CASE STUDY

Modera Wealth Turns Rapid Growth Into Financial Clarity with NetSuite 

July 29, 2026

Industries: Wealth Management

Modera Wealth Management is a fee-only, fiduciary registered investment advisor serving individuals and families along the Eastern Seaboard, with financial planning, wealth management, and portfolio management for clients who typically hold between $1 million and $10 million in assets.  

Over four or five years, the firm grew from roughly $5 billion to $15 billion in assets under management, most of it through two or three acquisitions a year of smaller RIA firms across New England and the Eastern seaboard. That growth outpaced the financial systems Modera had in place, and leadership knew the firm needed a platform built for the scale it had reached. Modera moved from QuickBooks to NetSuite in late 2024, with Caravel guiding the implementation. 

Challenge 

On QuickBooks, nearly everything Modera’s finance team did was manual, and the software could not hold the pieces the firm needed to run finance in one place. 

  • Manual, disconnected processes meant accounts payable, payroll, credit cards, budgeting, and forecasting all lived outside the general ledger, with analysis handled in spreadsheets rather than the accounting system. 
  • One-dimensional reporting limited the team to total-company transactional data, with no way to report or analyze results across Modera’s 13 offices or by line of business. 
  • Complex lease accounting across roughly 20 leases had to be tracked without a purpose-built tool. 
  • A small finance team could not keep pace with the volume of manual transaction recording that acquisition-driven growth created, leaving little time for the analysis leadership actually needed. 

Solution 

After moving to NetSuite with Caravel, Modera gained a connected platform and a structured implementation that matched the complexity of a multi-entity, multi-office firm. Caravel assigned a project manager who ran a detailed task list with clear ownership at every step, and brought in specialists for the areas that needed them most. 

  • Historical data migration brought Modera’s account balance detail for fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024 into NetSuite, giving the firm comparative history and consolidation in a single system rather than splitting years across two platforms. 
  • A cost allocation specialist set up multidimensional reporting so Modera could analyze results by office, by line of business, and at the total-company level. 
  • A lease accounting specialist loaded historical lease data into NetSuite’s lease module so the accounting for about 20 leases was handled correctly. 
  • A budgeting and forecasting specialist helped the team stand up budgeting and forecasting directly in NetSuite. 
  • Aftercare support gave Modera a resource to call after go-live, which proved valuable for a lean finance team getting its arms around a new system. 

Caravel also connected Modera’s portfolio management platform to NetSuite through a straightforward file export, upload, and reconciliation process, streamlining the time the team spent recording transactions and reconciling financial accounts against operational data. 

The results showed up first in the everyday work of the finance team.  

“Neither Jay nor I want to spend our lives recording general ledger transactions; we’d rather be doing the analysis that helps drive the company forward, and NetSuite frees us up to do that,” said Jim Kipp, Director of Finance at Modera Wealth Management. He pointed to the time gained in transaction recording as one of the two biggest wins. 

Outcome 

With NetSuite in place, Modera runs its full finance operation on one platform and has the capacity to keep growing. 

  • Time returned to the team as automated transaction recording replaced the manual work that once consumed the finance function. 
  • Budgeting, forecasting, and actuals on one platform gave leadership multidimensional analysis across offices, lines of business, and the total company. 
  • Comparative history and consolidation are now native, with prior-year balances loaded and validated during implementation. 
  • A repeatable path for acquisitions means new entities can be brought in by mapping their general ledger to NetSuite and flowing operational data through the same process Modera already uses, so future deals do not require a full re-implementation. 

Ready to Grow Without Outgrowing Your Systems? 

If your finance team is spending more time recording transactions than analyzing them, or your reporting can’t keep up with acquisitions and multi-entity growth, Caravel can help. Reach out to start a conversation about what NetSuite could do for your firm.

contact us