What is ZipHQ, and how does it work for procurement?

ZipHQ operates as an agentic procurement orchestration platform that creates a single entry point for all corporate purchase requests, routing them through proper approvals before connecting to existing financial solutions for execution and payment. The platform acts as a control layer for finance teams, making sure every purchase follows company rules before money gets spent.

The process begins when an employee fills out a purchase request through Zip's intake portal. The platform collects essential information upfront, including what's being purchased, from which vendor, for how much, and which budget it affects. This data capture happens before any commitment is made, a key distinction from traditional procurement tools that often record purchases after contracts are signed.

Once submitted, Zip's workflow engine takes over. The platform uses a no-code approach that allows finance teams to configure approval chains without programming knowledge. A $500 software purchase might require only a manager's sign-off, while a $50,000 consulting contract could trigger reviews from finance, legal, and security teams simultaneously. The workflows adapt based on variables like purchase amount, vendor risk, and department policies.

The approval process itself is where traditional procurement fails. In many organizations, purchase approvals happen through email chains or Slack messages that can stretch for weeks. Approvers lack context, requesters don't know where their request stands, and finance teams have no visibility until an invoice arrives. Zip consolidates these scattered communications into trackable workflows where every participant can see the request's status and requirements.

After approval, the platform handles the mechanical aspects of purchasing. It generates purchase orders automatically, pulling data from the initial request rather than requiring manual re-entry. When invoices arrive, Zip matches them against purchase orders and routes them for payment. The company claims this automation can reduce accounts payable processing time by half.

Zip’s platform manages the entire procurement lifecycle, with core capabilities that include:

1. Intake-to-procure process

Most organizations' purchases start anywhere and everywhere, including emails to finance, chats with managers, or invoices that show up later. Zip replaces this scattered approach with a single intake portal where every purchase and vendor request begins. Employees fill out one standardized form, and the software routes it automatically to finance, IT, legal, or other approvers based on company rules. By making intake the only entry point, Zip enforces policy at the start, prevents maverick spend, and gives finance visibility into commitments before money goes out the door.

2. Custom approval workflows

Traditional approval chains crawl through email, with each step adding days. Zip replaces this with dynamic, no-code workflows that adapt to each request. Rules route approvals based on spend, vendor risk, or department, and multiple stakeholders can review in parallel instead of waiting in sequence. Finance teams can update workflows instantly as policies change, eliminating IT bottlenecks. The result is faster approvals, fewer delays, and complete visibility into where every request stands.

3. Vendor management and onboarding

Onboarding vendors often drags on for weeks with scattered emails, duplicate records, and missing documents. Zip centralizes supplier data in a single source of truth and automates onboarding with standardized workflows. Legal, compliance, and security reviews happen in parallel, cutting cycle times dramatically. The platform also tracks contracts, sends renewal alerts, and flags risks like missing insurance or overreliance on a single supplier. Finance, procurement, and stakeholders all gain a unified view of vendor relationships and risks.

4. Real-time spend insights

Most companies discover spending patterns only after the books close. Zip flips this rearview approach with dashboards that update continuously. Finance leaders see total spend, cycle times, and pending approvals as they happen, while each request is instantly mapped against budgets. Insights highlight duplicate software purchases or scattered vendor contracts, enabling consolidation and better negotiations. With real-time visibility, procurement shifts from a reactive function to a strategic driver of cost control.

5. End-to-end procure-to-pay automation

Procure-to-pay often breaks down in handoffs, with approved requests re-entered manually as POs or invoices reconciled line by line. Zip automates the full process by generating purchase orders instantly from approved requests, reading and matching invoices automatically, and AP tasks like three-way and two-way matching run in the background. Payments are supported in 140+ countries and 40 currencies, eliminating the complexity of multiple banking relationships. The result is faster processing, fewer errors, and simpler global payments.

6. Intelligent procurement assistance (Zip AI)

Procurement choices are often slow and inconsistent. Employees pick random vendors, requests miss key details, and accountants spend hours coding invoices. Zip AI acts as a guide: steering requests to preferred suppliers, predicting needed fields in forms, and auto-suggesting invoice coding based on past patterns. The AI flags anomalies, answers policy questions, and reduces manual work across intake, sourcing, and AP. Employees move faster, finance gains consistency, and procurement policies actually stick.

7. Integration with enterprise software

Disconnected software forces teams to re-enter data, causing errors and delays between procurement, finance, and accounting. Zip integrates directly with ERPs like SAP and NetSuite, ensuring vendor, PO, and invoice data flows seamlessly. Approved records in Zip appear instantly in downstream systems without duplicate entry. This shared architecture gives finance early visibility into commitments, procurement into AP status, and managers into departmental spend, all in real time for a single source of truth across platforms.

8. Compliance and risk controls

Procurement policies on paper often fail in practice, with off-policy purchases and missing approvals slipping through. Zip enforces compliance upfront with programmable rules that require the right reviews based on spend, vendor, or risk level. Every action is logged, creating clear audit trails for regulators and auditors. Centralized vendor data makes it easy to flag gaps in certifications or insurance. By guiding employees to vetted suppliers and blocking rogue spend, Zip ensures controls function as designed.

