How to Navigate Accrual Accounting Like a Pro: Lessons from Stape’s Success

Struggling to make sense of accrual accounting? You’re not the only one. Managing subscription revenue while staying GAAP-compliant can feel like trying to juggle while walking a tightrope—it’s overwhelming, and one misstep could throw everything off balance. That’s exactly where Stape was before they discovered automation. 

Meet Olena Svoiak, the financial manager at Stape who implemented Synder RevRec to turn days of tiring, manual labor into mere minutes, all with the power of automation. Her story shows that with the right tools, even the most convoluted accounting struggle can become smooth sailing.

What you can learn from Stape’s journey with Synder

Stape.io’s server-side tracking aims to provide an accurate data collection and improve website performance. Users can choose from monthly and annual subscription plans based on how complicated the tracking is, and the features scale according to business size. 

With data privacy regulations becoming stricter globally, Stape helps ensure that data collection practices remain compliant, as businesses have greater control over the data before it reaches third-party services, mitigating the risks of non-compliance. What’s more, unlike traditional client-side tracking, Stape ensures more accurate data collection by eliminating issues such as ad-blockers, unreliable browsers, and data inconsistencies. 

In this article, we’ll take a look at all the lessons businesses can learn from Stape’s new and improved accounting workflow.

Lesson #1: Accrual-based management of subscriptions is key

Imagine a company that offers an annual server-side tracking subscription for $120, billed upfront in January. At the time of payment, the business can’t recognize the entire $120 as revenue because it hasn’t provided the service for the full year yet.

For every month that the company is offering the service, $10 will be debited from the deferred revenue account and credited in the recognized revenue account, as $120 represents the total value that is expected to be earned during the 12 periods. Once the full service is rendered, by the end of December, the balance of the deferred revenue account will be at $0.

The idea of crediting the revenue incrementally helps the company maintain a realistic portrayal of the income realised timely and keep in line with the GAAP accounting rules.

Overcoming deferred revenue challenges with Synder’s RevRec

To stay compliant with the accrual method of accounting, Olena combined Synder Sync with Synder RevRec, which recognizes the revenue from subscriptions part by part over time, reflecting the period during which the services are provided. Without a system, which properly maps and tracks these revenue flows, Stape could end up with inaccurate accounting. In the worst case scenario, this could lead to serious financial misstatements, tax issues and even misguided strategies, all based on wrong data.

And Stape’s situation isn’t unique. Many businesses in SaaS and other subscription-based sectors face similar challenges. The complexity increases when companies work with multiple platforms, such as payment processors and accounting softwares. To ensure that all systems are synchronized and that the pricing codes match across all platforms, Synder’s RevRec needs to work together with Synder Sync, a data synchronization tool. This tandem aims to provide the comprehensive functionality needed for GAAP-compliant transaction management.

No more duplicates in your financial reports

Stape’s story speaks of the power of using the right tools. Olena credits Synder’s mapping feature as the ultimate solution.

You can use Synder’s Product Mapping feature to match different product names in your accounting system with those from your different ecommerce or payment platforms, such as Stripe. This keeps duplicate items from showing up in your books and tainting your financial reports, while keeping product classification accurate. Synder will build a new product or service in your accounting based on your settings during the transaction sync, if it can’t identify the perfect match.

“The mapping in Synder is extremely helpful, which is why we are unlikely to consider other service providers, despite the competition in the market. Now, it’s possible to personalize the setup and match price codes between Stripe and Xero or QuickBooks. For us, this feature is the greatest value Synder provides, ensuring our records are accurate and GAAP-compliant from the start.”

Olena Svoiak, Financial Manager at Stape

Lesson #2: Aim for more detailed, granular financial records

When it comes to the world of accounting, precision is essential, especially for businesses that deal with massive amounts of transactions. A lesson from Stape’s experience is the importance of adopting the Per Transaction Sync mode. With this approach, each transaction is recorded individually as opposed to totaling many operations into a single journal entry. As a result, the company gets a higher degree of detail in their financial records and can easily track invoices and bill details for individual clients.

