Family & Children’s Place eliminates daily expense hurdles with Brex.

Manual expense reconciliation, receipt chasing, and a month to close the books

Federal funding drives most of Family & Children's Place's day-to-day operations, so thorough documentation and reporting are crucial. “I spend 95% of my time jumping through hoops to ensure we get the funding we've been awarded and can get new funding moving forward," explains Vice President of Finance Adam Faris.

When obtaining funding takes up most of your day, you can’t afford to run into complexity and manual processes when trying to spend it. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what was happening with their credit card provider, American Express. Maintaining compliance, reconciling spend, and month-end close were “painful.” A member of Adam's team had to download the monthly Amex statement in Excel format and create a list of transactions that needed documentation. She would then scan and attach physical receipts and chase down the rest, resulting in a 150-page PDF. Then, she would manually reconcile journal entries in NetSuite using scanned receipts in the PDF. This process took nearly a month after chasing down the last of the receipts.

"I always dreaded using my Amex card because it was such a pain to get receipts to the finance team, so I can only imagine how other employees felt," Adam shared. Family & Children's Place sought a modern card and expense solution with a real-time NetSuite integration to ease the burden on their finance team and employees.

Integrated cards and expenses, with a robust Netsuite integration

After finding Concur too expensive, Adam's team contacted their NetSuite implementation specialist at Oasis Solutions, who recommended Brex. Family & Children's Place was drawn to Brex’s integrated credit card and expense management platform hoping for a seamless, easy-to-use solution that could automate reconciliation and accelerate the month-end close.

Family & Children’s Place chose Brex for its integrated corporate credit cards, expense management, and NetSuite integration to streamline documentation and compliance reporting. “Brex’s implementation support was wonderful,” Adam says. “The technical integration worked seamlessly, and it was a simple process to get the plugins set up appropriately."

Adam spent three months testing Brex for himself, then rolled the product out to a few more employees, "and it just kind of exploded from there." He built spend limits and budgets, issued corporate cards to most employees, and set up Brex’s NetSuite integration.

“Brex eliminated the daily expense hurdles that were slowing us down.”

– Adam Faris, VP of Finance, Family & Children’s Place

Automated reconciliation, accelerated month-end close, and pain-free reporting

With Brex, maintaining necessary reporting and documentation is painless. “The flexibility in receipt attachment is enormous. It's so easy to forward a receipt by email or even take a picture and text it to Brex right away," Adam says. And if an employee is missing a receipt, the finance team can attach a note right to the transaction in Brex rather than chase them down.

Family & Children's Place has improved expense policy compliance to 97%, and the month-end close has become a continuous close, with the accounting team using Brex's NetSuite integration to regularly push transactions to its ERP. "Reconciling expenses used to be a 3- or 4-day process. With Brex's NetSuite integration, we're down to a few hours spread over the entire month."

Adam can even quickly reallocate funds to ensure employees can spend what they need when they need it. “Just yesterday, I got a call from one of our offsite trainings. I had created a spend limit on a card to cover the one-time cost of hotel registrations, and there had been a miscalculation. These employees were in the lobby and about to hit their limit to pay for one final room. Within three minutes, I logged into Brex, increased the limit, hit save, and they were able to pay and finalize check-in."

Since switching to Brex, Adam has fewer daily hoops to jump through to reconcile employee expenses and comply with federal funding mandates. “Brex eliminated the daily expense hurdles that were slowing us down,” Adam says. “What used to require hours of manual work for routine transactions now happens seamlessly. I also have everything in one place to meet our grant reporting mandates efficiently, which ensures we can secure the funding needed to continue our important mission.”