When Tyler Caskey joined a professional services firm as CFO, he inherited a finance function weighed down by ERP: time sheets were manual (created in Excel or even hand-written), invoicing was offline, and it was used only for AP and statutory reporting.
The ERP was seen as a badge of scale, something a âseriousâ business needed, but Tyler quickly realised it was overkill.
To make matters worse, the firm was already a year into a âmodernisationâ project, migrating to Deltek, another ERP. This had cost hundreds of thousands in fees and, within a month of go-live, core processes started breaking. Tyler knew the project was headed for disaster.
He proposed a complete reset, moving to Xero + apps and, three months later, the business was running smoothly on a system that the finance team could own and understand.
Since then, as a Partner at TheBeanCounters, Tyler has helped many organisations make this same shift.
His ongoing work helping teams migrate to Xero proves that true control, accuracy and speed donât come from complex ERPs, they come from connection, simplicity and ownership with Xero + apps.
The ERP experience
When Tyler first joined the professional services business, the ERP setup was a patchwork of manual processes and inefficiency.
âThey had Microsoft Dynamics, which sounded great on paper. In reality, people were still keying in time sheets manually, bills were entered one by one, and reporting was done in Excel.â
The ERP existed mainly for compliance.
âWe were using it just for statutory reporting and accounts payable. There was no automation, no ATO connection, no live data. It felt like we were running two systems.â
Despite these frustrations, the leadership team was convinced that an ERP was the mark of a mature business.
âThey were in the mindset that, because they were a 100-person firm, they had to be on something big and expensive. But most of what we needed could have been done with much simpler tools.â
The systemâs complexity left the finance team dependent on external consultants for even the smallest change.
âIf we wanted to change a report layout, it required a ticket, a quote and a two-week turnaround. We had no ownership of our own data.â
The experience made it clear to Tyler that there was an issue.
The Deltek debacle
Whatâs more, the business was already a year into another costly ERP migration: from Microsoft Dynamics to Deltek.
Weekly consultant meetings, endless scoping sessions, and hundreds of thousands of dollars had been sunk into the project.
âHundreds of thousands of dollars installation. Half desktop, half cloud: data wasnât syncing properly.â
The setup was unstable from day one.
Staff were quickly frustrated and basic processes werenât working properly.
In the first week after go-live, the AP run failed completely.
âThe ABA file wouldnât download and the remittance wouldn't send. We would have had to pay $3,000 to get a remittance designed. It just didnât feel right.â
Making the call
After a month of firefighting in Deltek, Tyler emailed the CEO.
âWeâve made a bad decision.â
Tyler proposed a review with the operational leads, telling them:
âGive me two days to come up with a solution.â
Two days later, he presented a new stack:
Xero + WorkflowMax for time & billing + Xero Me for expenses
The board approved.
The ERP rollout was scrapped within a month after go live.
The rebuild
Within weeks, the business was live on Xero, and the change was immediate.
âAccounts payables went from hours to minutes.â
WorkflowMax replaced a bloated project module and expense management was rebuilt with Xero Me.
âAdding Xero Me took an hour. I wrote a one-page guide and we were away.â
The teamâs relief was clear.
âOne team member actually hugged me: âThank you for not making me scan all my expenses at the photocopier to get reimbursed!ââ
This was Tylerâs first full-scale turnaround.
âIf it didnât work, I was going to be in trouble,â he laughs.
He also layered in Power BI for reporting.
The result? A finance team that could fully own its system, with zero consultant dependence.
Scaling the model
This model became a blueprint for Tyler.
He has since moved into a consultant role as Partner at TheBeanCounters, helping a wide variety of businesses reap the same rewards.
For a restaurant group with multiple entities and hundreds of staff members, Tyler found a finance team bogged down in NetSuite.
âThey were closing month end on day 20.â
With payroll already on Employment Hero, Tyler moved them to Xero + Fathom for group reporting.
âMonth end went from day 20 to day 6, then day 4!â
Even the ERP-native CFO of the group was a convert.
âOnce he realised how in control he was, he turned very pro.â
Then, at a $100m+ construction group with 10 entities, Tyler replaced Attache + MYOB with Xero + Mayday + dataSights + Fathom.
The change made life much easier, and even revealed inaccuracies.
âFour material account codes were missing from the monthly reporting, and it was hundreds of thousands off.â
And Mayday fixed long-standing intercompany issues.
âConnecting their loans exposed errors going back years. Even their tax accountant said, âMayday is awesome.ââ
Why Xero wins
Tyler explains the true benefit of Xero:
âAdding Employment Hero to NetSuite took three to four hours. Adding Employment Hero to Xero took 15 minutes!â
No consultants, no delays, and no proposals required to tweak a report.
âThey came out to change a P&L format and wanted a proposal; why?â
With Xeroâs modular ecosystem, finance teams have the ability to adapt and evolve easily and effectively.
âYou lose the anxiety of being wrong. The visibility gives you control.â
Lessons learned
Tyler is clear on these lessons:
- Donât default to an ERP
- Test your problems before you buy platforms
- Listen to your end users: if they hate it, it fails
- Simplicity scales. Small systems can do big things
- Own your data, because control builds confidence
- And above all: the future belongs to tech stacks that evolve with the business
đ If youâre an ERP Survivor, weâd love to hear your story.
Reach out to emily.lockyer@getmayday.com
.png?upscale=true&width=1196&upscale=true&name=Untitled%20design%20(42).png)
