Budget variance %
Top CRO KPI by sponsors
Life Sciences · Contract Research Organizations
Every study is a financial project. Most CROs aren't running it like one.
CROs manage investigator grants, pass-through reimbursables, milestone billing, and multi-currency site payments across dozens of active studies simultaneously — often from disconnected systems built for simpler business models. Archer configures NetSuite to give CROs the project accounting, billing automation, and sponsor-audit-ready controls their sponsors increasingly expect.
Invoice dispute rate
Critical sponsor satisfaction metric
Multi-currency
Across global site networks
Pass-through
Costs must be recovered with documentation
Milestone + T&M
Often in the same study contract
Where CRO financial management breaks down
Multi-sponsor, multi-study finance is where disconnected systems create the most damage.
When pass-through costs aren't captured with documentation, sponsors dispute them. When milestone billing requires manual verification, invoices are late. When study-level cost data and financial records are in different systems, profitability analysis is always backward-looking. Modern CROs competing on digital maturity can't afford these structural inefficiencies.
Study-level cost segregation that depends on manual allocation
Investigator fees, site costs, central lab pass-throughs, and direct labor must be allocated by study — with no cross-contamination between sponsors. At volume, manual allocation creates reconciliation burden and billing disputes that damage sponsor relationships.
Invoice errors and budget variance disputes are among the top KPIs sponsors use to evaluate CRO performance
Pass-through billing that loses documentation in the process
Investigator grants, IRB fees, travel reimbursements, and central lab costs must be captured, approved, and billed back with documentation that satisfies sponsor reconciliation requirements. When that process is manual, documentation gaps lead to disputed invoices and delayed reimbursement.
Under-documented pass-through costs are a primary source of CRO-sponsor billing disputes
Global site networks that multiply reconciliation complexity
Multi-currency transactions, local site expenses, and intercompany recharges across a global site network introduce consolidation complexity that most financial systems handle through spreadsheet bridges — adding days to the close cycle every month.
CROs with global site networks lose significant close-cycle time to manual multi-currency reconciliation
Revenue recognition that requires manual intervention every period
Study revenue recognized over project life — by milestone completion, patient enrollment, or percentage of work performed — requires revenue schedules that update automatically as study progress is reported. Without automation, every period-end is a manual calculation exercise.
Modern CROs are transitioning from legacy spreadsheets to unified financial platforms as a competitive requirement
Built for multi-sponsor CRO financial operations
The tools that automate study finance from contract execution through close.
Archer's module set addresses the billing, documentation, and project accounting complexity that defines CRO finance — replacing manual workarounds with NetSuite-native workflows that scale with study volume.
Archer Module
Contract Lifecycle Management
End-to-end management of master service agreements, study-level task orders, and budget amendments — with milestone billing schedules, budget tracking, and renewal workflows built into NetSuite. Every active study has its own contract record, revenue schedule, and billing timeline.
Archer Module
HCP Mobile Expense
Mobile expense capture for CRAs, investigators, and site staff — with study-level coding, policy enforcement, and automated routing for pass-through approval and sponsor billing. Expenses captured at source with the documentation sponsors require for reimbursement.
Archer Module
Approvals Workflow
Multi-level approval routing for investigator grants, pass-through expenses, study-level POs, and capital equipment — with immutable audit trails that document every authorization decision across the organization and satisfy sponsor audit requirements.
Archer Module
Accruals Management
Automated accrual calculations for study costs, investigator payment obligations, and pass-through liabilities — with documented journal entry logic that closes the gap between when obligations are incurred and when they appear in the financial statements.
What becomes possible
Study finance that runs itself — and holds up under sponsor scrutiny.
When every study has its own project record, revenue schedule, and pass-through documentation workflow in NetSuite, the CRO operates with the financial transparency that sponsors increasingly require — and that competitors without purpose-built infrastructure can't match.
Study-level
P&L for every active program
Profitability visibility that improves pricing decisions
Direct costs, allocated overhead, pass-throughs, and milestone revenue tracked by study in NetSuite — giving operations and finance real data on which study types, therapeutic areas, and sponsor relationships are actually profitable, before the next RFP is submitted.
Fewer
Sponsor billing disputes
Invoices that arrive documented, on time, and correct
Milestone billing schedules that trigger automatically, pass-through costs captured with source documentation, and study-level cost reports generated directly from NetSuite — reducing the invoice disputes that erode sponsor relationships and consume finance team time.
Faster
Multi-currency close
Global site consolidation without the spreadsheet bridge
Multi-currency transactions converted, intercompany recharges eliminated, and consolidated financial statements produced from NetSuite without manual assembly — cutting the close cycle time that global site networks currently add to every period end.
Get started
Ready to run study finance on infrastructure built for its complexity?
Schedule a discovery call with Archer. We'll assess your current environment and show you what purpose-built NetSuite configuration looks like for CROs managing your volume of active studies.