Customer Story

About Attivo Partners

Attivo is a leading, full-service fractional CFO and accounting advisory firm built exclusively for the venture-backed community. The firm supports over 500 companies, ranging from pre-seed startups with only a founding team to later-stage businesses with more than 300 employees and tens of millions in ARR. Combining day-to-day accounting support with experienced CFO-level advisory, Attivo tailors its services to each company’s stage and complexity. Its teams work closely with clients as an extension of their internal finance function, while continuously evaluating new technology that can make finance more efficient and scalable.

Attivo works with startups backed by top VC firms who trust our best-in-class accounting and financial advisory services and results. As a tech-forward thought leader in the Office of the CFO, they deliver the accounting and financial support leading companies need to keep pace with market trends.

The Challenge: Modern Revenue Models Outgrew Legacy Finance Workflows

As Attivo’s clients build new products and enter emerging markets, they are experimenting with increasingly sophisticated ways to bill customers based on value. That innovation creates complexity downstream. Contracts vary more from customer to customer. Usage-based pricing is becoming more common. Revenue recognition requirements can become sophisticated early in a company’s lifecycle.

“Revenue models are getting more complex because companies are experimenting with pricing, usage, and contract structures at the same time. What used to be a fairly standard SaaS agreement can now look different from customer to customer, which creates a lot more operational complexity for finance.”

— Carrie Sechel, Fractional CFO, Attivo

The systems available to finance teams were not designed for that environment. As John Truong, Head of Technology & Innovation at Attivo, put it, “Legacy billing and revenue systems struggle to support the needs and pace of modern startups, especially as AI companies introduce more variable and usage-based models.”

John had seen startups rely on spreadsheets and labor-intensive processes to send invoices, apply payments, and reconcile revenue activity. Those workflows may work at an early stage, but they become increasingly difficult to maintain as transaction volume and contract complexity grow.

The consequences extend well beyond productivity. John witnessed companies discover significant unbilled revenue during later-stage invoice or revenue recognition audits. In some cases, the issue had existed long enough that recovering the money could create a difficult customer conversation. There was also the risk of inaccurate CRM data misleading accounts receivable reporting.

In summation:

Manual billing operations that become harder to scale: Finance teams could find themselves brute-forcing invoicing, cash application, and other recurring workflows as the business grew.
Revenue leakage risk: Missed billing events or inaccurate contract data could leave earned revenue unbilled until an audit uncovered the gap.
Complex contracts that strained legacy tools: More varied pricing structures and customer-specific terms required finance teams to accommodate arrangements that simple SaaS billing systems were not built to handle.
Too much expert time spent on transactional work: Attivo wanted its teams focused on accounting judgment and strategic advisory while still delivering dependable day-to-day finance operations.

Why Tabs: A Revenue Platform Built to Keep Pace With Attivo’s Clients

Attivo began working with Tabs in October 2024, initially through a mutual client. The fit became clear quickly. Both companies were serving lean, fast-growing startups that needed finance operations capable of scaling without requiring a large internal accounting organization. By collaborating on the same customer, Attivo and Tabs saw an opportunity to combine Attivo’s accounting expertise with technology designed for modern billing and revenue workflows.

To understand their evolving integration strategy, Attivo stays closely connected to the Tabs Partnerships team and product roadmap. With Attivo putting its own reputation behind the technology it recommends, that visibility is essential, as clients see the firm as a trusted finance partner.

“We put our reputation behind every tool we recommend. With Tabs I can see the roadmap and talk to the people building it, so when a client’s billing gets complicated I know what it will handle and when.”— John Truong, Head of Technology & Innovation, Attivo

Automated invoicing for more scalable billing operations

Tabs automates billing workflows that could otherwise require significant manual effort as a company grows. That helps Attivo support clients with value-based pricing structures (e.g., by usage, outcomes, tiers, etc.) while reducing the amount of recurring work its team has to execute by hand.