Traditional procurement modules in enterprise resource planning platforms focus primarily on processing purchase orders and invoices after approvals have already occurred through informal channels. Zip takes a different approach by starting at the intake stage, providing an accessible front-end where any employee can initiate a purchasing or vendor request. The platform doesn't replace existing ERP functionality but instead orchestrates the workflow around it, integrating with major financial platforms to ensure data flows seamlessly between applications.

The distinction matters because user adoption often determines whether procurement policies get followed. Legacy procurement software earned a reputation for being complex, with interfaces that require training and workflows that frustrate casual users. Zip's interface resembles consumer software more than enterprise tools, making it simple enough that employees actually use it rather than circumventing policy using personal credit cards or corporate cards.

Many companies deploy Zip specifically to modernize their procurement experience without replacing their financial infrastructure. A layer between employees and the ERP, the platform captures requests through an intuitive interface while leveraging existing purchase order and accounts payable modules. This approach allows organizations to improve procurement compliance and visibility without the cost and disruption of replacing core financial platforms.

Zip checks budget availability when purchase requests enter the platform rather than discovering overruns after commitments are made. The workflow engine uses preset spending limits and rules to determine whether a request fits within allocated budgets, automatically flagging and rerouting requests that would exceed limits to approvers like finance managers or CFOs. This approach avoids hard blocks that would stop legitimate exceptions while still preventing unauthorized overspending.

The Zip platform distinguishes between different types of budget exceptions and routes them accordingly. A request that slightly exceeds a department's monthly allocation might need only a director's approval, while one that would blow through an entire quarterly budget triggers executive review. By validating budget compliance upfront and enforcing approval hierarchies, Zip allows justified exceptions with proper authorization while preventing the casual overspending that occurs when budget checks happen only after purchases are complete.

Zip captures general ledger coding details during the intake and approval process, including entity, department, cost center, project, location, and tax codes. When an employee submits a purchase request, the platform collects these accounting dimensions upfront, eliminating the need for accounts payable staff to manually add them later. Once a purchase is approved and executed, whether through a Brex virtual corporate card or traditional invoice, the transaction with its complete GL dimensions flows directly into the ERP in real time.

The platform handles complex accounting requirements, including line-item tax codes for VAT, GST, and other tax structures that vary by jurisdiction. This granular capture ensures that both card charges and supplier invoices originating in Zip carry the correct accounting codes into the company's ledger without manual intervention. Tax information gets properly recorded and synced into the finance software, maintaining compliance with local tax regulations.

Zip's renewals feature tracks software subscriptions and service contracts, automatically triggering renewal workflows before contracts expire. The platform alerts appropriate stakeholders, including business owners, finance teams, and IT departments when subscriptions approach renewal dates, pre-populating renewal requests with original purchase details. This helps companies avoid service interruptions or auto-renewals hitting credit cards unexpectedly.

The renewals dashboard provides visibility into all upcoming renewal dates and identifies which contracts contain auto-renew clauses that will trigger automatically. Teams can review price changes, evaluate usage patterns, and decide whether to renew, renegotiate, or cancel before commitments lock in. By retaining all prior contract information in one place and involving stakeholders ahead of time, Zip helps companies avoid the surprise renewals and price increases that accumulate when subscription management happens through scattered spreadsheets or not at all.

According to the company, Deploying Zip takes eight weeks or less for a standard implementation. The no-code configuration approach minimizes the IT work typically required for enterprise software deployment, allowing organizations to start using the platform in roughly one to two months. Traditional procurement implementations often stretch six months or longer due to complex customization requirements and technical integration challenges.

Bringing together Zip and Brex creates a seamless bridge between procurement and payments. In a single workflow, an employee request for a purchase can be approved in Zip and immediately paid via a Brex virtual card with all the necessary controls in place. This section breaks down the key benefits of the Brex for Zip integration, showing why one plus one is more than two in this case. By uniting Zip’s front-end procurement process with Brex’s back-end spend management software, companies can accelerate purchasing, tighten control over expenses, and gain full visibility from the moment of request through final payment.

Streamlined procurement-to-payment workflow

With Brex virtual cards embedded directly into Zip, employees move through intake, approval, and payment in one continuous flow rather than navigating separate processes for each stage. Upon approval of a request, Zip immediately issues a Brex virtual card configured for that specific purchase, allowing payment without waiting for traditional accounts payable processing. This immediacy particularly benefits one-time purchases that would traditionally require days of vendor onboarding for a single transaction.

The workflow improvements extend beyond speed to reduce manual expense reconciliation work. Every Brex card transaction made through Zip automatically carries the original request data, including requestor, approver, and business purpose. Finance teams no longer spend hours matching credit card statements to purchase approvals scattered across emails, as all transaction context travels with the payment and appears in both platforms in real time.

Brex for Zip effectively removes the middle steps that slow procurement in most organizations. Rather than approving a purchase in one platform, creating a purchase order in another, onboarding a vendor in a third, and then processing payment through yet another channel, the Brex for Zip handles everything in a single workflow. Companies report that this consolidation reduces procurement cycle times from days to hours for routine purchases while maintaining complete audit trails.

