CASE STUDY

At Encodia, Reconciliation Across Multiple Subsidiaries Is Finally in Balance

September 23, 2026

Encodia is a San Diego-based biotechnology company focused on next-generation protein sequencing technology. Li Yu, Vice President of Finance at Encodia, brought more than 20 years of corporate finance and accounting experience, including prior ERP implementations at companies running SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics, to the company’s move off QuickBooks and onto NetSuite with Caravel. 

Challenge 

  • An Outgrown Accounting System: Encodia had run on QuickBooks for years. The software was easy to use, but the company had outgrown what it could support as Encodia scaled. 
  • A Heavily Manual Close: Closing the books each month took several days of manual work, with no clear path to speeding up the process within QuickBooks. 
  • Limited, Slow Reporting: Getting timely information to management and other users was difficult, leaving Encodia’s finance team unable to deliver the kind of reporting a growing biotech company needed. 
  • A Need to Plan for the Future, Not Just the Present: Yu wanted a system that would not only resolve Encodia’s existing pain points but also scale with the company as it continued to grow. 

Solution 

Encodia evaluated several of the major ERP platforms on the market, including SAP, NetSuite, and Sage Intacct, weighing each against the company’s current pain points, its future goals, and the cost of both the annual subscription and the implementation itself. NetSuite stood out for its flexibility, ease of implementation relative to the other platforms Yu had used throughout her career, and its ability to integrate cleanly with the other systems already running Encodia’s business. “I do not know of any major platform out there that cannot interface with NetSuite. It is just very friendly to work with other system providers,” Yu said. NetSuite also came recommended directly by the NetSuite team once Encodia had made its decision, pointing Yu to Caravel and its Managing Partner, Scott Curry.

Yu credited Caravel’s thorough presentation of its process for giving her early confidence in the team’s technical depth, an impression that held up once the implementation began, including on one of the more difficult pieces of Encodia’s ERP environment: intercompany reconciliation across multiple subsidiaries. “Reconciliation out of balance is probably the daily headache in a big corporate ERP environment,” Yu said. “NetSuite has that function, but the Caravel team was able to make it function so smoothly. I was even trying to apply some SAP concepts to the intercompany setup, and the Caravel team assisting us was able to understand what we were trying to achieve and make it happen very quickly.” 

Responsiveness mattered just as much as technical skill. Running an ERP implementation while keeping up with day-to-day finance and accounting responsibilities added real pressure to Yu’s team, and having Caravel available to answer questions quickly made a meaningful difference. “Finance and accounting always work in a quite stressful environment on a daily basis. Being able to deliver things very quickly, and then get support from the team almost instantly, makes a huge difference in our day-to-day work,” Yu said. 

Outcome 

  • Faster, More Reliable Financial Reporting: Encodia now gets instant financial updates as soon as the team reaches a closing milestone, replacing a process that once took several days of manual work in QuickBooks. 
  • Flexible, Customizable Reporting: NetSuite’s reporting dimensions let Encodia slice and analyze financial data in the ways the business actually needs, rather than working within the constraints of its previous system. 
  • A Stronger Audit Trail: NetSuite’s built-in templates and tracking, including the ability to send customized vendor emails directly from the system and log responses automatically, give Encodia a complete, centralized record for audit purposes. 
  • A Platform Built to Grow: With its financial reporting foundation in place, Encodia is now exploring how to expand its use of NetSuite, including bringing its accounts payable process fully into the system and building out additional budgeting and planning capabilities. 

“I can get instant financial updates as soon as the team is at a certain closing point to know where we are,” Yu said. “NetSuite is very easy to customize in terms of reporting, and it has all the dimensions you can use to slice and dice and create your reports to meet your needs.” Yu also pointed to the audit benefits of consolidating accounts payable fully within NetSuite as a next step for Encodia’s finance team. 

About Caravel 

Caravel has served more than 1,000 clients over the past decade, providing a comprehensive range of services, including accounting, strategy, business process, and technology selection. Caravel is proud to be part of the technology services group of BPM LLP, a top 40 accounting and advisory firm. 

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