Controller's guide to scaling without breaking

"We just need another person in finance."

How many times have you said that? Or heard your CEO say it? Here's the uncomfortable truth that most finance leaders learn the hard way: hiring your way out of the speed versus control dilemma rarely works the way you think it will.

Imagine you're a controller at a 180-person SaaS company. Your company just hit $10M ARR, and you're drowning in approval requests. Teams complain that spending decisions take too long. The obvious solution seems to be more hands on deck.

You convince the board to let you hire two junior accountants. Six months later, you're spending more time managing and training them than you save in delegating work. The processes that worked for a scrappy team of two become bottlenecks for a team of five. Coordination overhead eats up most of the efficiency gains.

You realize you've just made your problems more expensive. Instead of one person struggling with the speed versus control trade-off, you now have three people struggling with the same impossible choice.

Here's what most controllers don't account for when they're building their hiring case. Training time means a new finance hire needs 3-6 months to become productive. Management overhead requires coordination and oversight for each additional person. Process complexity increases because more people often means more handoffs and potential errors. Cultural integration takes time because new hires need to learn your company's specific tools and workflows.

Meanwhile, the underlying problems remain unsolved: manual approvals that create bottlenecks, disconnected systems, unclear spending policies. You've just distributed the pain across more people.

At around 100 employees you’re suddenly dealing with more vendors than you had six months ago, expense reports from people in five different time zones, invoice approvals that used to take a Slack message now require formal workflows, month-end close that stretches from days into weeks, and budget requests from departments that didn't exist last quarter.

The instinct is to add people. But without fixing the underlying trade-off, you're just adding more hands to a fundamentally broken system.
For example, Teddy Collins, VP of Corporate Finance at SeatGeek, shares just how much manual expenses management cost his business: "Our process before required the accounting team to download receipts that are submitted and manually try to match them with expense line items in another system. At one point, expense card close consumed nearly three full working days—reconciling 15 shared department cards, tracking down receipts, and manually coding transactions. Our accounting team was drowning in manual work."

And the painful part? They were still stuck choosing between giving teams spending freedom (and dealing with messy reconciliation) or locking down cards (and creating approval bottlenecks).

Companies that successfully scale their finance operations without sacrificing either speed or control follow a predictable pattern:

And the key to scaling with those steps isn't some big mystery, it's as simple as choosing the right financial stack. Michael Robinson, COO at SWARM Engineering, puts it simply: "We no longer need a dedicated accounts payable person, Brex automates those tasks." With the help of intelligent finance from Brex, SWARM was able to optimize broken workflows and automate more of the manual busywork that was plaguing their team — while maintaining complete financial control.

The key insight is this: when you have the right AI-powered platform handling your routine financial operations, your existing team can suddenly handle much more complexity at much higher speed, without sacrificing an ounce of control.

Don't get us wrong, there are absolutely times when adding headcount is the right move. You should consider hiring when you've optimized processes and implemented automation, but still have genuine capacity constraints. When you need new capabilities like FP&A expertise that don't exist on your current team. When you're entering new markets or business lines that require specialized knowledge. When your current team is consistently working unsustainable hours despite efficient processes.

The key is to hire for strategy and growth, not just to keep up with basic operational tasks that technology should be handling.

Before you automate anything or hire anyone, look for the silly stuff that's eating into your day. Most finance teams are bleeding time on tasks that could be fixed with simple process changes—and more importantly, tasks that force them to choose between speed and control.

Step 1: Start with the "why are we still doing this?" audit

Block out two hours next week to document everything your team does in a typical day. Not what you think you do, what you actually do. Set timers. Track interruptions. Be honest about how long things really take.

You'll probably find patterns like these: manually entering credit card transactions that could auto-sync, chasing people for receipts that should be automatically captured, copy-pasting data between systems that should talk to each other, re-entering the same vendor information across multiple platforms, and manually routing approvals that could be automated based on simple rules.

Step 2: Identify the lowest hanging fruit

After making your list, look for easy fixes. Let's say you're spending eight hours every month just dealing with corporate card reconciliation. Half the receipts are missing. The other half are photos of crumpled papers taken in dim restaurant lighting. You have people submitting the same receipt three times because they forgot they already uploaded it. Your junior accountant is basically a full-time receipt detective.

Now imagine switching to a system where receipts auto-capture at the point of purchase and sync directly to your accounting software. That eight-hour monthly ordeal becomes a 30-minute review process.

This is what happens when you treat receipt management like a systems problem instead of a people problem. With the right platform, the receipt is already attached to the transaction before the employee even thinks about it. And with AI-powered categorization, the system learns your GL structure and automatically suggests the right codes based on merchant, amount, and historical patterns. What used to require a trained accountant reviewing every transaction now happens automatically—with accuracy that improves over time as the AI learns from your business.

The best part? Teams get the spending speed they need while you maintain the control you require. No trade-off.

