Most finance leaders know the monthly ritual. The period ends, and the scramble begins: pulling transactions together, reconciling accounts, chasing down discrepancies, and assembling the numbers into something leadership can act on. Accountants call this closing the books. For many companies, it eats the first week or two of every month, and by the time the picture is finally clear, it describes a business that has already moved on.
That ritual is starting to disappear, and for a growing company, the difference is significant. A new generation of technology makes it possible to keep the books essentially up to date every day, turning month-end from a frantic sprint into a quick confirmation. The industry calls this the continuous close. What it really means is that finance teams stop waiting on their numbers and start deciding with them.
That’s why Aprio has partnered with Rillet to put that shift within reach for the clients we serve.
Rillet is an AI-native ERP with a general ledger rebuilt from scratch for real-time architecture, designed to automate work that used to be manual. Created by accountants and former auditors, AI is embedded across accounting workflows. As data flows in through native integrations, accounts reconcile automatically. AI drafts the journal entries, finance teams review and approve, and every action is logged with a full audit trail. The result for a finance team: the books stay substantially closed every day, month-end becomes a confirmation step rather than a marathon, and reporting reflects the business as it actually is, in close to real time.
But technology is only half of what a growing company needs. Software can keep the books current; it can’t tell a founder which markets to enter, how to price a new product, or when to raise. That’s where Aprio comes in. With Rillet’s real-time foundation handling the routine work, our professionals focus where they make the biggest difference to a client’s business, the strategy behind their growth.
“Finance is moving to a continuous close, and that changes what clients need from us. With Rillet, the foundational work runs in real time, which frees our teams to focus on the strategic advisory that drives a client’s growth. We’re intentionally building the technology and talent to operate that way at scale.”
— Emily Cheshire, Client Accounting Services and Technology Practice Partner and Aprio’s Rillet Lead
What This Looks Like in Practice
Picture a Series B company at $18 million in ARR, operating across three entities, with a CFO who joined six months ago and a finance team of two. Their close is running twelve days. Leadership is making pricing decisions off month-old data.
For a company like this, the close becomes the bottleneck. The finance team spends the first stretch of every cycle reconciling and assembling data instead of analyzing it. Reports reach leadership well after the period ends, so consequential decisions get made against a picture that’s already out of date. And every new entity, product line, or funding round makes the strain worse.
This is exactly the gap we close with clients. Moving a finance team onto Rillet’s AI-native ERP hands transactional accounting to automation and turns the close into a continuous process, with month-end checklists coordinating AI and human tasks under a fully traceable audit trail. This approach takes the close that once ran weeks down to days — and in some cases hours — with the business reflected in the books in real time.
From there, the client’s Aprio team works alongside that foundation, translating real-time financials into the forecasting and advisory their growth depends on. The impact shows up quickly: faster visibility into performance, far less time spent on reconciliation, and a finance team shifting toward forward-looking work.
“Modern companies don’t operate in monthly batches, so their finances shouldn’t either. But real-time books only matter if someone is translating them into decisions. That’s what makes this partnership work: Rillet handles the foundational accounting work and Aprio’s experienced team brings the strategic judgment that turns those numbers into growth.”
– Nic Kopp, CEO and Co-Founder, Rillet
Building Toward What’s Next
A growing business doesn’t run in monthly batches, and its finances shouldn’t either. Together, Aprio and Rillet move clients past legacy tools and into a finance model that mirrors how their business actually runs. The close was never the point. What it makes possible is.
To learn more, visit aprio.com and rillet.com.