How I Stacked It

Every finance stack tells a story. How I Stacked It looks inside the tools, workflows and decisions real finance leaders use to build better, more scalable finance teams.

Perry Farrell

Financial Controller at AEI Music

AEI Music builds digital brands, labels and communities around electronic music, reaching 100 million engaged music fans globally through its digital channels, festivals and spaces. Founded in 1996 with the launch of Drum&BassArena, its brands today include UKF, SubSoul and TheSoundYouNeed.

Perry Farrell, Financial Controller at AEI Music, has rebuilt the group's finance function around Xero and a best-of-breed ecosystem of connected tools following a failed ERP migration.

When Perry joined AEI Music, the finance function was recovering from a move from Aquila to Sage Intacct that had left the business without reliable financial data. Over six months, the team migrated nine companies to Xero, rebuilt two years of accounting records and processed more than 60,000 transactions.

Rather than replacing the failed ERP with another all-in-one system, Perry convinced the directors to take a different approach. Drawing on his experience with Xero, he demonstrated that an ecosystem of specialist add-ons could provide the capabilities the business needed while retaining the flexibility to keep improving the stack over time.

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The Stack

Xero for Core Finance

Xero sits at the heart of AEI Music's finance stack, providing the core accounting platform across its nine companies. Moving to Xero gave the team a reliable financial foundation after the failed ERP migration, improving data quality and reporting while providing a platform the business can build around as it grows.

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Mayday for Month End

With nine companies in the group, Mayday helps AEI Music manage intercompany transactions and reconciliations between its entities, reducing the manual work involved in keeping balances aligned across the group.

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Apron for Spend Management

Apron brings payments, expenses and accounting together in one platform, designed for business owners, accountants and finance teams. Our use extends beyond employee expenses to include payroll, accounts payable, and capturing and transferring bill data into Xero.

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Syft for Consolidated Reporting

We are still implementing it, but we’ll be using Syft for consolidated monthly reporting and recurring reports for different departments.

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Claude for AI

We’re looking to explore using Claude to automate parts of the finance function, such as handling the AP inbox, but that’s still an ambition on the radar at the moment.

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