Case study
How a YC-backed SaaS startup keeps investor-ready books without a finance team
See how AG Accounting helped Adentris Inc., a YC-backed seed-stage SaaS startup, manage SAFE note accounting, a corporate rebrand, payroll migration, and R&D tax credits, all without distracting the founding team.
Adentris Inc. is an AI platform for healthcare revenue integrity and compliance, helping hospitals and behavioral health networks audit clinical charts, claims, and prior authorizations in real time. It’s a seed-stage, Reno, Nevada C-corporation backed by Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, and others, run by a lean founding team with zero desire to spend founder hours on accounting. AG Accounting handles the entire financial infrastructure so they don’t have to.
The challenge
Seed-stage SaaS startups face a specific problem: the financial complexity of a funded company with none of the infrastructure. Adentris came to AG Accounting with several overlapping challenges.
A growing SAFE investor roster. With more than a dozen SAFE note investors (institutional funds and individual angels), Adentris needed its equity accounting to stay perfectly reconciled with its cap table on Carta. Any mismatch creates problems at the next funding round.
A payroll provider migration. The company moved from Gusto to Rippling. Without careful accounting, payroll migrations create general-ledger gaps, misclassified expenses, and reconciliation headaches that compound over time.
Three separate card programs. Adentris runs expenses across Brex, Chase (multiple cardholders), and Bank of America. Each requires independent monthly reconciliation, and small errors compound fast.
R&D tax-credit eligibility. As a qualifying small business, Adentris is eligible for federal R&D tax credits under Section 41. But capturing those credits requires identifying and documenting qualified research expenses in the books throughout the year, not retroactively at tax time.
Our approach
AG Accounting runs the full accounting stack for Adentris inside QuickBooks Online. Here’s what that looks like in practice.
Month-end close. We post all journal entries, reconcile every account, and deliver a clean close each month. The founders get financials they can share with investors without any additional cleanup.
SAFE and equity accounting. We maintain the complete SAFE note ledger, reconcile balances to Carta after every round event, and post equity reclassification entries under ASC 505. The cap table and the general ledger agree, always.
Payroll transition accounting. We built the chart-of-accounts mapping for Rippling and posted the transitional journal entries that ensured continuity from Gusto. No gaps, no duplicate expense classifications.
Officer loan and forgiveness accounting. Adentris has officer shareholder loans on the books. We manage the amortization schedule and payroll coordination with full documentation under each applicable accounting standard.
R&D qualified-expense tracking. We flag and document qualifying research expenses throughout the year (payroll, contractor, and software costs eligible under Section 41), so Adentris enters tax season prepared, not scrambling.
Section 174 startup-cost amortization. We manage the five-year amortization schedule for organizational and startup costs under Section 174, with catch-up entries posted where needed.
Multi-card reconciliation. Each card program (Brex, Chase, and Bank of America) is reconciled independently every month. We handle transaction-date versus posting-date mismatches and flag any uncategorized or anomalous charges for client review.
The results
Investor-ready books at every stage. The SAFE ledger reconciles to Carta, the equity structure is properly classified, and the financial statements are ready to share at any point in the fundraising cycle.
Zero disruption through the rebrand. The Wrkdn-to-Adentris transition is fully documented, IRS-confirmed, and reflected accurately across all financial records.
No GL gaps from the payroll migration. The Gusto-to-Rippling transition produced clean, continuous payroll records with no breaks in expense classification.
R&D credits identified and documented. Qualified research expenses are tracked in the books year-round, reducing tax-season risk and supporting the R&D credit claim.
Founder time spent on accounting: zero. The Adentris team focuses on product and customers. We handle everything else.
As a second-time founder, I've learned that the most expensive thing you can do is manage your own accounting. We needed our books to be investor-ready from day one, without me or my co-founders getting bogged down in cap tables or tax credit paperwork. AG Accounting didn't just clean up our ledger; they built an infrastructure that actually scales with us. Now, I don't have to worry about our financial foundation, so I can just focus on building the product and serving our customers. It's been a massive weight off our shoulders.
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