How UpEquity streamlined its finance stack with Ramp

With its legacy provider, Brex, UpEquity had no way to institute a simple, streamlined reimbursement process. Head of Strategy and Finance Tyler Bliha was spending too much time each month with an inefficient, unwieldy reimbursement process that included toggling back and forth between multiple vendors, including Divvy and Expensify.

What’s more, the company knew it could optimize cost savings by switching to a different provider. “Brex didn’t do a lot around cost savings,” says Tyler. With Brex, Tyler and his team couldn’t easily gain visibility into opportunities to reduce unnecessary expenses or switch to more cost-effective plans. “We also weren’t taking advantage of the points system with Brex,” explains Tyler. “A platform that offered cashback was just simpler.”

“A platform that offered cashback was just simpler”

- Tyler Bliha, Head of Strategy and Finance, UpEquity

UpEquity switched to Ramp to get an all-in-one platform that would simplify reimbursement, provide greater visibility into spend management, and find more effective cost-savings.‍‍

From clunky reimbursements to next-day payments

Right away, Ramp’s reimbursement solution attracted Tyler’s attention. “The first thing that drew me to Ramp was the fact that there was a reimbursement solution. We have over 80 employees now, and our finance team is still small. Ramp’s ability to approve reimbursements and employee expenses on the fly has made my job a lot easier,” he says. Ramp simplifies the reimbursement process by empowering finance leaders like Tyler to establish and execute easy, automated approval processes from directly within the Ramp platform or communication tools like Slack.‍

Empowering employees to do their jobs

UpEquity uses Ramp cards as much as possible. “I gave a card to every department head and gave them the authority to issue new cards to their employees,” explains Tyler. “Getting people cards and getting them on the platform takes about 10 seconds.” Decentralizing oversight of corporate cards saves time for Tyler and empowers UpEquity employees without adding risk, as Tyler and his team can quickly review, approve, and reject any purchases made on the platform.‍

Deeper insights into how company dollars were being used

Ramp’s reporting tools allow Tyler to monitor spend across categories: by department, by vendor, etc. By issuing multiple virtual cards, the UpEquity team can increase the granularity of insights into department spend. “I can give our Director of Marketing separate cards for each acquisition channel: one for paid ads, one for lead gen, one for outsourced services, etc. That’s critical because I can not only see the different vendors we’re using, but I can also see how we’re thinking about the categorization and breakdown between different forms of marketing spend,” says Tyler.‍

Automated cashback and savings ‍

Ultimately, the level of insight Ramp provides allows UpEquity to identify opportunities for cost savings more efficiently. “That was something I didn’t necessarily see at Ramp until I started using it,” says Tyler. “The promise that you can look into areas of potential double spend, or areas where you can save money, or derive cost-savings by switching from monthly to annual. Having these views on autopilot makes my life a lot easier” says Tyler. 

"Ramp’s ability to approve reimbursements and employee expenses on the fly has made my job a lot easier" 

- Tyler Bliha, Head of Strategy and Finance, UpEquity

By implementing Ramp, UpEquity has saved time for the finance team by simplifying and automating tedious manual tasks, gained greater insight into spend trends across departments and vendors, and identified cost saving opportunities in real time. All of that generates efficiency and maximizes profitability for the fast-growing company. 

With Ramp, UpEquity’s once burdensome reimbursement process has become a breeze. “Reimbursements now take 10-15 minutes out of my week, since I can either approve requests or delegate their approval to department managers,” says Tyler. 

Ramp’s easy-to-use, easy-to-access platform offers granular visibility into transactions across the organization, which has enabled UpEquity to gain a better understanding of how resources were allocated across the company and identify opportunities for cost-savings. 

“Not until Ramp did we see basically intra-month insights into our day-to-day spend,” says Tyler, referencing transactions like subscriptions, one-off purchases, and third-party access.

Since implementing Ramp, UpEquity has scaled significantly, growing from 20-25 employees to 80+, with plans to more than double headcount over the next 12 months. At such a rapidly growing fintech company, Ramp’s ease of use, accessible virtual cards, and ability to auto-categorize purchases has made a significant contribution to streamlining operations.

"Not until Ramp did we see basically intra-month insights into our day-to-day spend"

- Tyler Bliha, Head of Strategy and Finance, UpEquity