How Brandt scaled finance operations 3x with zero added accounting headcount
“With Ramp, we haven’t had to add accounting headcount to keep up with growth. The biggest takeaway is that instead of hiring our way through it, we fixed the workflow so we can keep supporting the organization as we scale.”
VP of Accounting at Brandt Information Services
See insights on how 50,000+ customers spent on Ramp in 2025
When Brandt’s headcount and spend scaled quickly, the finance team faced a familiar choice: add people, or redesign the process.
They chose process. With Ramp connected to Sage Intacct, Brandt moved from an end-of-month scramble to continuous reconciliation throughout the month, and scaled from 24 to 70+ cardholders without expanding the accounting team.
Breaking the export-and-chase cycle
Brandt wasn’t lacking tools. They had already cycled through Concur and Expensify, and each one left the same problem behind: at month-end, the close still collapsed into spreadsheets.
Concur came first. The sync was fragile and created exceptions that the team had to untangle. And for cardholders, it wasn’t just “annoying”—it was a tax on every purchase. Receipts and coding were clunky enough that transactions came back incomplete, finance had to follow up, and the close turned into reminders instead of review.
Expensify reduced some friction. But at over $800/month, it still couldn’t change the fundamental shape of the workflow: wait for the statement to close, export transactions, then chase down coding and receipts after the fact.
In practice, Staff Accountant Amy Faircloth would email spreadsheets to cardholders, compile everything into a single file, then import it into the ERP. For Brandt, the lesson was simple: if month-end requires chasing people, the process won't scale. The workflow had to run continuously—and sync cleanly with the ERP.
"We would have to wait until the statement closed at the end of the month to download all transactions and then start working on it. I can't imagine if we were still on the old way with as many cardholders as we have now."
— Amy F., Staff Accountant at Brandt Information Services
Make spend reconciliation continuous—not a month-end event
After cycling through Concur and Expensify, Brandt’s finance team got clear on what they were actually optimizing for. They did not need a “better month-end.” They needed to stop creating a month-end backlog in the first place.
So when Brandt explored Ramp in 2023, they prioritized a setup where cardholders could code as they spent, Amy could review throughout the month, and transactions could flow cleanly into Sage Intacct. By the time the statement closed, the work should already be mostly done. Three requirements made that possible:
✓ A native Sage Intacct integration
Brandt had moved to Sage Intacct and wanted a connection that didn’t require constant monitoring, re-syncing, or cleanup.
✓ Virtual cards that kept pace with hiring and spend
As Brandt grew, issuing cards could not become a two-week bottleneck. Virtual cards let new teammates book travel immediately and support recurring subscriptions and developer testing.
✓ Controls that reduce follow-up
Brandt needed guardrails that made it easier to do the right thing in the moment: spending limits, approvals, and manager visibility. That meant fewer incomplete transactions and fewer end-of-month reminders.
Brandt didn’t just change tools. They changed the pace of the close.
Close became a background process
Brandt didn’t “speed up month-end.” They changed what month-end meant.
Instead of waiting for a statement to close and then scrambling through a pile of incomplete transactions, the team pushed the work upstream. Cardholders coded as they spent. Amy reviewed any issues that came in. And because transactions synced cleanly into Sage Intacct, month-end became a checkpoint rather than a starting line. That shift delivered results Brandt could feel immediately:
→ 15–20 hours faster per close
Amy no longer started close with a backlog. Because transactions were coded and reviewed throughout the month, most items were already ready to sync by the time the statement closed.
→ Scaled to 70+ cardholders with no added accounting headcount
As Brandt added cardholders, the workflow scaled with them. Instead of finance chasing missing info in bulk at month-end, cardholders completed coding in the moment, and exceptions surfaced early for review. That kept close predictable even as Brandt grew from roughly two dozen cardholders to 70+.
→ An average of 46 hours/month saved across the company
Across the business, Brandt employees spend less time submitting expenses, managers spend less time with approvals, and accounting automations helps the finance team move even faster.
→ Over $450k in combined savings
By consolidating expense management into Ramp, Brandt eliminated over $800/month in software subscription fees, gained automated spend controls, and began earning cashback on company purchases—delivering compounding value that has added up to more than $450,000 in total savings.
→ Faster reimbursements without routing through payroll
Instead of bouncing reimbursement requests through HR and payroll, Brandt had employees submit in Ramp, route approvals to managers, and pay out directly. That cut out the payroll detour and reduced the back-and-forth that used to slow reimbursements down.
→ Better spend visibility (and a cleaner subscription footprint)
Centralizing spend made recurring charges easier to spot. During the transition, Brandt audited subscriptions and found items dating back 10+ years that could be eliminated—turning “we’ve always paid for that” into savings.
A finance system built to scale with the business without burning out the team
Over the last few years, Brandt's headcount has more than doubled. Cardholders and finance operations work tripled. The accounting team has remained the same lean team.
That wasn’t a grind-it-out achievement. It was a workflow change. Ramp moved close work out of the last days of the month and into the moment spend happens: cardholders code and attach receipts as they spend, Amy reviews continuously and marks items ready to sync, and transactions flow into Sage Intacct without the spreadsheet detour.
The hardest part wasn’t the software. It was the Amex conversation. Brandt made the trade-off clear: employees could still earn airline miles through loyalty programs with Ramp Travel, while the company gained hundreds of thousands in cashback that it can reinvest in the employee experience and a close process built for the business they were becoming.
For Brandt, scaling finance wasn't about running month-end faster. It was about building a system where, by the time close arrives, there's nothing left to chase.