Enhanced spend control and compliance

Every purchase request in Zip that requires payment can be tied to a unique Brex virtual card configured with exact spending parameters. The card works only at the approved vendor, for the exact amount authorized, and within a specified time window. This transaction-level control surpasses traditional corporate cards that typically offer only monthly limits or spending categories, ensuring purchases never exceed their approved scope since the card won't work outside its programmed parameters.

Zip enforces procurement policies during the request and approval phase while Brex enforces payment controls at the transaction level. Dual enforcement makes it nearly impossible to pay unapproved vendors or exceed category spending limits. Brex for Zip provides real-time visibility into spending as it occurs, allowing finance teams to spot anomalies or potential duplicate purchases immediately rather than discovering them much later.

The centralization of all requests through Zip gives finance and procurement teams a consolidated view of both pending approvals and issued card transactions. This visibility reduces fraud risk and ensures budget adherence without relying on after-the-fact reconciliations. Organizations gain what amounts to preventive controls built directly into the payment method, catching compliance issues before money leaves the company rather than trying to recover it afterward.

Simplified global purchasing operations

Multinational companies face complexity when handling purchases across different countries and currencies, often leading to workarounds and non-compliance. Zip's integration with Brex addresses this through Brex's single corporate card program that supports payments in over 30 currencies across 50+ countries. An approved request in Zip can be paid for a vendor in London or Singapore as easily as one in New York.

Employees worldwide use the same Zip intake process regardless of location. The platform issues a Brex virtual card that works in the local currency, eliminating the need for region-specific processes or local company credit cards. Brex handles all currency conversions behind the scenes.

Without this integration, international purchases often require complex workarounds. A UK team paying a one-time EU vendor might need US finance involvement for wire transfers or multi-step purchase orders. Brex for Zip eliminates these time-consuming intercompany transfers and international banking processes.

The company enforces identical approval policies globally through Zip while consolidating all spend data centrally. This unified approach means procurement and finance teams manage global spending through one interface rather than juggling different processes, currencies, and payment methods. The need for separate local card accounts or multiple banking relationships disappears.

Cash flow benefits

Shifting vendor payments from bank transfers to Brex credit cards affects cash flow timing. When companies pay by card, the vendor receives payment from Brex immediately, but the company doesn't part with cash until the card statement comes due. This extends the payment cycle by several weeks, providing additional working capital flexibility that matters particularly when companies need to conserve cash.

Brex cards earn corporate card rewards on spending through points or cash-back programs. Software licenses, equipment purchases, and other operational expenses generate rewards that companies can redeem later. As Zip encourages more purchases to flow through Brex rather than traditional invoices, companies maximize these rewards without additional effort.

International vendor payments through Brex often cost less than wire transfers or standard corporate cards. The integrated card program eliminates the need for multiple foreign bank accounts or payment intermediaries. Organizations optimize payment timing while earning rewards on spending that would otherwise generate no return, improving both cash flow management and the bottom line.

Early adopters of the Brex for Zip solution have reported tangible improvements in their operations. Anthropic, a leading AI company, was using both Brex and Zip separately and saw the integration as a significant improvement.

Adam Dix, Head of Financial Operations at Anthropic, said: “Bringing together Brex’s powerful global card capabilities with Zip’s intuitive procurement workflows will eliminate the manual reconciliation work that currently consumes hours of our team’s time each week.” In other words, what once required tedious cross-checking between procurement records and card statements is now automatic, saving time and reducing errors.

“We’re proud to see two top Y Combinator companies come together to raise the bar for enterprise finance. At YC, we use both Brex and Zip, and have seen firsthand how they dramatically streamline financial operations and procurement. This integration represents the kind of innovation we encourage at YC — solving real problems for customers,” said

Dalton Caldwell, Managing Partner at Y Combinator, which is both an investor in and user of Brex and Zip, says the partnership is “solving real problems for customers” by dramatically streamlining finance and procurement processes.

Such testimonials underscore the real-world value that Brex for Zip delivers. Procurement and finance teams are not just saving time, they’re also gaining confidence that every purchase is properly authorized and accounted for without extra busywork. This kind of positive feedback from sophisticated users lends credibility to the promise of using Brex and Zip together.

ZipHQ organizes the entire purchasing process from start to finish. It connects employee requests to existing financial systems and routes them for approval before money is spent, so purchases follow the right process without slowing people down.

Its features work together to remove friction common among large or high-growth companies. AI guides employees to preferred vendors, invoices process automatically, and everything integrates with existing software. Companies gain real-time visibility into spend and can get up and running in about eight weeks, far faster than legacy tools.

Brex offers complete spend management through corporate cards with built-in controls, automated invoice processing, real-time spending reports, and automated bill pay to vendors. When companies use Zip and Brex together, they get complete control from request to payment. Each approved purchase is issued a virtual card with exact limits, while Brex manages spend with built-in controls, automated invoices, up-to-the-minute reporting, and global payments.

To see how these tools can improve your company's purchasing and payment processes, schedule a demo today.