Finfuego spends 60% less time doing expenses on Brex and Puzzle

Manual expense tracking and unscalable bookkeeping

Finfuego’s initial setup ran all of their spend through separate banks and spreadsheet workflows. Expenses lived in statements and unsynced files. It worked at a very small scale, but was time consuming and fragile. “All of our cash flowed through Bank of America, and I manually tracked expenses on Excel. It was incredibly labor-intensive,” shared Bekah Fields, Operations Engineer at Finfuego.

Once more employees came on board, the team wanted purchasing cards with spend controls that they could set proactively and employee cards for day-to-day purchases. Bekah’s team also needed a clearer view of cash and expenses across accounts, and a way to cut down the hours spent inside spreadsheets.

Automated accounting with Brex and Puzzle in one click

Finfuego adopted Brex to manage their spend across all company and employee purchases. With Brex corporate cards, spend controls are automatically enforced at the point of swipe instead of reviewed after it appears on a statement. Deployment was effortless, according to Bekah: “Brex made it incredibly easy to assign p-cards and employee cards, giving us instant visibility to track all authorized expenses.”

Finfuego also leveraged Brex and Puzzle’s one-click integration to get their accounting workflows set up fast. With one click – literally – she authenticated, connected the accounts, and saw expenses start flowing between Brex and Puzzle instantly. After attempting a lengthy implementation with another accounting software provider, the Brex + Puzzle integration was a relief. “With the seamless integration with Brex, Puzzle was deployed much faster, and proved to be a much better fit."

On Brex, expenses are now centralized in one place, GL-coded, and synced to Puzzle with real time updates. Without a dedicated accountant or function to manage the program, this the key unlock for Bekah’s team. “Connecting Brex and Puzzle was so fast, I barely remember doing it – everything was automatically synced and ready,” she shared. “It fit right into our company’s values of being as lean as possible from the start, automating things wherever we can.”

“Connecting Brex and Puzzle was so fast, I barely remember doing it – everything was automatically synced and ready.”

— Bekah Fields, Operations Engineer at Finfuego

Time spent on expenses cut in half, upgraded financial visibility

With Brex and Puzzle working together, Finfuego turned what used to be a manual chore of spend tracking and accounting into a lean, automated system. Put together, Bekah saves more than four hours every week on all bookkeeping tasks, reducing her time spent on expense management by 60% – a huge upgrade from the manual, statement-based reporting previously handled in Excel.

Moreover, Bekah now has a clear, holistic view of Finfuego’s spend at any given moment. “Now, we’re able to see what our biggest expenses are each month immediately — it gives me peace of mind that even small, non-categorized transactions are accounted for and looked right,” said Bekah. “I always know our books are up to date.”

In Puzzle, Bekah can click into her updated books and assess how much true buffer exists. “Puzzle keeps us honest about our realistic runway. It shows what we actually have to spend, not just what we expect to raise. If the buffer starts to look thin, I see it right away.”

Bekah’s time is now focused on reviewing and finalizing the books instead of wrestling with CSVs, PDF bank statements, or rebuilding reports. “Brex and Puzzle’s one-click integration has taken a big load off our backs and frees us up to do more important work,” Bekah shared. “It was so helpful–I would recommend it to any founder.”