For Attivo’s growing clients, this also means invoicing can happen more rapidly after contracts close. Finance teams gain a more dependable process for turning commercial activity into billable revenue, reducing the risk that invoicing falls behind the pace of sales.

Real-time cash application and AR visibility

Manual cash application can force finance teams to continually update payment activity if leadership wants an accurate daily view of cash. Tabs gives Attivo and its clients access to more current cash application, collections, and AR information without requiring people to manually maintain that picture throughout the day.

That visibility gives scaling companies a stronger operational foundation for monitoring cash flow while allowing Attivo’s teams to spend less time keeping transactional records current.

Revenue workflows that support more complex businesses

Attivo selected Tabs in part because the platform is being developed around the changing needs of modern companies. John saw legacy revenue systems struggling to move at the same speed as startups experimenting with usage models and other evolving commercial structures.

“As the Tabs platform has developed, it has kept pace with our clients' needs. That reinforces our recommendation as those companies scale and their requirements become more sophisticated.”

— John Truong, Head of Technology & Innovation, Attivo

Tabs’ continued product development also matters to Attivo because the firm supports clients from seed stage through more than $100M in revenue. The client’s revenue needs become more sophisticated over time, and Attivo wants technology that can continue supporting that progression.

A product partnership with a direct feedback loop

The relationship extends into product development. Attivo and the Tabs team are in regular, ongoing communication, making it easy to raise questions about mutual clients or implementation requirements. John described the working relationship as feeling similar to having an internal software counterpart available to Attivo. “It doesn’t feel like I’m talking to a third party,” John explained. “The Tabs team is just a Slack away, whether we need to answer a question, get a demo going, or understand what an implementation timeline looks like.”

Attivo teams and shared customers have also contributed feedback on workflows and product functionality. That creates a feedback loop where Attivo can bring real-world finance expertise into conversations about how the product should evolve.

Life With Tabs: More Capacity for Strategic Finance as Clients Scale

“Our clients trust Attivo to help them build finance operations that can maintain pace as their businesses evolve. The Tabs partnership gives our teams a modern revenue platform we can confidently bring into that equation, so clients can scale with stronger processes while our people stay focused on the strategic finance work that moves their businesses forward.”

— Greg Capitolo, Partner, Co-Founder and CFO, Attivo

With Tabs handling more of the transactional work surrounding billing and revenue, Attivo can shift more of its resources toward the work where experienced finance professionals create the greatest value.

John sees that change directly as clients move onto Tabs. Instead of spending as much time applying invoice payments or entering data, Attivo professionals can focus on questions that require accounting and finance expertise, including revenue recognition decisions and the broader financial issues, like resource allocation, that emerge as a company scales. That reinforces Attivo’s position as an advisory partner while technology handles a greater share of the underlying operational workload.

The combination can also help Attivo continue supporting clients further into their growth journey. One shared client, in the Legal AI space, scaled revenue and completed multiple successful fundraises while Attivo and Tabs supported its finance operations. After this LawTech company moved to Tabs, its DSO halved, dropping from 94 to 47 days on average. According to John, automation helped Attivo support that growth without increasing headcount in step with the growing operational burden.

Across clients, the impact shows up in several areas:

Faster invoicing after contracts close, helping finance convert sales activity into billed revenue more rapidly.
Better DSO performance, supported by more streamlined invoicing and collections workflows.
Current cash and AR reporting, without requiring continuous manual cash application to maintain an accurate view.
Faster month-end close cycles, with invoicing completed and cash already applied before the close process begins.
Greater capacity for strategic advisory, allowing Attivo professionals to direct more time toward complex accounting decisions and business issues.
The ability to support growth without proportional finance headcount increases, giving lean startup teams a more scalable operating model.

For Attivo, that shift also reflects where the finance profession is heading. Carrie expects technology to perform a growing share of finance’s operational work while professionals spend more of their time interpreting information and providing higher-level guidance.

“I see most of the work people are doing now being done by technology like Tabs in the future, and people having the opportunity to be far more strategic. People are worried that our jobs are going away. I just think they’re going to be different.”