Overview
Caraway is a $350M omnichannel DTC cookware brand expanding into all things home. They sell across DTC, Amazon, and retail channels, both in-store and drop ship. Katie Powers, Senior Director of Accounting and a former auditor, joined Caraway a year and a half ago to formalize accounting practices.
Katie has personally worked with NetSuite, QuickBooks, and Cin7 throughout her career. With Fulfil, she found the single source of truth she'd been looking for across operational and financial data, and it's the first ERP she's used where AI is integrated directly into accounting workflows.
See related: Hear from Caraway's Operations team about their experience with Fulfil
View video transcript
I was very, very adamant that I want one source of truth. I want all of my data to be in one spot and Fulfil really allows us to do that. We've taken what was a 13-month audit process down to 3 months. So, big savings there. From a month-end close perspective, we've gone from, I think we were bumping up on that 14, 15 day close that was basically eating up the entire month when I first started, and now we're down to around 7 days.
I'm Katie Powers. I'm the Senior Director of Accounting here at Caraway Home, a DTC cookware brand expanding into all things home-oriented right now. We are omnichannel: DTC, Amazon, retailers both in-store and drop ship. We're in that $350 million range. I've been with Caraway for a little over a year and a half now. I've been really leading the charge on formalizing our accounting practices and bringing the accounting and finance team at Caraway up to the performance standards of the rest of the company. In the past, I've used NetSuite, QuickBooks, Cin7 (which was Dear at one point) and kind of dabbled with a few other systems in the process.
Caraway has really been the first time that AI has been incorporated into our accounting software. I started dabbling with ChatGPT prior to joining Caraway, but really at that point the extent was just within the chat feature of, hey, what's the proper GAAP treatment of this thing so I can then take it and go apply it elsewhere. Fulfil is the first time that I've been able to use AI within one of my ERP systems.
I used to be an auditor, so when I look at our financial statements, I do take an audit-first approach. Being able to easily identify, okay, here's what our revenue is saying on the P&L, let me drill even further into all of the orders that make that up. Being able to then show, here's the COGS that's directly associated with this revenue, and print all of that out for auditors all in one spot makes my life so much easier. I know that it's data that I can rely on, and we've had now three years of clean audits. Revenue has been the easiest spot for us to work through.
With all of the other systems that we have, being able to easily see within Fulfil, here's the PDF of the bill that is attached right here to the transaction, and I can see exactly where that's falling on the general ledger. I am an accountant first and foremost on all fronts. In my world, if it is not in the GL detail, it doesn't exist. So I need to be able to trace the GL detail into what's the source data, and Fulfil makes that pretty easy, with being able to pull certain scenarios. We've got the link directly back to the system that generated that transaction, or we've already got the PDF associated with it right there.
It makes life much easier. Being able to pull in all of the data that we're getting from various other systems like our bank, like Ramp, and being able to use that within Fulfil in one spot is massive. And I'd say even more so from the naturally integrated sales side of things. Being able to see every single journal entry that goes along with the sales order has been a huge unlock, coming from a lot of bifurcated systems where you're trying to manually book revenue journal entries and trying to trace that back. That has not been easy in the past. So being able to see that clearly in one spot has been massive.
And then with Claude, being able to have that MCP connection within Fulfil and within Ramp has been really great to be able to use all of the extra data that's in both systems, all in one spot.
Like most DTC brands, we use a 3PL for all of our warehousing and fulfillment, which is great from an accounting perspective because I don't have to worry about all the little factors that go into making up those costs. But they are typically very slow to invoice. They've got a lot of data that they need to process before they're passing an invoice along to us. So the first big play that I did in Claude was have it use Fulfil data to help me come up with an accrual for our 3PL invoice. I loaded in the Excel file details of what makes up these invoices for the past year and then had Claude help me figure out what reports in Fulfil to pull to come up with this accrual each month. Every month we've dialed it in further. Now I'm to a point where I have Claude help me audit the 3PL invoice each month by pulling all of that Fulfil data, including our inventory balances, the receipts which help us calculate how much they're charging us from that front, and then also the actual fulfillment pick-pack costs on an order basis using all of our sales data in Fulfil. It's been really cool.
My current project that is running up my token usage is building out micro apps in Fulfil. That's been really cool. What started as originally I needed to be able to see our trial balance. I was exporting the trial balance every single month on a daily basis to drop into an Excel file to show here's what my reconciled balance is, here's what the balance sheet in Fulfil is saying, and then make sure that everything is tying out. I am a little OCD with my reconciliation. The Excel files need to agree to the balance sheet down to the penny. This helps me identify like, oh, an extra bill was added into AP after we technically closed out the month, so now my prepaid balance and my AP balance are different than what my reconciliation shows.
I've been able to build out a micro app within Fulfil that refreshes and pulls in the real-time balance sheet balances. I can do what I was doing in Excel in this micro app and then took that from there and evolved pretty aggressively. Now I've got a month-end close tracker that I'm building out in the micro app in Fulfil. One tab is the close tracker and the other tab is that account review that I'm doing. I've got it linked up to each close task. I can link to a balance sheet account and it'll show me on the account review tab all of the tasks that are associated with this account are complete, it's ready to be reconciled, and then automatically look at that for me.
Everybody on my team will tell you Justin is our favorite person. We have pulled him into many a ticket, many a call, but getting to really work with him and the team on site this last September has been super helpful.