For Stape, this concept isn’t just about neat records; it’s a matter of policy. Every transaction, regardless of size, must be linked to a specific customer. Combining transactions would violate the company’s accounting policy and make it impossible to maintain the granular level of tracking needed for accurate reporting.

Stape’s financial manager Olena shares that Synder has been instrumental in bringing the company back in total control of their accounting. Now, every transaction is automatically recorded and accurately mapped, and in the event of an error Stape has the flexibility to roll back any voided invoices with just one click.

“Even if a transaction synchronization fails, Synder helps us quickly identify what went wrong, understand why, and correct any issues. This functionality has been incredibly helpful in ensuring accuracy and resolving issues efficiently.”

Olena Svoiak, Financial Manager at Stape

Lesson #3: Customize the workflow to fit your needs and save time

One valuable lesson from Stape’s experience is the power of customizing workflows to meet your specific requirements. Using Synder’s automatic categorization feature, called Smart Rules, has proven to be a real revolution. This feature was a recent update for Stape, and within just a few months, they’ve significantly streamlined their processes, especially when working with archived data in one of their projects.

Smart Rules are custom if-then conditions that bridge the gap in important information such as classes and categories during the sync. Once set up, they automatically fill out critical details often missing when connecting sales channels or payment platforms, like Stripe, with accounting software, like QuickBooks Online. Whether it’s assigning revenue classes, recording costs of goods, or mapping payment fees, Smart Rules ensure your data syncs correctly and provides actionable insights for your business.

This flexibility to tailor the workflow to Stape’s unique needs has been invaluable. In the past, using Xero required manually exporting data, creating special files, and performing extensive double-checks—an incredibly time-consuming task. With Synder, this process became much simpler.

“Synder drastically speeds up the process of reconciliation and eliminates the need to manually check massive transaction files. While there might be a few transactions to review, instead of checking thousands, we only need to verify a couple and it saves us a significant amount of time. It now takes me about 40 minutes to finish and review a month’s data, whereas manually, it would have taken at least two days.”

Olena Svoiak, Financial Manager at Stape

Lesson #4: Be prepared to manage global transactions

With more and more businesses expanding globally, the capability to handle transactions in multiple currencies is a must. As Stape introduced sales in both Europe and the US, Olena was challenged with keeping track of various products sold in different currencies. The company was looking for a solution to automate the management of international transactions, without adding to the team’s workload.

Finally, they opted out for Synder and quickly realised that when using platforms like Xero, which is configured for multicurrency transactions, everything integrates smoothly. Regardless of the currency, the transaction is automatically recorded by the system at the appropriate exchange rate, captured from payment providers. Synder also recognizes different details of transactions, including those in foreign currencies, and categorizes them correspondingly. Its seamless integration helps with the management of global transactions, while also complying with accounting standards.

Lessons learned: Stape’s success with Synder

Stape’s experience holds a lot to learn, especially for businesses trying to manage subscription revenue and GAAP compliance. What Olena and her team did with the help of Synder’s automation tools was transform an otherwise error-prone and tedious process into a quick efficient workflow. Automating tasks helped them save time, ensured GAAP-compliance and laid the groundwork for a successful future. With Synder handling their accounting, Olena’s team can now concentrate fully on growing their business, confident that their financial processes are in good hands.

“Especially now when I’m creating accounting from zero, the results of Synder are very impressive for me. It saved my time. It saved me from the headache and now I can focus on planning the project. It’s very, very cool. Thank you Synder.”

Olena Svoiak, Financial Manager at Stape

Want to put those lessons into practice?

Stape revolutionized their accounting workflow by implementing Synder’s automated solution. If you want to do the same, sign up for Synder’s 15-day free trial or join our Weekly Public demo to experience GAAP-compliant subscription management and seamless integrations.