CASE STUDY
Simons Foundation Modernizes Financial Operations With NetSuite
August 21, 2026
Simons Foundation is a 501(c)(3) private foundation dedicated to advancing the frontiers of research in math and science. The foundation pursues its mission both by making grants and by supporting an in-house research staff focused on computational research. Lawrence Bianco, VP of Finance and Controller, led the foundation’s systems integration, overseeing accounting, financial reporting, budgeting, FP&A, cash management, taxation, and internal controls throughout the project.
Challenge
Simons Foundation had run its accounting on Microsoft Great Plains for years, layering on additional systems over time to compensate for the platform’s limitations rather than replacing it.
- A Rigid Core System: as the foundation grew more sophisticated, Great Plains required significant over-engineering, including a complicated chart of accounts and dimensions that were difficult to manage.
- Limited Reporting: the team could no longer run reports directly out of Great Plains and had to rely on external report writers, introducing a lag whenever finance needed a quick answer.
- Manual Data Entry: day-to-day accounting depended heavily on manual keying and spreadsheets, leaving little room for the team to focus on higher-value analysis.
- Unique Reporting Needs: as a private foundation, Simons Foundation faces rigorous tax reporting requirements that sit alongside standard GAAP accounting and an internal management view, none of which were well served by its patchwork of systems.
Solution
Simons Foundation evaluated a long list of ERP options before narrowing its focus to Sage Intacct, Microsoft Business Central, and NetSuite. The accounting team found NetSuite immediately intuitive and legible, and the foundation valued both NetSuite’s own engagement and the depth of its partner community, including Caravel.
“I felt like going with NetSuite was something where we could go with the flow a lot more and just naturally get to where we wanted the system to be without needing to do a lot of customization,” said Lawrence Bianco, VP of Finance and Controller at Simons Foundation.
On the implementation side, Simons Foundation considered NetSuite’s own internal practice as well as firms on either end of the customization spectrum, from a tightly scripted playbook to a fully bespoke, build-from-scratch approach. Caravel stood out for combining a proven method with the flexibility to tailor the system exactly where it mattered, without adding unnecessary time or cost.
“Caravel was in a really sweet spot where they have a proven method and a really great track record, but unlike some other options, they were willing to take it that last mile to get it exactly where we needed it, and they did it a lot more efficiently,” Bianco said.
The project scope centered on optimizing the general ledger and banking functions in NetSuite while integrating existing third-party systems for expense management and budgeting rather than replacing them outright. The team restructured its unwieldy, segmented chart of accounts into NetSuite’s dimensional structure, giving every grant award and every investment fund its own ID within a dimension for cleaner, more intuitive reporting. To meet its unique management-versus-GAAP reporting requirement, Simons Foundation adopted a light, focused configuration of multi-book accounting, allowing the team to tag select transactions for inclusion or exclusion in management reports without adding complexity to the close.
Simons Foundation completed the seven-month implementation within its target go-live month, aided by disciplined scope and thorough preparation of its chart of accounts and migration data ahead of time. To preserve continuity for colleagues outside the finance department, the team kept familiar front-end systems in place and simply reconnected them to NetSuite behind the scenes; expense and invoicing workflows were offline for only one week during the entire project. For data migration, the foundation brought its full year of transactions in as journal entries rather than through native modules, an approach developed in consultation with its auditors that preserved a clear audit trail while supporting meaningful, comparative reporting from day one.
With a lean internal team of nine across general accounting, tax, and FP&A, Simons Foundation backfilled a staff accountant’s day-to-day workload with a temp so he could dedicate 75 to 80 percent of his time to the project as internal project manager for its full seven months.
Outcome
Since going live, Simons Foundation has seen measurable gains in speed, accuracy, and day-to-day usability across its finance operations.
- Faster Close: the monthly close has shortened from roughly 12 business days to about nine, as journal entries flow in directly from source systems, including grant and banking data, rather than requiring manual keying.
- Streamlined Grant Payments: the monthly grant payment process, once a full week of work gathering data, verifying banking details, and loading payments, is now substantially completed within a single day.
- Real-Time Reporting: finance colleagues no longer wait on hourly refreshes from a separate reporting system, saving what could amount to half a day previously lost to interruptions and re-checks.
- Clean Comparative Data: with a full year of 2025 transactions brought in as auditable journal entries, the team can now run year-over-year comparisons entirely within NetSuite.
- Minimal Disruption: colleagues outside finance continued using the front-end systems they were already comfortable with throughout the transition, easing change management across the organization.
Looking ahead, Simons Foundation plans to automate more of its intercompany eliminations between parent and subsidiary investment entities, decentralize purchase requisitioning so staff across the organization can enter their own requests, and complete wire integration with its banking partner to establish NetSuite as the single source of truth for payment instructions.
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.