- 1Most scaling MCA firms stumble on internal systems, not on bad deals, the author argues.
- 2Standardizing, separating duties and automating reconciliation are the proposed fixes.
- 3Clean, GAAP-compliant books can help firms win institutional funding.
This is a guest opinion piece by David Roitblat, founder and CEO of Better Accounting Solutions, a New York City accounting firm that specializes in merchant cash advance companies. The views are his.
Roitblat opens with a paradox: the growth that MCA founders chase can nearly sink them. A small team on a spreadsheet-and-CRM setup handles early volume fine. Then volume triples, deals close faster and syndicators arrive. Reconciliations stretch from an afternoon to days, syndicator payouts trail collections, and tasks get duplicated or dropped.
His argument is that this is not failure but the limit of what early systems can carry. What works for a $5 million portfolio, he writes, buckles under $50 million, and most firms that stumble do so because of infrastructure rather than bad underwriting.
Where it breaks
Roitblat points to three weak spots:
- Financial reporting. Google Sheets and manual reconciliation stop working once merchants, syndicators and advances multiply. A single missed entry can cascade into wrong financial statements and strained investor trust.
- Process control. Work once handled by whoever was nearby needs explicit owners and documented approvals. Without clear controls over who approves, reconciles and verifies, errors slip through, and sometimes fraud does too.
- Visibility. If daily cash flow, default rates and syndicator balances take hours to assemble, decisions get made blind.
What he recommends
- Standardize. Use consistent charts of accounts, naming conventions, reconciliation methods and reporting cadence.
- Separate duties. One person initiates payments and another reconciles them; one prepares statements and another approves them.
- Automate. Connect the CRM, accounting software and ACH processors so payments, collections and RTR updates line up without manual uploads.
- Forecast. Model cash needs weeks or months ahead instead of only recording what already happened.
Strong internal reporting, he says, lets a funder spot shifts in repayment behavior early and respond by adjusting advance sizes, tightening collections or rebalancing syndication exposure.
Credibility with capital providers
As portfolios grow, investors, auditors and potential acquirers look harder. Roitblat says signed syndicator agreements, precise RTR recognition and clear merchant performance records become the basis of trust, and that clean GAAP-compliant books speed audits, strengthen valuations and ease investor onboarding. He adds that firms with sound accounting often find new credit lines and partnerships open up.
His closing test is readiness: whether a company's systems and reports can handle ten times the transactions without losing accuracy or visibility.
Roitblat can be reached at david@betteraccountingsolutions.com.
Source reporting: deBanked.