Step 3: Compounding the impact

Here's what most people don't realize about process improvements: the benefits compound. When you eliminate manual data entry, you also eliminate the errors that come with it. When you eliminate errors, you eliminate the time spent finding and fixing them. When you eliminate the fixing, you eliminate the frustration and context-switching that kills productivity.

Look for the problems that are causing the most time, and creating the biggest interruptions. Identifying those patterns can help you eliminate more operational drag in one go. One small process improvement often cascades into multiple efficiency gains across your entire workflow. Brex customers frequently tell us that the biggest benefit isn't any single feature, it's the way everything works together to eliminate the friction that was consuming their days.

The Goldilocks problem

You're probably living in the uncomfortable middle ground of choosing a finance platform. Startup tools like Expensify and basic business checking accounts are too simple for your current needs. Enterprise tools like SAP Concur are too complex and expensive for your current size.

You need something just right. Sophisticated enough to handle your complexity, but not so complex that it requires a dedicated admin.

Red flags you've outgrown your current setup

The manual download-upload dance is when your team is constantly downloading data from one system and uploading it to another because they don't integrate properly. Spreadsheet dependency means you're using Excel to track things that should be automated in your core systems.

Simple questions become complicated answers, so basic requests like "how much did we spend with this vendor last quarter?" take more than 10 minutes to answer. Volume-related glitches happen when your current tools start acting up when you hit certain transaction volumes. Feature limitations mean you keep running into walls where you need functionality that simply doesn't exist in your current tools. Support frustration occurs when you have problems and you're talking to people who don't understand businesses your size.

If you feel the pain here, it's more than likely your current setup is not working anymore.

The hidden cost of "good enough" systems

Imagine calculating that your team is spending 12 hours per week on tasks that exist purely because your systems don't talk to each other properly. You have five different tools that are each "good enough" on their own, but together they create a Frankenstein process where you're basically the integration layer. You're paying people to be human APIs.
When you calculate the fully loaded cost, including the opportunity cost of what your team could be doing instead, those inefficient systems could be costing your company thousands of dollars per year in lost productivity.

This is exactly why Brex was built as an integrated, intelligent finance platform rather than a collection of separate tools. Instead of managing corporate cards through one vendor, bill pay through another, banking through a third, and trying to reconcile everything manually, you get a unified system where data flows seamlessly and manual work is automated.

What to look for in your next finance stack

Intelligence that learns your business.
Don't just ask if a system has automation—ask if it gets smarter over time. Does the AI learn your GL structure and improve categorization accuracy? Does it recognize your spending patterns and flag genuine anomalies while letting normal activity flow? Can it anticipate problems before they become violations?

Integration quality matters.
Don't just ask if two systems integrate, ask how well they integrate. Can you see real-time data, or is it updated once per day? Do you get all the fields you need, or just basic information?

Support that understands your business is crucial.
Enterprise software companies often have great support for enterprise customers, but treat mid-market companies like small fish. Startup tools might have good support but lack the expertise to help with complex scenarios. Look for companies that specialize in businesses your size.

Transparent, predictable pricing.
This helps you avoid tools with complex pricing tiers that penalize growth. You want to be excited about scaling, not worried about how much your software bill will increase.

A clear implementation timeline.
If a vendor tells you implementation will take six months and require outside consultants, that's probably not the right fit for your stage. Look for tools that can add value within the first 30 days.

One reason controllers choose Brex is that it works with existing workflows instead of requiring a complete overhaul. You can implement it gradually: start with corporate cards, then add bill pay, then integrate with your accounting software. Each step adds value immediately without disrupting everything else.

Brex has a dedicated team of implementation specialists, specifically here to help you get up and running faster. No hiccups, no stress, no questions left unanswered.

The controller's dilemma

You became a finance professional to make strategic contributions to business success. But somewhere along the way, you got buried in operational tasks that seem to multiply faster than you can automate them.

You know there's a better way. You've seen other companies where finance is a strategic partner, not just a service function. But the path from here to there isn't always clear.

How Brex breaks the trade-off

For decades, businesses have had to choose: move fast and lose control, or carefully control money and slow everything down. Brex enables a new era of intelligent finance, grounded in our belief that companies shouldn't have to choose between operational speed and financial discipline.

We're reimagining finance as a system that doesn't just respond, it anticipates. It learns. It acts. It controls and handles. No pings, no check-ins, no chasing. Just flow. Quietly powerful. And always on. With this, Brex is no longer just finance software, it's an agentic system that runs itself so our customers can run their businesses. And, with Brex running in the background, companies know that they're making both control and speed their advantage.

The compound benefits of getting this right

When you successfully scale your finance operations without sacrificing either speed or control, several things happen. Your team becomes more strategic with routine work automated by AI, so you can focus on analysis, planning, and decision support. Your stakeholders become more autonomous with better systems and processes, so departments can manage their own budgets and spending more effectively. Your company becomes more agile because faster financial processes mean faster business decisions. Your career becomes more rewarding as you shift from being a cost center to being a profit driver.

