CHALLENGE

Upon engagement, our client, a $50M SaaS company, faced significant operational and financial instability. The finance department struggled with fragmented data across disparate systems like HubSpot, Salesforce, and NetSuite, leading to material forecasting errors, including a $1 million AR discrepancy caused by manual entry. This lack of a “single source of truth” hampered executive confidence and board reporting. The company entered a critical liquidity crunch, with forecasts projecting a near-zero cash balance by January 2026. Compounding this was a projected $8 million EBITDA shortfall required for 2026 debt covenant compliance. Furthermore, a deep-dive audit revealed systemic “revenue leakage,” where $3M to $4.5M in customer overages were unbilled due to inconsistent contract language and a lack of formal controls.

OUR ROLE

ETONIEN provided an Interim CFO to stabilize finance operations, institutionalize internal controls, and lead strategic planning. The role focused on:

• Diagnosing and Stabilizing: Implementing a 13-week cash flow forecast and identifying immediate control weaknesses.
• Building Visibility: Linking SaaS metrics (ARR/Churn) to financial performance to provide forward-looking insights.
• Strategic Leadership: Navigating a complex organizational restructure, managing private equity (PE) relations, and leading a “War Room” for debt and liquidity management.

SOLUTIONS

• Cash Flow Optimization: Established a daily “War Room” for collections, targeting “big whale” accounts and offering early-payment incentives. To preserve cash, we negotiated payment plans with critical vendors like AWS and deferred non-essential AP.
• Revenue Recovery: Launched a targeted project to validate and invoice $4.5 million in potential overages, transitioning major accounts to Enterprise License Agreements (ELAs) to capture future upside.
• Structural Redesign: Formalized a transition plan following the departure of key personnel, moving functions to ensure proper separation of duties.
• Rigorous Controls: Implemented a new policies with standardized escalation timelines and a dual-approval process to eliminate single points of failure.

OUTCOME

The engagement successfully guided the company through its most critical financial period by ensuring covenant compliance, delivering financial results with $19M in Adjusted EBITDA – well above the $13.6M floor. Liquidity was stabilized through the identification of $1 million in expense reductions and the acceleration of critical cash inflows via aggressive accounts receivable management. At the same time, the finance function matured from reactive task execution to a prescriptive, action-oriented strategic partner, materially improving data integrity and executive alignment. Risk was further mitigated through the resolution of a multi-million-dollar revenue leakage issue by implementing overage invoicing.