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Learn how the world's first profitability platform for touring musicians — backed by a16z — used Puzzle to modernize bookkeeping workflows and amplify financial clarity.
"If you're a founder who needs automated, daily financial insights that enable you to focus on growth instead of bookkeeping, Puzzle is your answer." — Ashanti Abdullah, Founder and CEO of Ternwheel
After decades of managing artists across the music industry, Ashanti Abdullah identified a critical unmet need: musicians required real-time financial visibility while touring. He founded Ternwheel to solve this problem, but soon faced a similar challenge with his own startup.
Like many early-stage companies, Ternwheel didn't have modern accounting software, which led to Ashanti tracking burn and runway through bank statements. Consolidating this raw data into usable reports would often take multiple days, pulling Ashanti away from other growth initiatives. And by the time these reports were complete, most were already outdated. As Ternwheel started to gain early traction — attracting prominent investors such as Tier 1 venture funds like a16z — this lack of financial clarity became a roadblock to revenue growth.
Ashanti initially solved this problem by outsourcing bookkeeping to a CPA. While this decision bought back valuable time and ensured his books were in good hands, Ashanti didn't want to be fully detached from Ternwheel's finance function. He wanted to work collaboratively with his CPAs, gaining visibility into financial insights that would help him make data-informed growth decisions when it mattered most.
Fortunately, after observing one of his CPAs using Puzzle to manage Ternwheel's books during tax season, Ashanti realized he could use the software to gain more visibility and ownership over his bookkeeping process from end to end.
"Before Puzzle, we mostly tracked burn via bank statements and outsourced taxes to specialists. We knew this combination wasn't scalable, but the team needed a more user-friendly solution than QuickBooks or Wave."
Thanks to Puzzle's extensive integrations, Ashanti connected Ternwheel's entire finance stack (Ramp, Stripe, Mercury, and Plaid) in minutes, centralizing his data end-to-end.
He immediately benefited from Puzzle's AI-powered categorization, which automatically contextualizes Ternwheel's transaction history without manual input. Now, closing the books each month, a task that once consumed a whole day, takes less than 15 minutes. And when tax season arrives, Ashanti prepares a full year's financial records in a similar timeframe.
Puzzle doesn’t just help Ashanti efficiently close his books. With the Puzzle Dashboard, Ashanti has complete visibility into Ternwheel's cash position, net burn, runway, and revenue at any time. This clarity has made board reporting a much more straightforward process. Knowing his financial data is both current and accurate before walking into meetings is a feeling he describes as "priceless."
But what truly solidified Ashanti's trust in Puzzle was the customer support. When tax season rolled around, and he needed a new CPA, Puzzle connected Ashanti with a trusted professional through its accounting partner network in less than 30 minutes, eliminating a potentially lengthy research and vetting process.
"It's incredible how, within five minutes, Puzzle gives me complete financial visibility into my business. The dashboards show me exactly where I stand with burn, runway, MRR, and ARR. You just log in, and it's all there."
Since implementing Puzzle, Ashanti has transformed financial clarity from a burden to a competitive advantage. Tedious reporting tasks that previously took days now take mere minutes, delivering timely insights to both internal teams and investors.
With Puzzle now at the helm of his bookkeeping workflow, Ashanti can refocus his time and energy on what ultimately matters most as a founder: growing Ternwheel.
"Puzzle singlehandedly transformed our financial operations. Our numbers are always accurate, bookkeeping workflows take minutes to complete, and our team has much more time to focus on growth-related initiatives."