The opportunity ahead

Your company is growing. That growth creates challenges, but it also creates opportunities. Finance teams that figure out how to scale efficiently become invaluable strategic partners. They help their companies grow faster, more profitably, and more sustainably.

The alternative is trying to scale through headcount while leaving broken processes unchanged, which leads to bigger teams that are less effective and more expensive.

With Brex, your team can:

Eliminate AP busywork. You can automate tasks that typically require dedicated AP staff. Built-in expense policies, autogenerated receipts, AI-powered automated approvals, and anomaly detection reduce manual work while increasing compliance.

Close faster with fewer resources. Accruals accounting for incomplete transactions enables continuous close, while AI-generated suggestions accelerate GL coding and merchant mapping. Real-time ERP integration means no more manual data exports and imports.

Support growth without adding overhead. Manage multiple entities with customizable controls, multi-currency support, and localized policies on a single platform—capabilities that would typically require specialized headcount.

Extend your team's capacity. Tools like Brex ProAccess let external accounting firms easily review expenses, prepare journal entries, and draft bills from one place, making outsourced work more efficient without hiring internally.

The results: More capability, same team size

That's why more than 30,000 companies choose Brex to scale their finance operations efficiently. Controllers using Brex complete expense reviews faster, and save time that can be redirected to strategic work instead of hiring additional staff for operational tasks.

Growth means everyone wants to spend money, not just the accounting team thinking they need to hire more headcount. Marketing has a conference they "must" attend. Sales needs higher limits for client entertainment. Engineering wants to try the latest productivity tool. Everyone has a good reason why their request should be an exception to the normal process.

Your job is to enable smart spending while preventing wasteful spending without becoming the department that kills every idea.

The problem: Overloaded with manual approvals

As your company grows, you'll face an increasing volume of spending requests, budget exceptions, and "urgent" purchases. Each one comes with its own justification and timeline pressure. The traditional approach of reviewing each request individually doesn't scale.

Here's what happens if you try to personally approve every purchase over $500 at a 150-person company: You become a bottleneck. Decisions get delayed. Teams get frustrated. And you spend all day saying yes or no to other people instead of doing strategic work.

The age-old choice: enable speed by giving teams autonomy (and lose control), or maintain control by reviewing everything (and create bottlenecks).

The solution: AI-powered systems over decisions

Smart controllers don't try to make every spending decision themselves. Instead, they use intelligent tools that enable good decisions to happen automatically and flag truly unusual situations for human review.

Think of it like security at an airport. TSA doesn't personally inspect every item in every bag. They use scanners and protocols to automatically clear most things and focus human attention on the exceptions.

This is where Brex's AI-powered spend management really shines. The platform uses AI to learn your spending patterns and automatically flag anomalies, while intelligent controls and spend limits prevent problems before they occur. Department heads get real-time visibility into their budgets and team members can spend within approved categories and limits without waiting for approvals.

The secret: Give autonomy within boundaries

The most successful finance teams figure out how to give operational teams the flexibility they need while maintaining the control they require. This means clear, sensible policies that people can understand and follow without constant interpretation. Real-time budget visibility so team leads can see how much they've spent and how much they have left without asking finance. Automatic approvals so routine purchases get processed immediately and only unusual requests need human review. Clear escalation paths so when someone needs an exception, there's a clear process to get it approved quickly.

Example: How Plaid cut expense time by 30% with Brex

Before having the right systems in place, the finance team at Plaid had to chase employees every month just to close the books.

"There was a lot of chasing receipts, rubber stamping approvals, and no consistent process," said Sophie Chiang, lead accounting manager at Plaid. "Finance lost time asking the same questions every month. It was frustrating for our AP lead and for employees, too."

By moving to Brex and centralizing spend for travel, expenses, reimbursements, and vendor spend in one place, Plaid gained the visibility and efficiency they were looking for. Employees spend 30% less time submitting expenses using features like auto-generated receipts, AI-suggested categories, and attendee auto-fill from calendar meetings. And they also have a single place to request virtual cards, book travel, and get reimbursed in days instead of weeks.

For Sandy Yang, Plaid's head of accounting, this was huge. "Brex drives efficiency across the board: employees save time on day-to-day tasks, and our finance team can redirect energy from administration to more value-adding work."

The result: teams move faster, finance maintains better control, and nobody's working weekends to close the books.

Hundreds of controllers have used the approach outlined in this guide to transform their finance operations. They've moved from drowning in manual work to driving strategic decisions. From hiring their way out of problems to building systems that prevent problems. From choosing between speed and control to delivering both.

See how Brex can be the foundation for your transformation. Request a demo to see how the platform works with companies your size. Talk to our team about your specific challenges and goals. Join the community of finance leaders who've made the leap to strategic partnership.

Your company is growing. Make sure your finance operations are ready to grow with it.