How Accounting Wise increased its realization rate by 49% with Karbon Billing & Payments

Dan Gomez founded Accounting Wise with a clear mission: to help software companies grow and make smart financial choices by providing them with clear and simple data.

After years spent working at what he calls a ‘traditional’ firm, he knew there was a smarter way to operate. Accounting Wise comprises a self-described “tech-savvy financial team,” who leverage the smartest tech to deliver on their promises.

They’re committed to being efficient in their practices and finding the best possible and least wasteful solutions, while taking responsibility in finding better outcomes and alternatives for their customers. This extends across every inch of the practice—including the firm’s tech stack.

The challenge: Limited visibility into what was actually generating revenue

Before implementing Karbon Billing & Payments, Accounting Wise had relied on QuickBooks for invoicing since 2012. While QuickBooks handled the basics well enough, it created several operational blind spots when it came to viewing the firm holistically.

"We had time tracking in Karbon, but the invoicing was happening somewhere else," Dan explains. "I couldn't show my team how their work connected to revenue. And when I needed to investigate whether we were pricing correctly or if scope had crept, I had to manually piece things together."

The disconnect between where work was tracked and where billing happened meant he couldn't easily answer fundamental questions like:

• Which clients were profitable?

• Which team members were struggling with certain types of work?

• Where was the firm leaving money on the table?

It wasn’t just Dan who was struggling with visibility. His team members had no way of easily finding out when their clients had been invoiced without direct access to QuickBooks, which is something he wanted to avoid. 

And with a truly global team spread across Portugal, the Philippines, Spain, and South Africa, visibility is a key ingredient for a successful distributed firm.

The solution: Billing from the same system where time and work are tracked

Dan made the switch to Karbon Billing & Payments in October 2024, driven primarily by the ability to connect realization reports with actual time and invoice data.

"I was looking for ways to get the team to feel more like they were participating in the success of the business," Dan says. "With the invoicing in Karbon, I could actually show them: 'You contributed this much last month, you generated this much revenue for the company.'"

The decision wasn't purely about team motivation. Dan recognized that linking time tracking to invoicing would unlock insights that had been impossible to surface before.

The impact: From guesswork to data-driven decisions

Catching lost revenue

One of the most immediate benefits after implementing Karbon Billing & Payments was identifying revenue that had slipped through the cracks.

“The realization reports really help identify areas where we need a price increase or where scope has increased and we never communicated it.”

"There have been times where we caught ad hoc projects that were coded incorrectly—and we got to invoice the time and collect on that (otherwise lost) revenue."

By linking invoices to specific work items, Dan can now see exactly what was billed against what work was completed. Timing differences and project transitions no longer create confusion about whether work has been properly captured.

And with this visibility, Dan knew where to investigate to determine opportunities for internal efficiency gains and if he needed to raise prices for certain clients. After making necessary changes, Accounting Wise now benefits from close to a 100% realization rate.

Reducing project time through better resource allocation

The visibility into revenue and realization by team member and by client has led to operational improvements beyond just billing.

"Sometimes we've seen one person writing off a lot of time on certain projects," Dan says. "We investigated, realized there was an area they were struggling with, and we knew another team member really excelled in that area. So we swapped those projects, and it reduced write-offs while also helping develop the team member who was struggling."

In one case, Dan used the data to take a different approach entirely: instead of raising prices on price-sensitive clients, he looked at whether the work could be done more efficiently.

“We actually cut the project time from 25 hours to 15 hours by implementing Karbon automations and training the team member. We kept the client, improved profitability, and taught someone something in the process.”

Streamlining admin and client communication

The consolidation of billing information into Karbon has reduced the administrative burden on Dan and improved client communication.

"It takes less time for me to talk to the person who did the work now. I can get everything from the system, so I'm not bothering them and I have what I need to talk to the client."

For clients who want detailed breakdowns, Karbon's ability to include time entries directly on invoices has been particularly valuable.

"Some clients, especially on larger projects, want to see the details. In Karbon, I can break out that invoice to show all the individual time entries. Most of the time, it answers their question immediately and saves a lot of back-and-forth."— Dan Gomez, Accounting Wise

Key Karbon features that made the difference

Realization reports: Monthly analysis of revenue performance by team member and by client, enabling data-driven conversations about pricing, scope, and resource allocation.

Work item–linked invoicing: Each invoice ties directly to the work item, eliminating ambiguity about what's been billed.

Flexible invoice presentation: For clients who need transparency, invoices can display individual time entries with notes—reducing billing disputes.

Batch invoice processing: Unlike QuickBooks' one-at-a-time recurring invoice setup, Karbon queues all monthly recurring invoices at once and customers can batch send.

Timeline integration: All invoice communications are logged in the client timeline, giving team members visibility without requiring access to accounting systems.

Advice for firms considering the switch from QuickBooks to Karbon Billing & Payments

Dan emphasizes that the value of Karbon Billing & Payments depends on how fully a firm has adopted the rest of the platform:

“If the team's not fully committed to using Karbon 100%—tracking time properly, using notes, coding projects correctly—you won't get the full benefit. But if you're already doing those things, bringing billing into the same system just makes everything connect.”

Key results

• Increased realization rate from 67% to nearly 100%

• Recovered tens of thousands in unbilled revenue

• Improved team accountability

• Reduced admin time

• Increased client satisfaction