Nominal Saves Kunai 80+ Hours During Acquisition Due Diligence

At a glance

• Kunai is a consultancy that provides IT engineering and staff augmentation for financial services companies. The company serves five of the top ten U.S. financial institutions.
• Location: Operations across the United States, Mexico, Canada, and the United Kingdom
• Products used: Nominal’s AI‑powered finance platform
• Primary use cases: Multi‑entity consolidation, intercompany eliminations, month-end close automation, multi-currency FX translation, and audit-ready, GAAP-compliant books. 

Nominal completely automated all my intercompany elimination entries. The AI agent suggests the eliminations instead of me having to go look and book them all.”

Greg Hood, Head of Finance, Kunai

Fragmented finance systems stall acquisition plans

Kunai, a consultancy providing senior-level IT engineering and staff-augmentation services, was on a stratospheric growth trajectory. The company had doubled in size every year for three years running, and counted five of the top ten U.S. financial institutions among its clients.

But like many high-growth startups, Kunai’s finance systems hadn’t kept up with the expansion. The company had opened entities in multiple countries over the previous year, each with its own chart of accounts, systems, and currencies.

The company was preparing for a potential acquisition, but needed to streamline and standardize the financials. To lead the charge, the team brought in Greg Hood, a seasoned fintech executive who has guided three successful M&A exits.

Hood immediately encountered challenges. The web of spreadsheets and disconnected ledgers made even routine tasks a hassle. “Everything in Excel kept breaking,” he said, pointing to formulas and intercompany balances that constantly needed fixing. Month-end close took days — time the team didn’t have as they prepared for a potential deal.

An ERP migration would take months and cost a fortune, not ideal when bankers could come calling any day. Kunai needed a fast, reliable way to consolidate its books, ensure GAAP compliance, and produce audit-ready reports without overhauling its entire tech stack.

A fast, frictionless rollout with Nominal

While evaluating options, Hood discovered Nominal at the Finance and Technology Expo in New York. After seeing how the platform could connect to both QuickBooks and Excel without requiring code or outside consultants, he signed on.

Traditional ERPs promise consolidation, but often come with long timelines, big budgets, and a steep learning curve. Nominal took a different approach: instead of replacing Kunai’s existing systems, it layered on top of them, using automation and AI to handle consolidation, audit tracking, and real-time reporting.

For Kunai, that meant no downtime, no retraining, and no disruption to the business, all at a price well below what an ERP overhaul would cost.

Implementation started immediately. The Nominal team worked with Kunai to map a 600-line P&L into an 18-line version, then automated currency translations and eliminations. The team pulled QuickBooks information into Nominal in less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee. “We linked into QuickBooks in a matter of minutes,” Hood said.

Nominal also set up a dedicated Slack channel for Kunai and held weekly check-ins to keep things moving. Their collaborative, clear, no-jargon approach made the process feel more like a true partnership than just another IT rollout.

AI-powered finance creates ROI in record time

The results came quickly. After one training cycle, Nominal’s AI agents began suggesting elimination entries that balanced intercompany accounts in seconds. Manual reconciliations disappeared, and Kunai cut a full day from its monthly close schedule.

Cash flow statements and variance analyses were generated automatically. According to Hood, Nominal’s AI agents caught and resolved about 75% of anomalies before the finance team even had to step in.

Over the six-month sprint leading up to the acquisition, Nominal saved the Kunai team an estimated 80 to 90 hours of manual work. The platform also helped them avoid up to $20,000 in temporary staffing and overtime costs. 

Just as important: the platform gave them confidence that numbers wouldn’t shift between close cycles. Audit‑ready drill‑downs make it easy to trace any consolidated balance to its source transaction in a few clicks, eliminating the back‑and‑forth that previously took days.

Clean books helped close the deal

When an acquiring company kicked off due diligence, the Kunai team was ready. Nominal provided a consolidated, GAAP-compliant view built directly from the company’s existing ledgers. That freed Hood to focus on the dozens of other tasks required for a successful exit. “Nominal cut our time to acquisition and saved me an ERP implementation,” he said.

The clarity Nominal provided helped de‑risk the transaction, shortening the financial workstream and paving the way for Kunai’s successful sale. The platform’s automated mappings and eliminations meant Kunai could meet due diligence requests with confidence — no late nights or restatements required.

Future‑ready finance 

After the successful acquisition, Hood is now advising multiple high‑growth clients through his consultancy, SkySight Analytics, and has added Nominal to his recommended finance tech stack. 

Hood positions the platform as a cost‑effective alternative to expensive, time-consuming ERP projects. The goal? To enable finance teams to scale revenue, not headcount, while gaining real‑time insights and AI‑driven assurance.

“Spend less time doing, more time analyzing” is the advice that Hood shares with founders considering an exit. Nominal helps make that possible, turning disconnected systems into a single source of truth and giving companies a future-ready finance setup at a fraction of the usual cost.

Said Hood: “There's no need to spend a hundred thousand dollars on a full ERP implementation when you have a great, cost-effective tool like Nominal.”

About Nominal

Nominal is an AI-powered finance automation platform that overlays any ERP. It automates multi-entity consolidation, intercompany eliminations, and month-end close management — helping accounting teams reconcile faster, consolidate cleaner, and close with confidence.

See Nominal in action: book a demo.