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DA Connected — Financial Automation

Financial automation consulting

Your finance stack should work together.

DA Connected implements Ramp, integrates it with your ERP, and designs the finance workflow around both — so transactions start clean, land correctly in the general ledger, and stop holding up the close.

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CFO-led · Practical · Remote across the U.S. · On-site in Greater Boston and New England

Connected finance workflowAn abstract diagram of six connected nodes. Values flow from a single source, through two intermediate nodes into a central hub, and out to two destinations.
Years leading finance
20+
Removed by one automation
$1M/yr
Accounting systems connected
40+
To digitize vendor payments
3 mo

The problem

The hidden cost of disconnected finance

Most growing companies already own good software. The gap is between the tools — in the handoffs nobody ever designed.

Manual work

  • AP invoices entered by hand
  • Employees chased for receipts
  • Finance re-coding transactions after the fact
  • Reconciliation that takes days, not minutes

Limited control

  • Approval rules that vary by team
  • Spend visibility that arrives late
  • Policies enforced inconsistently
  • Errors that surface after the close

Slow decisions

  • ERP data landing too late to act on
  • No timely view of where money is going
  • Month-end that runs as a fire drill
  • Finance working on transactions, not analysis

Companies don’t need another finance tool. They need their people, processes, Ramp and ERP to work as one connected system.

The connected finance architecture

One workflow, from employee spend to the general ledger

The ERP stays the accounting system of record. Ramp becomes the operational layer for spend. DA Connected sits between the two and makes the whole path work.

  1. 01

    Employees

    Cards, expenses, purchase requests

  2. 02

    Ramp

    Receipts, coding, approvals, Bill Pay

  3. 03

    ERP

    Vendor bills, payments, GL sync

  4. 04

    Reporting

    Reconciliation and financial reporting

  5. 05

    Management

    Spend visibility and decisions

Employee spending

  1. Employee
  2. Ramp card
  3. Receipt
  4. Coding
  5. Approval
  6. ERP
  7. Reconciliation

Accounts payable

  1. Vendor invoice
  2. Ramp Bill Pay
  3. Approval
  4. Payment
  5. ERP
  6. Reconciliation

Management reporting

  1. Ramp
  2. ERP
  3. Financial reporting
  4. Decision

Accounting systems we connect

  • NetSuite
  • QuickBooks Online
  • Sage Intacct
  • Microsoft Dynamics
  • Xero
  • Workday

Ramp connects to more than 200 systems across accounting, banking, HR and payroll, procurement and productivity, including 40+ accounting integrations.

Services

Four ways in, and one for when it has already gone wrong

Fixed scope and fixed fees wherever possible, so you know what you're buying before the work starts.

01

Finance Automation Assessment

Find the opportunities before you spend money on technology.

A fixed-fee review of how your finance operation actually runs today — ERP, corporate cards, expenses, AP, procurement, approvals, chart of accounts, entity structure and month-end. You finish with a written roadmap and a business case, whether or not you hire me to build it.

What you get

  • Current-state assessment
  • Process-flow map, end to end
  • Documented process and control gaps
  • Ranked automation opportunities
  • Chart-of-accounts and entity review
  • Recommended technology architecture
  • Prioritized implementation roadmap
  • Effort baseline and payback estimate
Timeline
2–3 weeks
Investment
From $2,500
02

Ramp Implementation

Turn Ramp into a finance operating system, not just a corporate card.

Full configuration for companies starting from scratch. Organizational structure, card policies, approval workflows, spend limits, accounting categories and custom fields — then employee onboarding, testing and go-live support so the thing is actually used.

What you get

  • Org, departments and user setup
  • Card programs and spend limits
  • Approval workflow design
  • Expense policies and controls
  • Accounting categories and custom fields
  • Vendor setup and accounting integration
  • Employee and finance-team training
  • Testing, go-live and issue resolution
Timeline
3–6 weeks
Investment
From $7,500
03

Ramp + ERP Integration

Make your finance systems agree with each other.

The flagship engagement, run in six phases from discovery through post-go-live optimization. Covers GL, department, class, location and entity mapping across NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics or Xero — including multi-entity and international environments.

What you get

  • Discovery: ERP, COA, dimensions, approval hierarchy
  • Architecture: data mapping and sync rules
  • Coding rules and accounting policy alignment
  • Configuration and integration build
  • Testing: transactions, bills, payments, sync errors
  • Documented reconciliation procedures
  • Finance, manager and employee training
  • 30–60 day optimization review
Timeline
4–10 weeks
Investment
From $15,000
04

Fractional Finance Systems Advisor

Your CFO doesn't have to be your systems expert.

