Growing pains
Temerity Capital Partners, founded in 2015 by Andy Sandler, is a private investment firm managed by its founder, his family, and eligible employees. Its investment portfolio spans sectors like fintech, housing, and baseball teams. In addition, the firm has its foundation and an impact investing arm. “We used an accounting program. However, it was not designed for the niche of a family office. It was more of a ‘regular’ accounting program focused on areas like inventory, accounts payables, and accounts receivable,” says Temerity Capital.
As Temerity Capital continued to grow and expand, a need for more streamlined operations, particularly in financial tracking and reporting, arose. Their previous accounting system, though functional, was designed for general businesses and not suited to the specific needs of a family office. It required significant re-engineering and manual intervention to produce the necessary reports. In short, it just couldn’t keep up with the demand their growing demands.
Finding SumIt
Temerity had three primary concerns about choosing the right software. First, the platform needed to integrate with various bank and brokerage feeds. Second, due to the firm’s diverse portfolio, it needed to be able to handle multiple entities. Finally, the process of generating consolidated reports for all the stakeholders took way too long and needed to be streamlined.
After exploring several family office service providers, Temerity decided to go with SumIt for two reasons: One, SumIt operated with a start-up mindset. The company was adaptable, curious, and innovative in coming up with solutions. Two, its price point was just right. The company’s competitive pricing was within its allocated budget for an accounting system.
From the beginning, SumIt was very interested in the pain points for family office accounting and what they could do to address those points. They listened, gathered information from various sources, found the overlapping issues, and implemented solutions.
Implementation process
The implementation process went notably smoothly. The SumIt team handled most of the setup. Temerity provided them with read-only access to their previous accounting program and they were able to extract balances and journal entries and have those input onto the platform.
Then, SumIt and Temerity worked together on a new set of general ledger accounts to eliminate some legacy accounts. They ran reports from prior periods to ensure those matched up with the reports that were manually created. The transition was tremendously efficient. And there were very few obstacles, allowing Temerity Capital to quickly benefit from the new system.
The results
After implementing SumIt, Temerity experienced a significant transformation in its family office operations. The platform helped them free up a substantial amount of time, allowing staff to allocate their focus to other critical business areas. One of the most impactful outcomes was the acceleration of the quarterly closing process, which saw a reduction of 10-15 days compared to previous timelines.
Additionally, the platform enabled the team at Temerity to respond to accounting-specific queries almost instantly. Reflecting on the process, the consensus within Temerity was overwhelmingly positive, with the only wish being that they had adopted SumIt sooner.
Final takeaway
When offering advice to other family offices considering a new accounting system, Temerity emphasises the importance of thorough research and ensuring comfort with the platform as well as the partners involved in the process.
Many companies are primarily focused on making a sale and moving on. Meaning more often than not, the needs of their clients are neglected once the deal is done. While some may find this acceptable, for those looking for a partner who listens and takes their opinions into consideration, then SumIt stands out.
From their CEO to the engineers, everybody has not only been extremely responsive and professional, but they are just all-around good people. It has been a pleasure working with them.