How HappyCo automates 95% of bills to free up time for strategic work

Global operations and lean teams demanded maximum automation and visibility

When Liz Hanson, Director of Accounting at HappyCo, stepped into her role in early 2024, she inherited a complex challenge. The company had undergone a reduction in force that left critical institutional knowledge scattered. With operations spanning three countries, multiple entities, and multi-currency transactions, the accounting team needed systems that could do more with less.

"We run a pretty lean accounting team, especially for our size and being global, and having multi-entity, multi-currency, all that fun stuff," Liz explains. "Every penny that moves into, out of, or in relation to any of our entities relies on me or the systems that I own to get coded and handled correctly."

The stakes were high. HappyCo was approaching its first full audit, and the finance team needed complete visibility and control across all vendor payments and expenses. The CFO wanted granular oversight. Department heads needed to manage their own budgets. And Liz's small team couldn't afford to spend days on manual reconciliation and data entry.

What HappyCo needed was a platform powerful enough to handle complex global operations while automating the routine work that consumed valuable time.

Using Brex as a complete AP automation engine

Liz saw an opportunity. HappyCo was already using Brex, but the platform had far more capability than the company was leveraging. "I deeply trained myself on Brex. I clicked through absolutely everything that was available to me to kind of learn what opportunities we have," she says.

The transformation came from understanding how Brex's features work together. Spend limits ensured expenses automatically coded to the right entities. Custom approval workflows matched HappyCo's risk tolerance, with higher oversight for bills than card expenses. The NetSuite integration eliminated manual journal entries entirely.

"I took a flashlight to every nook and cranny of the system, looking to answer the question of: how can I use this to make my life easier? Which is all I'm ever trying to do, is give my team more power to take time off and not feel glued to their desk with high-volume daily tasks."

For bill pay, HappyCo built a streamlined process that combined human oversight with Brex automation. Invoices route through their accounts payable inbox in Zendesk for initial review, then forward to Brex where the platform handles approvals, payments, and direct sync to NetSuite. When Canada local transfers launched earlier in the year, it unlocked the ability for the Canadian entity to pay its own bills and manage its own spend, which proved critical for cash flow forecasting across entities.

Within months, HappyCo was pushing more than 95% of bills through Brex and had configured automations that made daily operations nearly hands-free. "Brex has made my team’s and my job so easy. We're syncing over 100 transactions a day on a normal day, and I rarely need to make any edits."

“We sync 100+ transactions daily with confidence. Brex automations work so well, my team can actually take time off.”

— Liz Hanson, Director of Accounting at HappyCo

Audit-ready AP, 100+ daily transactions automated, and zero pushback from auditors

The real test came during HappyCo's first full audit. Having all AP centralized in Brex transformed what could have been a grueling process into the smoothest part of the entire audit.

"I don't think we could have done it without Brex. As far as AP and vendor expenses, it would have been incredibly difficult," Liz says. "With Brex we had immediate access to all the bills, direct links to the ERP, and related payments."

The audit team could trace every payment to its approval, see the complete vendor history, and verify that everything aligned with HappyCo's documented policies. "AP was the simplest part of the audit, because everything was in one place, and they didn't push back on a single thing."

“AP was the simplest part of the audit. Everything was in one place, and they didn't push back on a single thing.”

— Liz Hanson, Director of Accounting at HappyCo

On a daily basis, HappyCo syncs more than 100 transactions through Brex with minimal oversight required. The company processes between 60 and 80 bills per month through the platform, with automations handling the coding, approvals, and reconciliation that used to consume hours of manual work. "We do kind of a catch-all check at month-end to see if anything looks out of place, needs to be accrued for, etc. That's been fantastic and has really cut down on the daily management of our payables."

And the efficiency gains extend beyond Liz's team. Department heads manage their own budgets with confidence. Employees spend without waiting for reimbursements. And the accounting team can focus on strategic work instead of transaction coding and manual reconciliation.

Perhaps most telling is what happens when competitors approach HappyCo. After achieving this level of automation and control, Liz has a simple response for vendors pitching alternative solutions: "I just tell them I don't have any need for their solution right now; I have Brex."

Ready to see how Brex can streamline your financial operations? Sign up for Brex today and discover how our integrated platform can eliminate the complexity of managing multiple financial tools while delivering measurable time and cost savings.