Top US bottling company increases spend control and visibility with Brex p-cards.

Uncontrolled p-card spend and manual expense processes

The leading independent bottling company in the South had a very manual and time-consuming expense management process. Expenses were managed through spreadsheets, and they used separate Wells Fargo and Bank of America cards for procurement and T&E spend, respectively. The company sought more visibility into its overall spending and wanted to improve data accuracy, control spend, and consolidate cards for travel and expenses as well as its procurement spend happening on purchase cards.

As a first step, they brought in Senior Procurement Manager Matt Bailey to assess how to improve operational efficiency across the procurement function. “Each location had their own procurement process, their own vendors, and their own ways of paying and processing purchase orders,” Matt said. “Wells Fargo purchase cards were assigned to locations, so most people shared them. You had no idea who was using the card or what all the charges were for. And it was a huge problem because we had a massive amount of p-card spend.”

Matt estimates the bottling company had close to 10% of its indirect spend on p-cards — the highest of its parent company’s 10 global business units and much higher than the typical 1%-2% for procurement orgs. The lack of visibility into such a high-volume spend concerned the ownership group and raised flags during an internal audit. “The auditors straight-up told us, ‘we don’t actually know who’s spending money.’ So if there were fraudulent transactions, we’d have no idea who’s making them.”

The bottling company also wanted to better manage how employees buy from certain vendors. “With Wells Fargo, we could block vendors using their Merchant Category Code but we had to block them completely. So no one could buy anything from them, which isn’t what we want.”

Managing company T&E spend wasn’t any more efficient than procurement spend. And when Matt first got hired, he wanted to submit his mileage for reimbursement. “They handed me a printed Excel spreadsheet. I couldn’t believe it — I had to write in the mileage, do the calculations, and physically take it to my boss for his signature. I immediately began searching for a solution.”

Replace multiple card programs and spreadsheets with Brex

Matt said the company considered Concur and other popular expense management software but ultimately chose Brex corporate cards, including purchase cards, and expense management, for one main reason.

“The biggest problem with most spend management solutions is that your credit card is separate,” Matt said. “So you would swipe your card to pay for dinner, but it could be days before the charge shows up in your expense management tool. With Brex, you can see the transaction in the Brex app while you’re still at the table and wrap up that expense almost immediately.”

That's because the Brex card is natively integrated with Brex's expense management software. And Brex automates IRS-compliant receipt and memo capture and categorization, auto-routes to the right approvers, and accelerates reconciliation by adding departments, projects, and GLs automatically. Brex even adds attendees to corresponding transactions based on their calendar events.

The bottling company also leverages Brex's integration with Workday, which allows for faster onboarding of new employees. “We use the Workday integration to load new employees, and it’s so crucial. We can get a card shipped to them the day they start,” Matt said.

Further, Brex cards can flex to be any type of card — procurement, T&E, fleet, stipend, and more — with spend limits and built-in controls tailored to specific needs. These controls can be set at the category, merchant, or even transaction level, enabling companies to differentiate T&E and procurement spend seamlessly using a single card.

“We easily separated T&E and procurement using Brex’s spend limits. For example, any team with a procurement limit can buy from Amazon without trouble, while anyone trying to purchase from Amazon using a T&E limit is automatically blocked. Traditional credit card programs cannot offer the same flexibility and built-in controls as the Brex card.”

“It used to take our parts manager 2 days a month to reconcile transactions on his Wells Fargo p-card. With Brex, he can do it in minutes.”

— Matt Bailey, Senior Procurement Manager, leading independent bottling company in the South

1,000 hours saved on expenses and p-card reconciliation in minutes

Brex’s integrated card and expense management solution gives the leading independent bottling company in the South greater visibility and control over its high-volume procurement spending, enabling it to easily restrict vendors and categories at a granular level.

This enhanced visibility helped address a key internal audit concern: curbing card misuse and preventing fraud. “Two months after going live with Brex, we fired someone for buying personal things on their Brex card,” Matt said. “They didn’t understand how much more visibility we had with Brex.”

Matt estimates Brex’s expense management automation helps 500 sales reps save 1-2 hours every week filling out expense reports and further improves the employee experience with faster reimbursements.

“The old reimbursement process took 2-3 weeks to pay employees back. With Brex, it’s just a few days, which is huge for employee satisfaction. We've actually seen an uptick in the number of T&E expenses filed because people were just paying out of pocket before. It just wasn’t worth it for them to do all the paperwork for 10 bucks.”

Matt says Brex had an even greater impact on procurement card users. The bottling company handles hundreds of monthly transactions for shop materials, tools, tires, and parts from suppliers like AutoZone, O’Reilly’s, and Advance Auto Parts. Before Brex, managing this volume of purchases created a mountain of paperwork.

“One of our parts managers spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on his p-card. It used to take him 2 days a month to reconcile transactions on his Wells Fargo p-card. With Brex, he can do it in minutes. Plus, Brex p-cards deliver the speed of a credit card with PO-like controls and approval flows. That’s huge when a machine is down and we're waiting on that part.”

And thanks to Brex, the company’s accounting team can move faster with more accurate data. “Brex provides much higher-quality data than Wells Fargo,” Matt said. “Fewer transactions are miscategorized or hit the wrong period, and our spend reaches our ERP cleaner, saving our accounting team hours each month.”

Whether it’s a mileage reimbursement for a meeting two hours away, a $30,000 parts purchase, or travel to an industry conference in Thailand, Matt appreciates the power and simplicity Brex card and expense management bring to his organization.

“We consolidated two credit card platforms and one very manual expense management process into a single solution in Brex. With Brex, I get much greater control and visibility as a procurement manager, and as a company, we can more effectively manage our global business spend.”