How Crowdbotics streamlined, centralized, and saved with Ramp

With an ever-growing number of employees located around the world, Crowdbotics needed a simple way to handle travel and expense reimbursement. Its legacy systems couldn’t make reimbursement easy, nor could they accommodate Crowdbotics’ preference for ACH-driven bill pay. 

The manual, complex process that characterized expense management extended to procurement as well, which the finance team was managing using spreadsheets. “The big area that we cut POs for is contracted development,” explains Crowdbotics VP of Strategic Finance, Miles Lavin. “They’re usually fixed fee, and we’re trying to allocate spending caps to those firms, then tracking invoices because those projects occur over several months. We were previously doing this in spreadsheets, and we didn’t want to move the process to our legacy accounting partner given the limitations of PO generation with that tool.” 

Crowdbotics needed a streamlined expense management system that could easily handle reimbursement, bill pay, and procurement—all in one central place.

Crowdbotics partnered with Ramp to simplify employee reimbursement—and, consequently, also simplified bill pay and procurement. “We issue cards for everything now, for our spend programs and travel,” says Miles. “Even though we have the cards, there’s always a situation where somebody forgets to use their card, so Ramp’s reimbursement process is great to have.” 

The finance team appreciates the ability to reallocate cards between employees easily. “With other systems, you need to close a card and reissue a new one,” explains Miles. “The ability to quickly change the owner is helpful and less disruptive to the business.”

Crowdbotics also shifted the procurement process from manual spreadsheets to Ramp Procurement, so the team no longer needs to sift through aggregated invoices tied to various POs recorded on multiple spreadsheets.

Consolidating multiple workstreams within one centralized platform yielded multiple benefits for the finance team. By simplifying and centralizing, the team gained better control over corporate spend. 

“Having a clear approval process is significantly better,” says Miles. “Having a source system of record that we can go back to and trust for the approval process has been key.” 

That centralized system also gives Miles and his team improved visibility—especially on the procurement side of the business. “In most systems I’ve used that are procurement-based, it’s actually very hard to track allocated spend that hasn’t been issued yet,” says Miles. “A lot of PO tracking looks at which invoices have been paid—but I actually need to care about which invoices have been sent to us: so, where do I need to accrue spend vs. what’s our actual cash out on it.” According to Miles, the ability to easily unite the invoices that have been paid with the as-yet unpaid invoices that are tied to a PO has been helpful. “It means that, as I look from a financial lens at approving invoices for payment, it’s really easy to look at the invoice itself and make sure we’re not exceeding the financial cap,” says Miles. “Having that visibility on both the invoice and the PO is super helpful.”

The visibility that shifting from manual spreadsheets to Ramp’s automated platform has offered has also produced significant time-savings. “Rather than have to go to a different screen, system, or spreadsheet, I can look at an individual invoice and easily see what I have remaining,” says Miles. “Previously, I would have had to go to a spreadsheet, filter to a PO, then look at all the aggregated invoices tied against it, then look at accumulated reserves and things like that. Having it all in one spot saves me a ton of time.” By Miles’ estimate, that time-savings amounts to 3-5 hours each month.

In addition to time saved, control instituted, and visibility gained, deploying Ramp has also given the finance team the gift of quiet from the company’s employees. “We switched from our legacy provider to Ramp in under a week and heard zero complaints,” says Miles. “We have 120 employees and another 400-500 contractors, and Ramp managed that transition seamlessly.”