Why Caydem
Run the Company Like the Buyer of It
Every owner is building a business to be valuable. Caydem keeps your books by the measures a buyer, a banker, or an auditor will one day score you on — an immutable ledger, real dimensions, a structured close, and controls that bind everyone — so books that are ready to be examined become a side effect of running the business well.
All of it with enterprise-grade depth and your data in your own database — without the cost, complexity, or lock-in of a big ERP.
What Makes Caydem Different
Six differences that are built into the foundation — not features that can be bolted on later.
- The system of record — not a scratchpad
- Once an entry is posted, it stays posted. Corrections are explicit reversals, never silent edits — so a reconciled period stays reconciled and last year’s numbers don’t change behind your back. Most small-business tools let you reopen a posted transaction and quietly rewrite history. Caydem won’t — and the rule is enforced in the database itself, not just in application code.
- Dimensions, not a single “class”
- Tag every line by department, location, class, and project — and report across any of them. Stop encoding your business into account-number sprawl, sub-customers, or memo fields. Industry add-ons register more on the same spine — the automotive and RV module adds a unit dimension, so every entry can trace to the specific unit it belongs to.
- Built for the close and the audit
- A guided month-end, period locking that blocks back-dated edits, and a scoped CPA portal with a PBC list and sampling — give the auditor exactly what they need and nothing more. Changes to core documents — invoices, bills, payments — and to every approval request are logged with the actor, the before and after values, and the reason. The numbers you report stay the numbers of record.
- Your data, your deployment
- Run Caydem on your own hardware or let us run it for you. Either way, each company lives in its own schema in a database you can own outright — not a shared tenant in someone else’s cloud you can never leave. Row-level security policies scoped by company are defined on every domain and ledger table. Backup and restore are built into the app, so taking your data with you is something you do, not something you request.
- Controls that bind everyone — including the owner
- Every mutating action checks a permission before it runs — enforced at a single choke point in the code, not written down in a policy nobody reads. Segregation of duties is a rule engine wired into the approval path: whoever created a document cannot be the one who approves it, and the company owner role is no exception. Turning a rule off is possible, but it is an explicit act — never a silent bypass. Identity is managed centrally, so access stays consistent and revocable across every company.
- Your industry, layered on — not forked in
- The add-on mechanism is built and running today — a module registers its own dimension types, owns its own namespaced tables, and runs hooks inside core transactions without altering the accounting core. Automotive and RV came first: units as a first-class dimension, retail and wholesale sales posting straight to the ledger, and ownership history that survives resale. You get specialized workflows without a one-off product that can never be updated, and without paying consultants to customize an ERP.
How it compares
Between Outgrown and Overkill
Most companies face a false choice: stay on small-business tools they’ve outgrown — QuickBooks, Xero, spreadsheets — or take on an enterprise ERP implementation like NetSuite, Sage Intacct, or Dynamics 365. Caydem holds the enterprise column’s structure at a fraction of its cost and none of its project risk.
| Small-business accounting | Caydem | Enterprise ERP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Posted transactions | Editable after the fact, often silently | Immutable out of the box — corrected only by an explicit reversal | Controls exist, but enforcement is a configuration decision |
| Analytical tracking | One “class,” or two tracking categories | Department, location, class, and project — all first-class, included | Available — depth varies by edition and setup |
| Period close | Soft close or manual discipline | Guided close with reconciliation sign-offs and period locking, included | Often a separate module or third-party add-on |
| Controls and approvals | Broad roles — a second signature means buying another tool | Segregation of duties enforced out of the box — even for the owner | Available, but designed and maintained by consultants |
| The external audit | Hand over a read-only login — or the whole file | Scoped CPA portal with PBC list and sampling, included | An access role and report set someone has to build |
| Where your data lives | The vendor’s cloud, on the vendor’s terms | Your database — self-hosted or managed, your choice | The vendor’s cloud; leaving is an extraction project |
| Multiple entities | Separate logins and per-company upsells | Many companies, each in its own isolated schema, in one application | Supported — often licensed per subsidiary |
| Time and cost to live | Cheap to start — outgrown on control and structure | Install and post the same day, starting at $495 per month | Months of implementation; six-figure budgets are common |
Comparison reflects common configurations of small-business accounting tools and cloud ERP suites, and is provided for general guidance. Product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
Making the move
Outgrowing QuickBooks?
As Intuit steers businesses off QuickBooks Desktop, Caydem is built to be where your books go next. We extract your QuickBooks history — accounts, customers, vendors, and transactions — from live files in production today, and the Caydem import replays that history as first-class ledger entries, not opening balances: real conversions have posted tens of thousands of documents in minutes. A to-the-penny trial-balance reconciliation is the bar every migration has to clear before we call it done. Our team will work the migration with you.
See the Difference in Your Own Books
Install Caydem, connect your database, and post your first entry on real data.