A monthly retainer for companies that have the systems and need someone to keep them working as the business changes. New entities, new workflows, new people, and a rolling view of what to automate next.

What you get

  • Monthly system and exception review
  • Ramp and ERP optimization
  • New entity and workflow setup
  • Approval and onboarding changes
  • Internal-control review
  • Spend analytics and reporting improvements
  • Rolling finance automation roadmap
Timeline
Ongoing
Investment
From $3,000/mo
05

Ramp Rescue

For companies that already implemented — and it isn't working.

A short diagnostic and remediation engagement for implementations that went sideways: incorrect GL mapping, duplicate transactions, sync failures, a weak approval structure, and a finance team still doing the work by hand.

What you get

  • Integration and GL mapping audit
  • Sync-failure root cause analysis
  • Approval structure redesign
  • Data cleanup and correction plan
  • Adoption and training remediation
  • Rebuild of the broken workflows
Timeline
2–4 weeks
Investment
From $5,000

Something more complicated?

Multi-entity and international NetSuite environments, portfolio-wide standardization across several operating companies, and specialist work outside these packages are scoped individually. Tell me the shape of it and you’ll get a written quote.

Approach

Five steps, in this order, every time

Nothing gets configured until the future-state process is agreed on paper. That single rule prevents most of the problems I get called in to fix.

  1. Step 01

    Discover

    Understand the ERP, the processes, the controls and the pain points — sitting with the people who actually run AP and the close, not only the org chart.

  2. Step 02

    Design

    Define the future-state workflow: data mapping, approval model, coding rules and reconciliation procedure. All of it agreed on paper before anything is configured.

  3. Step 03

    Implement

    Configure Ramp, connect the ERP, and build the workflows, card programs and AP paths to match the design that was signed off.

  4. Step 04

    Test & train

    Run real transactions, bills, reimbursements and payments end to end. Resolve the exceptions, then train finance, managers and employees on the process they'll use.

  5. Step 05

    Optimize

    Support go-live, then come back at 30–60 days to find the bottlenecks, tighten controls and remove whatever manual work survived the first pass.

Track record

DA Connected is new. The experience behind it isn't.

These are outcomes from twenty years of finance leadership roles — not client case studies. Each one is attributed to the role where the work was done.

$1M / year

Designed and deployed Alteryx workflows that automated time-and-materials project billing, removing the manual process entirely.

Senior Manager, Operational Finance · ICON Clinical Research

10% → 30%

Gross margin on a $100M+ multi-service-line clinical trials business, working alongside the operations leadership team, in under two years.

Senior Manager, Operational Finance · ICON Clinical Research

$4M annualized

Deep-dive analysis of project-level profitability and resource utilization strategy cut unjustified contractor cost by half.

Senior Manager, Operational Finance · ICON Clinical Research

73.2% → 81.1%

Business-unit project margin, after building the financial and operational dashboard used by project leaders and executives as the single source of truth. Worth $4.6M in additional profit.

Manager, PM Business Intelligence · Parexel International

100% in 3 months

Introduced and integrated Ramp for corporate cards, expense management and bill pay — every vendor and employee reimbursement digitized, manual check payments eliminated.

Financial Controller / Interim CFO · Biomere

$2.7M recovered

Scrubbed questionable project funding and out-of-scope work to recover change-in-scope revenue that had been delivered but never billed.

Senior Manager, Operational Finance · ICON Clinical Research

Illustrative engagements

What a typical engagement looks like

These are illustrative scopes built on the methodology above, not past clients. Company descriptors are generic on purpose. Your actual baseline, savings and payback get quantified during the assessment.

A $40M professional-services firm, 120 employees

Situation
Cards on a legacy bank program, expenses tracked in spreadsheets, AP invoices keyed into QuickBooks Online by hand.
What gets built
A Ramp card program with department-level limits, receipt and coding automation, a two-tier approval model, and a QBO sync mapped to class and location.
Expected outcome
Receipt chasing and manual coding largely removed; card reconciliation becomes a review rather than a multi-day rebuild.

A 200-person life-sciences company on NetSuite, three entities

Situation
NetSuite live, Ramp adopted by one department, no agreed GL mapping. Finance re-codes transactions after they sync.
What gets built
Subsidiary, department and class mapping; an approval hierarchy matched to the delegation of authority; vendor bill and payment sync; a documented reconciliation procedure.
Expected outcome
Transactions land coded correctly the first time, and the close stops waiting on spend data to be cleaned up.

A PE-backed portfolio, five operating companies

Situation
Every company runs a different card, expense and AP process. The sponsor cannot compare spend across the portfolio.
What gets built
One reference configuration, standard chart-of-accounts dimensions, a common approval model, and a staged rollout sequence company by company.
Expected outcome
Comparable spend reporting across the portfolio and a repeatable setup to apply to the next acquisition.