I think one of the things that really sticks out about Fulfil is the customer service. A lot of the other larger ERPs, you want to get anything done and you're working with a consultant that's going to be billing you an absurd amount per hour to try to do it. With Fulfil, I really do feel like we're partnering with you guys.
To Fulfil's credit, our finance team were the first folks that had Claude accounts back in the fall because you guys shipped out that MCP connection. So we had been using Claude for the last 6 months, playing around and getting comfortable with it. I was actually the admin on our Claude account because there were like seven of us that were in there. And now I had to pass it off to the people team because I'm like, I have no business telling people on our creative team whether or not they should have a Claude account. So we've been really lucky on the finance team because of Fulfil to be at the forefront of Claude usage.
One Source of Truth for Finance and Operations
For any accounting team evaluating an eCommerce ERP, Katie's number one requirement is the one that matters most: all data in one system. No more reconciling between separate tools, no more manually booking revenue journal entries, no more tracing transactions across multiple platforms.
"I am an accountant first and foremost on all fronts. In my world, if it is not in the GL detail, it doesn't exist," Katie says. "I need to be able to trace the GL detail into what's the source data, and Fulfil makes that pretty easy."
With Fulfil's general ledger, every sales order automatically generates the corresponding journal entries. Revenue, COGS, inventory movements. All visible, all traceable, all in one place. For a former auditor, this is the difference between spending days pulling data and spending minutes drilling into it.
"Being able to see every single journal entry that goes along with the sales order has been a huge unlock, coming from a lot of bifurcated systems where you're trying to manually book revenue journal entries and trace that back."
Audit Cycles Cut in Half
Before Katie formalized the accounting practice at Caraway, the audit process was eating up a significant chunk of the year. Now it takes a fraction of the time.
The key was having clean, traceable data from the start. Because Fulfil ties operational data directly to financial records, revenue is the easiest section of the audit to work through. Katie can show auditors the P&L, drill into the orders that make up that revenue, show the COGS directly associated with it, and print it all from one spot.
"We've had now three years of clean audits," Katie says. "Revenue has been the easiest spot for us to work through."
Bills and expenses are just as traceable. The PDF of every bill is attached directly to the transaction in Fulfil, linked to the exact GL account it hits. No digging through email, no cross-referencing separate systems.
Month-End Close Cut in Half
When Katie started, the month-end close was basically eating up the entire month. Now the team closes in half the time. For finance teams at high-growth DTC brands, a faster close means more time spent on analysis and less on data wrangling.
The improvement came from eliminating manual work that shouldn't have been manual in the first place. Previously, Katie was exporting the trial balance daily, dropping it into Excel, and manually reconciling every account down to the penny. Now she's built micro apps inside Fulfil that pull real-time balance sheet data and flag discrepancies automatically.
"I've been able to build out a micro app within Fulfil that refreshes and pulls in the real-time balance sheet balances. I can do what I was doing in Excel inside this micro app."
That micro app has evolved into a full month-end close tracker. One tab tracks close tasks, the other handles account review. Close tasks link to balance sheet accounts, and when all tasks for an account are complete, it automatically flags the account as ready for reconciliation.
AI in Accounting: How DTC Finance Teams Are Using Claude + Fulfil MCP
Caraway's finance team was the first team in the company to get Claude accounts, directly because Fulfil shipped its MCP integration. Six months before the rest of the company adopted Claude, the accounting team was already building workflows on top of it.
Katie's first use case was practical: 3PL invoice accruals. Like most DTC brands, Caraway uses a 3PL that's slow to invoice. Katie loaded a year of 3PL invoice details into Claude, then had it figure out which Fulfil reports to pull to calculate the accrual each month. Every month the model gets more accurate. Now Claude audits the 3PL invoice against Fulfil data, checking inventory balances, receipts, and fulfillment costs on an order basis.
From there, Katie moved to vibe coding micro apps inside Fulfil. The balance sheet reconciliation app. The month-end close tracker. Tools that a traditional ERP would require a consultant billing hundreds per hour to build.
"My current project that is running up my token usage is building out micro apps in Fulfil. That's been really cool."
Customer Service That Feels Like a Partnership
Katie has worked with NetSuite, QuickBooks, and Cin7. The support experience with Fulfil is different.
"A lot of the other larger ERPs, you want to get anything done and you're working with a consultant that's going to be billing you an absurd amount per hour. With Fulfil, I really do feel like we're partnering with you guys to build out the right ERP for us."
She describes a visit from the Fulfil team where small annoyances were fixed on the spot. A preference for light mode instead of dark mode. A workflow that didn't quite make sense. The team would turn to a developer and ask, "Can you just add that really quick?" And it would get done.
"The fact that I know so many of you guys on a first-name basis is huge. To be able to have that partnership and build it in a way that actually makes sense for us has been really great."
The Future of DTC Finance Is AI-Native
Katie and the Caraway finance team are an early example of what accounting looks like when AI is built into the ERP, not bolted on as a separate tool. 3PL accruals generated by Claude pulling live Fulfil data. Month-end close tasks tracked in a vibe-coded micro app. Reconciliation that updates in real time instead of living in a static Excel file.
This is where DTC finance is heading. The teams that figure out how to use AI inside their operational systems, not just for ad hoc questions in a chat window, are going to close faster, audit cleaner, and make better decisions with less manual work. Caraway's finance team got there first because their ERP made it possible.
See related: ERP for home and living brands | Fulfil vs. NetSuite for eCommerce brands
