Dawn Capital

The challenge

Dawn Capital relies on quality finance data. But in the past, it has taken an outsourced finance function 60-80 hours a month to produce the necessary management reporting pack. 

After shopping around for an in-house accounting system and judging the contenders against a demanding list of criteria, Dawn Capital chose iplicit. A few months on, that reporting time has been cut in half, allowing the team to focus more on higher-level work.  

Dawn Capital has existed for 15 years. “We exclusively back European founders building global giants in B2B software and fintech, with a primary focus on Series A and B investments,” says Financial Controller Gurvinder Sandhu. In some ways, the business is straightforward, he says, with the accounting system serving a single corporate entity. But dealing with issues such as prepayments, or forwards, is a major complication.

The solution

When it came to choosing a new system, Dawn had a checklist of criteria. It included: 

• Automation of recurring functions 
• A comprehensive VAT module 
• Ability to customise the system 
• Visibility of information and segregation of roles to see who’s made what changes 
• Pricing: “Were we getting all this functionality as part of the package, or was it an extra bolt-on?”

“It was clear for us quite soon in the process that iplicit was the system to go for,” says Gurvinder.  “It was good to see a tool that checked a lot of the boxes that we believed should be standard in a good accounting system. Those features were just there and ready.” 

Dawn Capital needed its accounting software to integrate with three other key systems: the accounts payable platform Lightyear (which is already integrated with iplicit), the expenses system Soldo and the financial planning and analysis tool Adaptive. Accountant Frankie Boffey says the team was well-supported with these integrations and the rest of the implementation.

"Since we got the setup sorted, we’ve not really had any issues with the system and, day to day, it’s working perfectly."

"It’s a very strong system. It works very well,” says Gurvinder. “It’s easy for the CFO and me to go in and search for what’s allocated where. Making sure the journals are correct gives us control over the accounts. It’s sped up our reporting timeline significantly, so it’s freed up our time internally to actually think about other things – so we’re quite happy with it."