How Boulder Care flipped the startup finance playbook — closing 3x faster with 1 full-time accountant on Campfire
Learn how Boulder Care replaced its outsourced accounting model with an AI-native, technology-first finance function using Campfire.
Coming from 20 business days to close and a very expensive outsourced accounting firm, to closing the books in six days with 1.5 FTEs — that in itself is already a 2X ROI conversation, let alone the efficiency and accuracy.
Mitzi Yue SVP of Finance, Boulder Care
Challenge
Outgrowing the startup starter pack, without following the standard playbook
When Mitzi Yue joined Boulder Care as SVP of Finance, she inherited what she calls the classic startup “starter pack”: QuickBooks, Bill.com, and an outsourced accounting team. It’s a familiar formula — a large outsourced function paired with a lean, cost-efficient tech stack. And it came with a familiar cost: month-end close took 20 days.
Having scaled three companies before Boulder, Mitzi knew the traditional next move by heart — bring accounting in-house, hire a controller, migrate onto Sage Intacct or NetSuite, and keep the starter-pack tooling as long as possible. But this time, she wanted to flip the playbook. Rather than leading with headcount and treating technology as the thing you upgrade last, she wanted to lead with technology first.
The inflection point was the one she knows well: the moment a finance function has to evolve from a back-office cost center into a strategic lever. As Boulder grew more complex, its accounting software had to keep pace — and QuickBooks couldn’t.
“My playbook has always been: move off QuickBooks, choose Sage Intacct or NetSuite, hire a controller. We did it in a very different way this time. We brought technology on first.”
Solution
An AI-native ERP that leads the stack, not follows it
Rather than defaulting to the incumbents, Mitzi ran a deliberate evaluation against legacy systems bolting on AI features versus a new generation of tools built AI-first. Campfire sat firmly in the second bucket.
Her evaluation was rigorous: product feature depth, the leverage her team would gain, and — critically for a healthcare technology company — reference calls with other companies in the space. Mitzi is known for asking reference customers to unsell her, to name the worst things about a product. What she heard were the normal growing pains of an early-stage company, set against a pace of product releases that stood out. Above all, she ran every option through an ROI framework designed to separate hype from value.
What sealed it wasn’t only the feature set — it was the partnership. Solutions consultant Hank listened closely to Boulder’s specific challenges and brainstormed on the spot, and founder John joined calls directly. Even where a solution didn’t exist yet, Mitzi felt heard and had a direct line to the team, which mattered for the long-term partnership she was after.
Within the first months of being live on Campfire, the platform has driven a technology-first transformation across the finance stack — RCM for revenue, Ramp for AP, and Campfire as the accounting core tying it together. And the finance team’s response has been what Mitzi describes as genuine delight.
“It’s not about the technology replacing the team. It’s about technology enabling and delighting the team — and that continues to generate a force multiplier.”
A standout has been Ember, Campfire’s AI chat and agent feature, which Mitzi describes as her new analyst. Insights that once meant downloading transaction lists, building pivot tables, and losing a day of work now take a minute or two. She can ask for advertising spend over the past five months, then drill in conversationally — by department, by vendor, by what’s driving a discrepancy — one click deeper each time.
“My favorite thing is that Ember is the analyst who goes above and beyond. It doesn’t just give me what I asked for — it gives me the charts and graphs I didn’t ask for.”
Just as significantly, Ember has started to close finance’s oldest gap: timeliness. Where finance data is typically a lagging indicator, real-time insight has moved Boulder’s finance function much closer to the real-time data the rest of the business already runs on — making it more proactive and more decisive.
Results
A faster close, a leaner team, and finance as a talent magnet
With Campfire, Boulder Care cut its close from 20 days to six, running on a single full-time in-house accountant in place of a full outsourced firm. When measured against the cost of the old outsourced model, the ROI made the decision, in Mitzi’s words, a no-brainer.
An unexpected outcome: Campfire has become a recruiting tool. Top finance talent no longer asks whether a company uses AI — they ask how. Being able to pull up Ember live in interviews reliably produces a “wow” moment, and turns the elephant in the room — that AI is coming for finance — into a conversation about embracing it. Every finance interview now touches on AI, and Boulder’s stack has become a genuine talent magnet.
“The topic of AI comes up in interviews every single time, and to be able to show our candidates something as innovative as Campfire has become such an incredible talent magnet.”
For Mitzi, the bigger story is a new playbook entirely. Instead of hiring headcount first and upgrading tools last, Boulder led with technology and is now reshaping how it staffs and builds the function around it.
“The fact that we don’t have our standard playbook anymore is a new frontier — and that’s the exciting part. We get to shape the modern finance function today.”