How Red Antler centralized its company spend

Red Antler's creative production team makes hundreds of purchases each month in service of developing industry-leading branded content for clients. Historically, the team’s three producers were responsible for all purchasing related to production costs. Given the high volume of monthly transactions spread across multiple projects and incredibly tight timelines, expense management added material time to these employees’ already full plates. 

Red Antler was tracking expenses manually, which meant that producers were spending hours each month reconciling spreadsheets and verifying hundreds of transactions line-by-line against hard-to-read card statements. Unauthorized expenses often went undetected, and employees frequently spent hundreds of their own dollars due to lost receipts or forgotten charges. 

“Given our volume of purchases, expense management was an incredibly cumbersome process, because client work and timelines dominate, expenses were often put off.”

- Christina Cooksey, Head of Creative Production

This outdated and inefficient system aligned with the industry standard, but it wasn’t working for Red Antler.

To solve its efficiency problem, Red Antler needed to relieve pressure from the three producers who had become de facto expense managers. By working with Ramp, the company did so in two ways: first, by decentralizing team spend via individual employee corporate cards, and second, by centralizing control over those individual cards. 

Christina Cooksey worked with Ramp to give each creative production team member his or her own corporate card. Employees can now request card limits to cover their daily expenses, and Christina can control purchases and budgets in real-time. 

Whereas the team’s previous expense management system meant countless hours spent reviewing and approving requests, Christina can now review and approve requests immediately. 

“Expenses are completed the day of purchase, often within minutes. All we have to do is text their receipt and a message with charge details.”

- Christina Cooksey, Head of Creative Production

Thanks to the Ramp dashboard, Christina can visualize the entire team’s spend across categories, departments, clients, and projects. She and her team now spend less time managing expenses, but they have gained more insight into how transactions happen across the department.

Using Ramp to modernize Red Antler’s outdated expense management process helped the creative production team reclaim 80+ hours a month that used to be spent tracking and submitting expenses for reimbursement. 

“Now, there are no more stacks of receipts sitting on my desk staring me in the face or finance charges ticking up personal cards. Expense management is no longer an end-of-the-month nightmare, and the team now has better real-time control and visibility over their purchases." 

- Christina Cooksey, Head of Creative Production

That saved time relieves pressure for team members, and it also benefits clients. Producers no longer have to wear quite so many hats. They can focus their time and effort where it matters most: on creating the best-possible creative work for world-changing brands.