How Smokeball Uses AI to Turn Revenue Data into Decisions, and Scale Finance Ops Without Adding Headcount

Company Smokeball
Description AI-powered legal practice management software
Industry Software
HQ Sydney, Australia
Use Cases revenue recognition, reporting and insights, audit-readiness, scaling without new headcount
Leapfin User Since 2024

Executive Summary

  • AI-powered speed and revenue performance insight – Using AI agent Luca to generate reports, surface insights, and build automation workflows.
  • Finance as a strategic partner – Sharing real-time strategic insights with GTM teams.
  • Headcount efficiency – Leapfin eliminated the need for at least one additional hire per year. 
  • Close time cut from 15 days to 3 – Revenue data now available day-of, not days later.
  • Audit-ready confidence – Complete audit trail and documentation available instantly.
  • Balance sheet reconciled to the penny – Every month, every line item, in under 30 minutes.
  • Reliable paying-user reporting – Clear, accurate insight into recognized users vs. CRM data.

A forward-looking Finance team inside a fast-growing legal tech company

Smokeball helps law firms work smarter with AI-powered legal practice management software. Inside the company, its Finance team embodies that same drive for efficiency and innovation.

When Director of Finance Art Garza saw how Leapfin could unify their operational data and use AI to automate complex revenue logic and surface insights instantly, he recognized an opportunity not just to modernize their accounting, but to elevate it.

  • We didn’t adopt Leapfin just to fix a problem. We wanted to find a better way – to move faster, be more accurate, and give the team more control.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

Today, Smokeball’s Finance team uses Leapfin to automate revenue recognition and turn revenue truth into business decisions. They have cut close time by more than a week, consistently reconcile to the penny, and keep up with business growth and transaction scale without adding headcount.

Here’s their story.

Challenges

1. Manual accounting processes that couldn’t keep up with business shifts

Smokeball’s growth outpaced its systems. The team tracked revenue calculations and deferred balances in sprawling Excel workbooks.

  • It was taking us 12 to even 15 business days to close the books. By the time we were reviewing results, the business had already moved on.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

The manual work also limited finance’s ability to engage in forward-looking conversations with leadership.

“Finance needs to have a voice. When we’re talking about things that happened a month ago, that voice doesn’t carry the same weight.”.

Art Garza

2. Tools that promised automation – but slowed things down

In search of efficiency, Smokeball implemented Stripe Rev Rec, expecting tighter automation. The result: new complexity.

  • We signed up with Stripe based on promises of what was coming. But our edge cases broke their logic, and I never fully trusted the entries.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

Each month’s revenue calc still required line-by-line validation, and the process often couldn’t even start until two business days after month-end.

3. Finance operating one step behind

By the time the books were closed, business leaders were already onto the next month’s priorities.

“Our insights were always delayed. Conversations about revenue or performance didn’t have the same impact because decisions had already been made.”

Art Garza

Art and his VP, Ben, saw the need for a more scalable, proactive model – one that empowered Finance to lead, not lag.

The turning point: Building for scale and control

Smokeball’s Finance team didn’t want to outsource its accounting logic – it wanted to own it.

When Art discovered Leapfin, what stood out wasn’t just speed. It was control.

  • When I saw that we could define our own journal entries and map them to our chart of accounts, I knew this was the right fit. Leapfin lets us build the logic ourselves and trust the results.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

That control also meant scalability without constant headcount growth.

“Our team is lean. Leapfin helps us handle the work of a larger team and frees people to focus on more impactful work.”

Art Garza

Results

1. Turning data into decisions

Leapfin became Smokeball’s single source of revenue truth, especially for one of its most important metrics: Paying Users.

“Our CRM shows MRR, but too many people touch it. Leapfin shows the real number – the users we actually recognize revenue from.”

Art Garza

That clarity enables proactive conversations with Sales and Customer Success.

  • Now we can tell Sales, ‘Here’s the product mix driving growth’ or ‘This add-on sells best.’ Those insights come directly from Leapfin.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

2. Scaling without adding headcount

Automation and insight combined to eliminate manual bottlenecks and relieve team pressure.

  • Leapfin significantly increases our team capacity, delaying or eliminating the need to consistently add new headcount.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

3. A faster month-end close and a stronger voice

With Leapfin, Smokeball no longer waits two days for Stripe calculations. Revenue data is available instantly, and the monthly close finishes in a fraction of the time.

  • We used to spend five or six days on revenue recognition. Now, we’re posted and reviewing the full P&L and balance sheet on day three.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

That acceleration gave finance new capacity to think and lead.

  • Before, I was buried in line items. Now I’m telling stories about what the data means. Leapfin turned me from a transactional accountant into a strategic business partner.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

4. Audit-ready in record time

A recent round of investment carried a stipulation that Smokeball would conduct annual audits. The first of those full audits just took place last month, and Art was surprised at the increased level of detailed requests for transaction-level data. But the team was ready to respond to requests immediately, and confident that every figure would stand up to scrutiny.

“Before Leapfin, unwinding transactions to answer some of these questions would’ve taken forever. Now there’s a complete audit trail. No interpretation. No guessing. From a revenue perspective, we were fully prepared, and that peace of mind is priceless.”

Art Garza

5. Reconciled to the penny

Leapfin’s rule-based automation – powered by their specialized AI agent, Luca – ensures every revenue and deferred balance aligns precisely. What used to be a weeklong chore is now a quick validation step.

  • Our balance sheet is reconciled to the penny every month. Deferred revenue and prepaid expense accounts are done in 30 minutes flat.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

Embracing AI with Luca

Smokeball’s Finance team quickly saw the benefits of Luca, Leapfin’s specialized AI agent. Art’s journey with Luca mirrors many finance professionals’ evolution from curiosity to confidence. Now, he relies on Luca regularly for reporting and analysis.

  • I honestly wasn’t thinking a lot about AI. But it just took using Luca that first time to realize how much it could do. Any report I need, I build it with Luca. I pull them weekly and it keeps saving me more time.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

Looking ahead, Art’s eager to let Luca handle automation workflows.

“The next thing I’m looking forward to is Luca building accounting and enrichment automation rules for us. It gives me confidence that no matter what changes, we can handle it.”

Art Garza

Luca has helped Smokeball’s team expand capacity, sharpen accuracy, and accelerate insight, without adding complexity or risk.

The human side: Partnership and support

Leapfin’s partnership approach made an immediate impression.

“I asked some pretty ridiculous questions along the way, and the team was always patient, thorough, and supportive. Leapfin’s expertise gave me total confidence in what we were building.”

Art Garza

Looking ahead: Forward thinking, backward planning

Leapfin’s visibility has inspired operational improvements beyond finance.

Art’s advice for others captures his philosophy:

  • We started thinking about how to set up products differently so we could automate billing end-to-end. Leapfin showed us inefficiencies we didn’t even know we had.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

Art’s advice for others captures his philosophy:

  • It’s forward thinking and backward planning – understand where your company is going, and build your systems for that future state. Leapfin has proven it can scale with us and those are the solutions we want in our finance stack.
    Art Garza Director of Finance, Smokeball

Key takeaways

  • Finance team elevated from transactional to strategic
  • Empowered with AI to build revenue reports and automation workflows 
  • Scaling efficiently without adding headcount
  • Close time reduced from 15 days to 3
  • Audit-ready data confidence – full traceability down to the transaction
  • Automated, accurate reconciliations in under 30 minutes
  • True single source of revenue truth

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