The Books Didn’t Break. They Were Never Wired.
Rebuilding the ERP for an online retailer with about $100M in revenue
Amazon-led, multi-storefront online retailer | About $100M in revenue | Financial systems implementation | June 2026 to present
At a glance
4 of 55
transaction sources that were set to post through to the ledger. Posting is now on for every source the build uses.
72 of 105 to zero
unmapped account combinations in the history conversion
69
account categories corrected that would have shown operating income before operating costs
96%
of general ledger lines were journal entries before the rebuild
The situation
The company’s ERP had been frozen for years:
- general ledger posting had stopped in 2023, and payables posting in 2021
- cost of goods sold had posted only once, in 2016
- cost was booked as a percentage of revenue
- the close ran in spreadsheets and took about 30 days
- 96% of general ledger lines were journal entries, and none of the staged order documents had posted
What we did
Phase 1, diagnostic (June 10 to July 1, 2026)
- Assessed the system’s current state and documented the close process
- Set the reconciliation method, opening balances and cutover plan
Phase 2, implementation lead (July 2026 to go-live)
- Redesigned the chart of accounts, mapping 666 account strings across 550 natural accounts to 86
- Traced why the ledger had stopped posting
- Loaded the new chart of accounts and converted the account history on a restored copy of production
- Set up a two-step receipt that ties every vendor cost to a document
- Had the company re-survey the vendors that carry most of its purchase orders, after an earlier survey had skipped half of the vendors that carry 90% of them, including the six largest. The re-survey found about half of purchase-order volume could already send invoice data electronically.
- Set a three-lane design for bringing vendor invoices in
Results so far (on a restored copy of production, before cutover)
- Root cause. Only 4 of 55 transaction sources were set to post through to the ledger. Posting is now on for every source the build uses, and 69 account categories that would have shown operating income before operating costs were corrected.
- Chart of accounts. 234 accounts loaded, and unmapped account combinations in the history conversion fell from 72 of 105 (483,951 rows) to zero.
- First income statement. In September 2026 the system produced its first income statement built from posted transactions, for a single day.
- Vendor invoices. The company decided to sync invoices directly from its two largest vendors, a quarter of purchase-order volume.
How we measured this: the figures come from the company’s ledger and system data; results so far were measured on a restored copy of production, before cutover, and the engagement is ongoing.
What it means
A ledger that stops posting can look like a failed system when the cause is a setting. Until cost posts from transactions rather than a percentage of revenue, monthly margin is an estimate, and so is every decision built on it.