A Public Company Cannot Run on Sage 50 and a Workaround

ABOUT HEPION PHARMACEUTICALS

A NASDAQ-listed biopharma developing AI-driven therapies for liver disease

Hepion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: HEPA) is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Edison, New Jersey, developing AI-driven therapies for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and related chronic liver diseases. Its lead candidate, rencofilstat, received FDA Fast Track designation in 2021 and Orphan Drug designation for HCC in 2022, marking it as a clinically significant program in an area of significant unmet need.

As a NASDAQ-listed company with external auditors, clinical trial obligations, and multi-entity financial operations, Hepion carried governance requirements that went well beyond what its accounting infrastructure could support. Sage 50 was the general ledger. Bill.com handled payments. Neither was designed for a public company operating in a regulated industry, and the gap between what regulators and auditors expected and what the finance team could produce was growing every quarter.

Key Outcomes

1. Sage 50 – Fully replaced
2. Bill.com – Decommissioned
3. 0 – Manual reconciliation steps
4. Day 1 – Audit-ready operations

THE PROBLEM

Sage 50 was generating audit findings that repeated every year

Sage 50 is accounting software designed for small businesses. Hepion was a publicly traded clinical-stage company with multiple operating entities, an active clinical program, external auditors conducting annual PCAOB-standard reviews, and NASDAQ listing requirements for internal controls. The mismatch produced a predictable set of problems that recurred in every audit cycle because they were structural, not correctable by better process.

What Sage 50 could not do

1. Sage 50 could not support multi-entity financial operations natively, forcing the finance team to maintain separate books and consolidate manually outside the system
2. Internal controls within Sage 50 were insufficient to satisfy PCAOB audit standards, producing recurring findings related to approval authority and segregation of duties
3. There was no mechanism to enforce Delegation of Authority within the system, approval authority was managed by convention and documented after the fact rather than enforced at the point of commitment
4. Audit preparation required manually gathering supporting documentation from Sage 50, Bill.com, and supplementary spreadsheets, with no guarantee of internal consistency across sources

What Bill.com was adding to the problem

1. Vendor payments processed in Bill.com sat outside the general ledger, requiring a manual reconciliation step every period to match Bill.com payment records against Sage 50 entries
2. The lag between a payment being issued in Bill.com and the general ledger reflecting it created a persistent gap in cash visibility that made treasury management imprecise
3. Running two financial systems for a function that should be native to one ERP added administrative overhead, reconciliation risk, and an additional point of failure for the audit trail
4. Any payment made in Bill.com required a separate documentation trail that had to be manually linked back to the general ledger entry for auditor review

The core issue at Hepion was not that the finance team was undisciplined or the controls were inadequately designed. The issue was that the systems in use could not enforce the controls that a public company is required to demonstrate. Recurring audit findings on approval authority and segregation of duties cannot be resolved by training, they require a system that enforces the control at the point of the transaction.

THE IMPLEMENTATION

One system. No workarounds. Audit-ready from day one.

Archer Insights replaced Sage 50 and decommissioned Bill.com in a single implementation, establishing NetSuite as the complete financial operating environment for Hepion. The implementation was structured around three non-negotiable outcomes: multi-entity operations that run natively within one system, payment and banking that operate within the general ledger rather than alongside it, and internal controls that satisfy PCAOB audit standards without manual supplementation.

WHAT ARCHER REPLACED AND WITH WHAT

JP Morgan direct banking: eliminating Bill.com

The decision to decommission Bill.com rather than simply add NetSuite alongside it was deliberate. Archer's position is that payment processing and banking reconciliation belong inside the ERP, not in a third-party tool that requires ongoing synchronization. For Hepion, connecting JP Morgan directly within NetSuite meant that ACH and EFT payments were executed from within the general ledger, cleared transactions fed back on a daily automated basis, and cash position was accurate without manual reconciliation.

The audit implication was equally significant. Every payment now has a single, unbroken documentation chain: the approval in NetSuite, the payment instruction issued from NetSuite, the cleared transaction confirmed by the bank feed, and the reconciliation entry posted automatically. Auditors can follow that chain entirely within the ERP without requesting supplementary records from a third-party platform.

The practical test: what can an auditor see without asking the finance team for anything?

After the Archer implementation, an auditor with read access to Hepion's NetSuite environment can pull any vendor payment, see who approved it and when, confirm the bank cleared it, and verify the GL entry, all within a single system, without a single email to the finance team. That is what audit readiness actually means.

Multi-entity operations: consolidation without manual work

Hepion's multi-entity structure required each legal entity to maintain its own financial records while the parent company needed a consolidated view for external reporting. In the Sage 50 environment, this meant maintaining separate files and assembling the consolidated view manually each period. In NetSuite, each entity operates within its own sub-ledger within the same system, intercompany transactions are recorded and eliminated automatically, and the consolidated view is a real-time output of the system rather than a manual construction.

MODULES DEPLOYED

What Archer configured for Hepion

RESULTS

What changed for Hepion after go-live

THE ARCHER EDGE

Audit readiness is not a deliverable. It is an architecture decision.

Companies that treat audit readiness as a deliverable, a document they prepare before each audit cycle, spend disproportionate time and money on it every year. Companies that build audit readiness into their financial architecture produce the same documentation as a natural output of their normal operations, without any additional preparation effort.

Archer Insights designs NetSuite implementations around the principle that every financial transaction should be completely, automatically documented from the moment it is initiated. The approval, the commitment, the payment, the reconciliation, and the GL entry should all exist as a connected, system-generated chain that an auditor can follow without requesting a single supplementary document from the finance team.

For a NASDAQ-listed clinical-stage company with external auditors and limited finance team capacity, that principle is not aspirational. It is operational necessity.

Archer Insights is a five-time consecutive NetSuite Alliance Partner Spotlight Award winner (2022 through 2026), recognized by NetSuite specifically for its work in the BioTech and BioPharma sector. Every engagement is led by a team that works exclusively in life sciences and healthcare.

Call to Action

If your public company is still running on Sage 50 or carrying a third-party payment tool outside your GL, Archer can show you what a fully integrated, audit-ready financial infrastructure looks like.

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