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Case Study

How a public biotech cut its accrual cycle from 5 days to half a day

Public clinical-stage · NetSuite

Company
Clinical stage, public
ERP
NetSuite
Master
Excel, SharePoint
Comms
Teams, email
  • 5 days → 0.5 day

    End to end, from pulling the PO to journal entry preparation

    Previously manual · Now orchestrated

  • 100% of POs

    Auto-classified by accrual type, by department and program

    Replacing manual stitching

  • Traced to source

    Every PO and approval timestamped. Audit memo auto-filed.

    Consistent · Reproducible

“I stopped chasing PO owners. The agent reads the contract, drafts the accrual, and emails the right person to confirm the estimate. Half the work is already done.”
Accounting manager, clinical-stage biotech
Accrual schedule · March
Total accrued$520,975.00Posts as JE 3351 on approval
VendorBasisAmount
Medpace — Phase 2 trialOpen PO 4471, 62% delivered
Charles River Labs3 receipts unbilled at 3/31
Insight GlobalContractor hours, unbilled
Payroll — semi-monthly6 working days after 3/25
Cooley LLPHours to 3/31, invoice in April
Mt Sinai — site fees2 site visits, unbilled
Sigma-AldrichReceived 3/29, invoice not in
Total520,975.00

Every figure traced to source · 7 of 7 have support attached

The agent emails the PO owner a targeted ask; replies update the draft.

The challenge

The chase, the chaos, and the judgment

Every month started the same way: download the PO zip from NetSuite, sort by category (R&D, CTA, legal) and start the chase. Estimates trickled back as email, screenshots, and PDFs, entered manually into the master schedule.

Journal entries were the hardest part — not data entry, but judgment. Which accounts to hit, how to handle the reversal from last month.

The solution

Orchestrated, audit-ready accruals

Process orchestration

Pulls POs from NetSuite, classifies each by accrual type, reads the underlying contract, and drafts the accrual using the methodology that matches: patient-month for CRO, prosecution-stage for legal, SOW milestones for R&D vendors. Emails each PO owner a targeted ask. Replies update the draft. Write-back to the master and the journal entry are generated automatically.

Audit-ready output

Every approval is timestamped and filed alongside the source documents as evidence of review. IPE is flagged automatically. The auditor opens the folder, traces the approval, done. Re-runs match: same inputs, same result, every cycle. Change management captured by default.

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