Case study

Pathformance: Runway multiplied, decisions sped up

Industry
Ad tech SaaS
Employees
20-50
Financial tech stack
QuickBooks, Excel, internal dashboards

About Pathformance

Pathformance helps advertisers finally answer the question every CMO asks: is my media spend actually working?

They manage millions in ad budgets and hundreds of campaigns every month, with a mission to measure performance across tactics and channels in a consistent way. The company has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies four years in a row.

“Partnering with Fuel really gave us a strategic partner feel to our finances, where we were able to build out meaningful dashboards and scorecards that are important to us because it's custom.”

Elizabeth Johnson

Founder and CEO at Pathformance

Game-changing functionality

Dashboards
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Faster monthly close:

2x

Challenges

Elizabeth, CEO & Founder of Pathformance, grew up with finance in her DNA — her father was a CFO of a large insurance company. She also had a CFO on her team. But as the company scaled, their financial setup was still fragmented: QuickBooks reports, Excel workbooks, and dashboards stitched together manually.

That worked for a while. But once growth accelerated and millions in budgets were at stake, the cracks showed.

Customers

“We really needed to understand what was happening not only in real time, but also what’s coming forward."

Elizabeth Johnson

Founder and CEO at Pathformance

Solutions

With Fuelfinance, Pathformance turned fragmented spreadsheets into one source of truth.

QuickBooks integration & real-time dashboards

We immediately connected QuickBooks to Fuel’s system, cutting reporting delays and giving management real-time financial visibility. Pathformance got its first reliable dashboards in just 1 week, freeing their finance team immediately.

Granular unit economics by client & project

We gave the team insights into project profitability, average deal size, and margin erosion factors.

Faster monthly closes

Pathformance went from closing their books around the 25th of each month to the 9th — freeing the finance team from constant catch-up and letting leadership see the numbers almost two weeks earlier.

Cash flow forecasting & runway planning

 We built direct cash flow reporting, helping the team move add ~4 months of reserves.

Cleaner, more accurate books

We corrected accounting misclassifications, such as intangibles and accruals, to prevent distorted swings in profitability. This created a more reliable base for both investor discussions and internal decision-making.

Weekly strategic reviews

Beyond dashboards, our weekly calls focus on revenue trends and client retention — highlighting repeat brand losses, industry shifts, and marketing/sales opportunities in real time.

Results

The finance team closes books two weeks faster, sees project profitability instantly, and makes confident, data-driven decisions without waiting on manual reports.

Cash runway extended

Pathformance multiplied its cash reserves in only two months. This gave the leadership team breathing room to make strategic decisions instead of reacting under constant pressure.

Unit economics clarity that drives decisions

With full visibility into margins per client and project, Pathformance can now tie revenue dips to specific drivers (e.g., fewer projects vs. smaller deal sizes). This isn’t just a report — it guides strategy. For example, when margins came under pressure from costs, the team refocused on higher-margin project types.

Revenue analysis that feeds sales

We built functionality to show exactly what went right (or wrong) compared to the same quarter last year — like pinpointing seasonal campaigns or repeat brands that didn’t renew. That insight now fuels the sales team, who can chase specific leads to recapture lost accounts.

Investor-ready reporting

Pathformance team can now pull EBITDA, gross margin, or other key metrics instantly, without waiting days for manual calculations. This makes board meetings and investor discussions faster, more confident, and backed by clean, reliable data.

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