When AI Meets Accounting at Scale: Inside Fetch Rewards with CAO Sean Han
One of the best ways to learn about what we can do with AI today is to hear from fellow accounting and finance leaders on their own AI adoption journeys. I’m really excited to share the second episode of the Lumera Podcast with Sean Han, the Chief Accounting Officer at Fetch Rewards.
At first glance, Fetch Rewards looks like a straightforward consumer app: users snap a picture of a receipt, earn points, and redeem gift cards. But as Sean Han explains in this episode, the underlying business model and its accounting nuances are anything but simple.
A business model with unique accounting challenges
Sean joined Fetch after building treasury and controllership functions at complex businesses like Sunrun, MasterClass, and NerdWallet. He assumed a “cash app” would be easy. Instead, he found:
Marketplace revenue mechanics. Every advertising campaign creates SKU-level variable consideration, tiered discounts, and complex gross-versus-net analysis for multi-faceted partnerships and deals
A fast-moving points liability. With more than 12 million monthly active users, Fetch must model breakage and cost-per-point across dozens of gift-card vendors
Building on Netsuite
Fetch implemented NetSuite early on, but key modules like billing, revenue recognition, and fixed assets were missing or misconfigured. Rather than rip and replace with brand new tools, Sean focused on implementing these missing capabilities within Netsuite and prioritizing data connectivity:
Workato as middleware. Bi-directional flows now keep Salesforce, Snowflake, Slack, and NetSuite in sync, exposing data mismatches in real time.
Specialist apps where they matter. Ramp handles credit cards and A/P; Tesorio handles A/R and collections. Everything posts cleanly back to NetSuite.
Workflows inside Slack. Invoice and journal-entry approvals happen in Slack where employees already spend their day.
The takeaway: integrations outperform migrations. A lightweight iPaaS layer and purpose-built tools can deliver enterprise-grade control without a multi-year ERP overhaul.
Where AI already delivers ROI
The biggest impact driver for Fetch was Klarity Automate. Klarity scans every revenue contract, extracts key terms, and reconciles them against Salesforce.
Their team was reviewing roughly 10% of revenue contracts before implementing Klarity. After they implemented Klarity, they got review coverage over 95% of contracts, with no additional headcount.
Sean’s adoption playbook is pragmatic: treat AI like a promising new analyst. Provide clean data, review its output, iterate. Perfection isn’t the goal; capacity and consistency are.
Shrinking the close, and what comes next
When Sean joined Fetch, month-end close drifted past Day 25. 18 months later, they’re closing by Day 9 and targeting Day 5 by year-end. They implemented Numeric (close-management tool) to automate flux analysis and streamline reconciliations during close.
Listen to the full episode to hear Sean’s candid views on how a lean accounting team can harness AI, data integrations, and a thoughtfully extended ERP to handle enterprise-grade complexity. I think you’ll come away inspired, and armed with a few ideas to test in your own stack!