How Ellipsis AI cut expense management from 2 hours to 10 minutes

Too much time spent on admin, instead of building

Before Brex, Hunter Brooks was drowning in financial administration that was taking focus away from building his product. "The pain was like a four out of five," Hunter says. "It was a pain to do all this stuff in addition to building a product."

The manual process was extensive and error-prone. Hunter tracked every expense in Notion, which "got super messy," making it impossible to search through previous expenses effectively. The administrative burden was substantial: "I spent two hours at the end of every week just figuring out all of the expenses I did and uploading them into Notion and then eventually into Mercury."

For a B2B SaaS startup spending primarily on software subscriptions and tools, this time drain was particularly frustrating. "You want to spend your time on your business and your product and your customers," Hunter says, highlighting how financial administration was pulling focus from core business activities.

One platform to automate the busywork

Brex became the obvious choice for Ellipsis AI, with Hunter noting the platform's strong penetration in the Y Combinator ecosystem. The transition was smooth, with Hunter appreciating the instant virtual card provisioning and responsive account management and underwriting team that raised their credit limit before their Y Combinator funds even landed.

The automated features in Brex, like bill pay and receipt capture, immediately made an impact. "One feature that I particularly like that saved me a lot of time is the automatic info extraction from invoices on the expense flow," Hunter shares. This OCR functionality eliminated manual data entry, while the intuitive interface made expense management straightforward.

Brex also provided peace of mind through security and fraud protection features. When Hunter heard about a company losing funds due to unsecured ACH settings, he easily enabled Brex's allowlist feature. "That took like five minutes and gave me a lot of peace of mind," he recalls, noting that a competing platform didn't even offer this capability at the time.

“I used to spend 2 hours a week on expenses, now it's 10 minutes with Brex. It just works.”

— Hunter Brooks, CEO at Ellipsis AI

More time to focus on building an amazing product

The results were instant. Hunter says “With Brex, I went from spending two hours a week on managing expenses to less than 10 minutes”. That’s a 92% reduction in time spent on financial administration, freeing up nearly two hours weekly to focus on product development and customer acquisition.

The streamlined process has been particularly valuable as Ellipsis scales rapidly. With 30% month-over-month growth, efficient financial operations has become increasingly critical. "Brex just works," Hunter emphasizes, "I don't have to spend any time on any of the busywork typically associated with admin stuff. I have better things to do."

The partnership extends beyond financial services. Brex has a partner perks marketplace, where Ellipsis offers their bottom-tier product (typically $20 per developer per month) free for a year to Brex customers. With 15 customers already redeeming this offer within the first month, this strategic partnership is driving meaningful customer acquisition.

Hunter summarized the transformation: "As a founder, you want to de-risk things. You want to spend your time on your business and your product and your customers. If you use Brex, all that tedium goes away."

For growing startups where every hour matters, Brex eliminates the administrative friction that can slow momentum, allowing founders to focus on what drives their business forward.