inconvenient truth that comes with the territory of venture fund account management. But what if there was a way to simplify your processes for venture fund capital management? Thanks to Oracle NetSuite, there is.

NetSuite’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology is a cloud-based business management solution that can modernize all facets of venture fund management.

When strategically implemented into your fund management practices, the NetSuite platform can support your firm in specific ways:

  • Increase organizational efficiency.
  • Provide actionable insights into the state of your portfolio.
  • Enhance your ability to serve your clients.

Let’s take a closer look.

What Are the Primary Challenges Associated with Venture Fund Accounting?

Using the NetSuite ERP platform, your firm can overcome some of the biggest hurdles in venture fund accounting.

Complex, Inefficient Accounting Procedures

Complex accounting procedures are an inherent part of managing venture capital funds. You must apply a unique set of procedures and best practices based on the unique requirements of each deal.

While you’ll always need to use these processes, you can simplify account management using NetSuite’s standardized account management framework. When you take advantage of NetSuite’s sophisticated account management tools, you’ll have more time to navigate the nuances of each deal.

Multiple Disparate Accounting Systems

The technology stack is one of the most significant problem areas for most CFOs and venture fund accounting teams. Far too many accounting teams still rely on multiple, unintegrated accounting programs to track, manage, and optimize their portfolios.

Even if you’ve mastered your various systems and programs, transitioning between different software solutions is inefficient, time-consuming, and unnecessarily tedious.

Lack of Visibility

Using disparate systems isn’t just inefficient; it creates problematic data silos.

A data silo is what happens when two or more systems gather and store data but can’t share this information with other software on your network. The information on each platform becomes “siloed,” meaning it can’t be accessed without launching the particular software on which it’s stored.

Data silos also limit information visibility and make it challenging to see the complete picture of your portfolio. As a result, you’re constantly attempting to solve problems and make decisions without knowing all of the variables. Talk about working from a disadvantage.

Are Your Processes at Their Breaking Point?

Individually, the aforementioned challenges can strain your business and hinder your ability to serve your clients. Cumulatively, they can become a burden on your resources and undermine your company’s ability to grow.

Unless something changes, your venture fund account management processes will ultimately reach a breaking point, forcing you to either adapt or stop expanding your business.

Here are a few signs that your firm is overwhelmed, and it’s time to change.

1. Building Reports Takes Days or Even Weeks

Generating reports shouldn’t consume entire workdays or even 40-50 hour weeks. Realistically, your account management team should be able to build detailed custom reports in just a few hours, if not less.

Therefore, if building reports has transformed into a major, all-hands-on-deck project, it’s time to reconsider your venture fund accounting processes.

NetSuite ERP streamlines the report-building process. It includes several reporting tools you can use to gain deeper insights into your portfolio, its performance, and other key indicators of success.

2. Audits Have Become a Source of Stress

Audits are a fact of life in the heavily regulated venture fund management field. But news of an impending audit shouldn’t elicit feelings of stress or concerns about fines or compliance issues. In fact, your team should be confident they’re doing everything by the book.

NetSuite ERP can ensure that you’re prepared for external audits and help you conduct your own internal audits. This effort will help optimize compliance and confirm that your operations are proceeding as they should.

3. You’re Unable to Provide Shareholders with Timely, Accurate Data

The success of your venture fund accounting firm hinges on your ability to serve your clients and build trust in your brand. In order to accomplish these goals, you must keep clients in the loop by providing them with timely, accurate data on the state of their portfolios.

The question is, how can you do that if it takes your team an excessive amount of time to generate a single report? The short answer is you can’t. If it takes you a week to generate a report and another week or two to meet with a client, the data you’re presenting to them will no longer be timely and relevant.

Over time, your inability to provide shareholders with accurate data may strain your relationship with them. In the worst-case scenario, this can impede growth and potentially cause lasting damage to your brand and professional partnerships.

How NetSuite Simplifies Venture Fund Account Management

NetSuite simplifies venture fund account management by addressing your firm’s three most significant management challenges.

1. First and foremost, NetSuite serves as a replacement for disparate accounting systems. Replacing your disjointed software with a unified solution can eliminate data silos and significantly increase data visibility.

In turn, you’ll be able to gain valuable, timely insights into the performance of your investments. Additionally, eliminating data silos will resolve information discrepancies and enable you to maintain more accurate records for auditing purposes.

2. NetSuite will also expedite your report-generation processes. With the platform’s advanced reporting tools, you can effortlessly generate custom reports in hours, not weeks. You can use these prompt, detailed reports to keep clients in the loop and build trust in your firm.

3. While NetSuite provides a broad range of tools and features, one of the most important benefits is that it enables you to keep all of your data in one place. As it stands, NetSuite is the only solution that offers true data unification.

Once you implement NetSuite ERP, you and your team will no longer have to waste time chasing down data points or performing tedious administrative processes. Instead, you can focus on managing your clients’ venture capital funds and maximizing your portfolio performance.

Make the Most of Your NetSuite Investment with Finlyte

Adopting Oracle NetSuite’s cloud-based, best-in-class enterprise resource planning solution will undoubtedly simplify your venture fund accounting processes. But suppose you want to take your business even further. In that case, you can maximize the efficacy of your NetSuite solution by combining it with Finlyte’s unmatched industry knowledge and proprietary investment portfolio performance management tool, ION.

When you partner with Finlyte, we’ll assess the current state of affairs within your venture capital fund, examining its structure, accounting standards, and critical facets of your fund.

From there, we’ll perform an assessment to understand how we can support your team:

  • Discuss your venture fund accounting processes.
  • Identify your biggest roadblocks to overcome.
  • Leverage our experience with NetSuite to identify solutions within the platform’s modules.

In addition to helping you find suitable NetSuite modules that fit your company’s needs, we’ll lend our expertise to streamline the implementation process. We’ll also oversee the deployment of ION, our investment performance analysis solution that can provide deep, actionable insights about your portfolio.

To learn more about ION’s capabilities and to discuss NetSuite implementation, schedule a consultation with Finlyte. Together, we can simplify venture fund accounting and empower you to deliver optimal value to your clients.