April 11, 2026
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HiSmile is one of those companies that makes the growth story look effortless from the outside. Asingle oral care product launched online, a brand built through social channels, and overnight, a global operation spanning multiple countries, retail shelves, and an expanding product range.
Behind that story, of course, is a finance function that had to evolve just as fast. We sat down with Adin Kenavan, Senior Accountant at HiSmile and President of YP Gold Coast, to talk about what that evolution looked like. The problems, the process, and what he’d tell other finance teams going through the same thing.
HiSmile has grown from a pure e-commerce business into a multi-entity operation selling across Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Europe. For the finance team, that kind of growth is a series of compounding complexity problems.
“Starting from a very single core product, e-commerce brand to now essentially trying to operate within the entire oral care industry,” Adin explains. “Multiple revenue streams, multiple jurisdictions – we sell into the US, Canada, New Zealand, Europe, and we’re looking to move into more markets. All of that added a layer of complexity.”
The management report pack that worked at the beginning – built in Excel, straight forward, effective – was still technically functional. But the overhead of maintaining it had grown dramatically. Each month it took longer. Each new entity added another import, another reconciliation, another opportunity for something to go wrong.
There wasn’t a single catastrophic moment where everything fell apart. It was gradual. The reports were taking too long, and the manual process introduced enough risk that the team wasn’t comfortable sharing outputs with external stakeholders – banks, consultants, advisors – without extensive checking first.
“Because of the errors that can come with manually processing datain Excel, there’s just risks that we’re not prepared to take to directors and more importantly to external stakeholders such as banks,” Adin says.
The specific trigger was intercompany transactions. Every time anumber changed in one entity – a recoded transaction, an adjusted accrual – the ripple effect through the consolidated spreadsheet was disproportionate. What should have been a two-minute fix in Xero turned into an hour or more of reconciliation work as the change flowed through linked sheets, manual journals, and formula-dependent tabs.
Do that three or four times a month and you’ve lost an entire day torework. Scale that across a growing number of entities and the math stops working.
The evaluation process was methodical. The team needed something that could connect directly to their Xero entities, handle multi-currency consolidation reliably, and produce report outputs professional enough for external stakeholder use – not just internal management.
Fathom ticked those boxes. But the deciding factor, Adin says, was the practical test they ran during the free trial period.
“We kind of approached it from the perspective of: at the very base minimum, we will see a net positive impact if Fathom can do nothing else but recreate the exact same report. So I sat down two weeks leading up to month endand said: I’m going to try and set up a report that looks exactly like and mirrors the previous month’s financial report.”
That’s the test. Not “can this tool do everything we might ever want?” – but “can it replicate what we already have, reliably, faster? ”Everything else is secondary until that bar is cleared.
It was. The numbers matched. The process was faster. The team had confidence in the controls. That was enough to make the switch.
The most immediate difference was time. Adin estimates the team saves at least a day or two per reporting period – time previously spent on manual consolidation, rework, and formula maintenance. That aligns closely with Fathom’s own data, which shows multi-entity customers saving an average of twelve hours per period.
But the more significant change was risk reduction. With data syncing directly from Xero into a templated report structure, the errors that came from manual imports simply disappeared. Eliminations are configured, not calculated by hand. Currency conversions are handled consistently. The team can share outputs externally with confidence.
The team also stayed lean. HiSmile didn’t need to hire additional headcount to manage the growing reporting complexity – Fathom absorbed the additional workload that more entities would otherwise have created.
“It certainly allowed our team to remain lean and dynamic and tochew through extra data and more processes than we otherwise would have,” Adin explains. “If there weren’t any options to move away from Excel, then we probably would have to be in the position where it’s like – okay, we need another set of hands.”
For teams thinking about making a similar shift, Adin’s advice is practical and reassuring: don’t try to do everything at once, don’t throw out what’s working, and start by replicating.
Run both processes concurrently for one period. If the outputs match, you’ve validated the new system. Then you can start adding – custom KPIs, additional visualizations, more sophisticated analysis – from a foundation you trust.
He’s also clear about involving the people who use the reports inthe design process. At HiSmile, directors and key managers are active participants throughout month end – not just recipients of the final report. That proximity means the report doesn’t need to do all the explanatory heavy lifting. The conversations have already happened; the report confirms what’s been discussed.
For teams without that level of in-person collaboration, report design matters more. Start with what executives care about. Keep the top level simple and clear. Make detail available for those who want it, without forcing everyone to wade through it.
HiSmile’s finance function isn’t standing still. The team is now using Fathom to build work papers and operational schedules that previously lived in Excel – applying the same logic of “set it up once, run it everymonth” to a wider range of finance processes.
“It may take a day to set up,” Adin says of building a new schedulein Fathom. “But if it’s going to take two minutes to run as a work paper every month moving forward, then you’re kind of infinitely saving time.”
That’s the compounding effect of getting the infrastructure right. Every process you systematize, every manual step you eliminate, adds to the capacity of the team. And in a business growing as fast as HiSmile, thatcapacity is everything.
Want to try for yourself? Start your free trial.
Ellie is a campaign marketing manager at Fathom, with a degree in branding and marketing. With a background in campaign strategy and creation, Ellie is passionate about showcasing how Fathom can make a real difference to finance professionals and businesses.
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