For early-stage CPG brands, a smart finance stack can be the difference between confidently scaling or constantly scrambling. At first, running lean makes sense. A spreadsheet here, a freelancer there. Maybe QuickBooks if you’re lucky. But as sales pick up and complexity creeps in, that means more SKUs, more POs and more retail partners. Soon, that patchwork starts to show stretching and fraying at the seams. Suddenly, you’re buried in workarounds, wasting time in clunky admin or missing key insights that could have helped you grow smarter, faster.
The good news? You don’t need a costly ERP to build a strong financial foundation—not yet, anyway. You just need the right tools, added at the right time, working in step with the right processes.
Here’s what a high-functioning finance stack looks like for CPG startups and rapidly scaling brands, and how to build yours strategically.
On-the-rise brands in the CPG sector face unique challenges. Margins are tight. Cash is unpredictable. Supply chains are increasingly complex. And the realities of managing omnichannel sales ranging from DTC to retail to Amazon make it hard to see the full picture in real time.
Your finance stack isn’t just about keeping the books clean or staying compliant. It’s about making timely decisions. The right finance tools should give you visibility into where money is coming from, where it’s going, and where it’s getting stuck. And they should help you answer critical questions such as:
If your current setup can’t answer those questions with confidence, it’s time to upgrade your stack.
1. QuickBooks Online: The Hub
We recommend QuickBooks Online as the central hub for nearly all early- and growth-stage CPG brands. It’s affordable, flexible, and integrates with a wide range of other tools. When configured properly, QBO becomes the backbone of your finance stack, and can scale with you well beyond the startup phase.
2. Spend Management with Ramp
As your team grows, so does your risk of overspending. The Ramp platform helps brands set and enforce budgets, track expenses in real time and assign controls by employee, department or project. It’s ideal for managing contractors, field marketing teams and fast-moving ops staff—without losing track of who’s spending what.
3. Accounts Payable and Financing
Settle is a game-changer for CPG brands managing large production costs, extended vendor terms and short-term cash crunches. It simplifies accounts payable workflows and provides financing options that sync directly with your accounting system. That means fewer surprises, faster payments and more working capital when you need it.
4. Inventory Management System
Spreadsheets work until they don’t. As your SKU count grows and you begin selling through multiple channels, an IMS becomes essential. Not only does it reduce errors and manual tracking, it gives you real-time visibility into inventory levels, cost of goods sold and order timing—all of which feed into smarter financial management and forecasting.
5. Real-Time Bookkeeping and Reporting
Finance tools are only as effective as the data in them. Real-time bookkeeping ensures your systems reflect your current reality—not last month’s assumptions. At nDepth, we aim to post transactions within 72 hours and provide timely, accurate reporting so founders can make decisions based on what’s actually happening in the business.
You don’t need to switch out everything at once. But you do need to know when your current tools are no longer serving you well. Here are some signs you’ve outgrown your setup:
The best fix here isn’t just “more software.” In fact, one of the biggest myths we see is the idea that new tech will magically fix broken workflows. In reality, good tools amplify good processes. If your underlying workflows aren’t sound, even the best software will only highlight the cracks.
One of our clients—a fast-growing wellness brand—came to us with strong sales but fragmented systems. Their ops team was using spreadsheets for inventory. Their bookkeeper was manually uploading transactions. They couldn’t track margins or understand why cash accounting always felt tight.
We helped the brand’s leaders implement a scalable stack: QBO at the center, with Settle for AP and production financing, Ramp for spend controls, and an IMS to improve visibility. More importantly, we helped them redesign their workflow and processes to match.
The result? They gained real-time insight into their cash flow, finally understood true SKU-level profitability and were able to scale into new retail accounts with confidence.
A finance stack isn’t just about what you plug in; it’s about how you connect the dots between operations, accounting, controllership and strategic decision-making. The right systems, just like the right partners, can turn finance from a stressor into a superpower.
At nDepth, we help CPG founders build finance stacks that grow with them. Whether you’re still living in spreadsheets or ready for the next level, we can help you assess what’s working, where the gaps are, and what to add next.
Want to figure out a better finance stack for your evolving needs? Let’s talk