Who we help

Enough finance complexity to matter, too little to justify a systems team

If you recognize your company in two of these three columns, the assessment will almost certainly find something worth fixing.

Company profile

  • $10M–$250M annual revenue
  • 25–500 employees
  • An ERP or accounting system already in place
  • Growing AP and expense volume
  • A lean finance team
  • Multiple departments, locations or entities

High-fit industries

  • Professional services and agencies
  • Life sciences and biotech
  • Technology and SaaS
  • Healthcare
  • Private-equity-backed businesses
  • Engineering and architecture firms

Trigger events

  • Implementing or upgrading an ERP
  • Adopting Ramp
  • Rapid headcount or transaction growth
  • Expanding the finance team
  • Audit findings or control gaps
  • An AP automation initiative

Why DA Connected

Technology consultants know technology. Accountants know accounting. DA Connected knows both.

The gap between a working demo and a finance operation that runs reliably every month is where implementations fail. That gap is the entire practice.

Software expertise

Ramp configuration, ERP integration, workflow automation and system testing — done hands-on, not supervised.

  • Ramp configuration
  • ERP integration
  • Workflow automation
  • System testing

Finance expertise

Chart of accounts, AP and expense processes, internal controls and month-end close, from someone who has owned all four.

  • Chart of accounts
  • AP and expense process
  • Internal controls
  • Month-end close

Operator mindset

I've lived through go-live. I know what breaks afterward, and I design for adoption and reliable monthly operation.

  • Designed for adoption
  • Built for month three
  • Clear ownership
  • No unnecessary complexity

We don’t just implement software. We make the finance process work.

Scroll the table to compare →

How DA Connected compares with a traditional IT consultant and a traditional accounting firm
DimensionTraditional IT consultantTraditional accounting firmDA Connected
FocusTechnologyAccountingFinance + technology
EngagementImplementationComplianceDesign, build and adoption
OrientationSystem-focusedAccounting-focusedBusiness-outcome focused
ModelOften project-basedOften recurring accountingImplementation + advisory

Rick Hu

Credentials

  • MBA, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland — Finance and Information Systems
  • BEcon, International Finance, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
  • Certified Management Accountant (CMA)
  • CFA Level I
  • Based in Acton, Massachusetts
  • English and Mandarin

About the founder

Built by a CFO. Designed for finance teams.

I'm Rick Hu. For more than twenty years I've run finance organizations in life sciences, healthcare and clinical research — at Biomere, BrioHealth Solutions, Walgreens Health, ICON Clinical Research, Parexel International, Quintiles (now IQVIA) and Harvard University.

Most recently, as Financial Controller and interim CFO at Biomere, I implemented NetSuite end to end, brought in Ramp for corporate cards, expense management and bill pay, added SuiteProjects Pro for project accounting and profitability tracking, and built the finance team that runs all of it — AP, AR, GL, procurement, treasury and FP&A.

I didn't implement Ramp as a consultant. I implemented it because I was the person responsible for the close, the controls and the numbers afterward. That's the whole difference. I know which configuration decisions look fine in a demo and cause problems in month three, and I know that the real work starts after go-live, when the workflow has to become routine.

DA Connected exists to give growing companies that perspective — senior finance and systems expertise, without a large consulting firm attached to it.

Systems implemented and worked with

  • NetSuite
  • Ramp
  • SuiteProjects Pro
  • Concur
  • Quartzy
  • Oracle R12
  • SAP
  • Hyperion Essbase
  • PeopleSoft
  • Planview
  • Alteryx
  • Power BI
  • Tableau
  • IBM Cognos
  • Spotfire

Questions

The things people ask before the first call

No. DA Connected is a services practice, not a software reseller. You hold your own Ramp contract and relationship directly. I'm engaged and paid for the design, implementation, integration and advisory work — which keeps the advice about what your finance operation needs rather than what carries a margin.

Let’s find the friction in your finance stack.

A 30-minute conversation is usually enough to tell whether Ramp, your ERP and your close are leaving value on the table.

Book a free consultation

Get started

Book a free consultation.

Thirty minutes, no charge and no pitch. Bring your close calendar and the manual process that annoys you most, and we’ll work out where the friction actually is.

Pick a time

Opens Calendly in a new tab. Prefer to write first? Use the form.

runhao.hu@gmail.com617-285-5065

Acton, Massachusetts — Remote across the U.S. · On-site in Greater Boston and New England

Send a message

A couple of specifics make the first call far more useful.

Approximate headcount, entity count and the process that hurts most is plenty.