How Heyday Skincare gained control over 23+ entities with Ramp

As a multi-entity organization, Heyday’s spend management is complicated. “We’re a complex business,” says Senior Accounting Manager, Shawn Gordon. “We have a small finance team for a pretty big organizational operation—with 23 corporate-owned locations under our purview, our accounting system altogether has 30 entities in it.”

The team’s legacy finance solutions did not help simplify the accounting and expense management process. “We did not have the right accounts payable systems in place to operate cleanly and efficiently,” says Shawn. “10 locations might mean 10 different spend management instances.” That meant the finance team was constantly duplicating its efforts—without having the overarching transparency and control that would lead to a smooth operation.

Heyday partnered with Ramp to gain control over its fragmented approach to financial management. “Ramp has been a real saving grace for our business,” says Shawn. “It’s brought us to a much better, more organized place. We can centralize everything into one instance in Ramp, and we can go and make sure that when we get a bill or when we have a credit card charge, it goes to the right home without having to worry about it.”

Ramp has enabled Heyday to centralize its finance operations while also allowing the finance team to examine each individual shop and evaluate its role in the larger organization. “Ramp not only gives us the ability to properly account for things in the right place, but also to pay to and from the right place,” explains Shawn. “Something as simple as ensuring the credit card gets paid from the location that had the expenses really does make a difference in allowing us to monitor and keep track of each location. Simply put, that location specificity is a win for our treasury management too.” 

With the Ramp platform, Heyday’s 300+ employees can easily submit receipts and receive reimbursements expediently. “The idea that you can text your receipt or text information about a transaction you made is incredible,” says Shawn. “That convenience value is super beneficial to our employees who are traveling and on-the-go.” 

Since implementing Ramp, Heyday has gained efficiencies borne from a shared services model. “Ramp allows us to deliver a centralized approach,” says Shawn. “We now have both a common way of doing things and a common way of collecting, processing, and analyzing all the information we use for our financial reporting.” 

For example, Heyday needs a platform that can manage expenses both for its national brand marketing campaigns and for individual shops. “It’s a challenge to bring all those things together, and Ramp is a tool that allows us to do that,” says Shawn.

One benefit of that centralization is proactive, more controlled management. “Without centralization on the spend management side, it leaves the opportunity for things to happen without oversight,” says Shawn. “Things can get a little out of control.” For example, before partnering with Ramp, Heyday employees would individually order supplies they need from Amazon. Now, rather than make purchases directly from their own Amazon accounts, employees are encouraged to shop via the Amazon Business Account Heyday has set up with Ramp. “That centralization helps drive the supply chain and lets us manage the shop better together,” says Shawn.

A true game-changer for Heyday has been Ramp Bill Pay. “It makes a big difference when you can pay rent out of the business that owes the rent,” says Shawn. “2023 was the year of Bill Pay making a big difference for our accounting operation in allowing us to get time-savings and better accuracy in our books through one central system.” 

Prior to using Ramp, Heyday struggled with a legacy bill pay system that duplicated the company’s inventory. “It matters where you’re booking something and where you’re paying it from the multi-entity component,” says Shawn. “We immediately stopped bleeding by switching to Ramp. Ramp not only alleviated a duplicative inventory problem—it also gave us document matching, so we can now make sure our bills are properly associated with our POs and receipts.” Ultimately, the efficiency gained has saved at least one finance team member half a day of time spent on transacting inventory. 

“It’s setting us up on a path to continue gaining more visibility and accuracy in how we’re processing our payables for the inventory part of our business,” says Shawn.

In general, Ramp is setting Heyday on a path toward improved processes and systems, which ultimately yield dividends for the business. “Now that we can centralize everything and not have to worry about what another system might be doing or if it’s processing correctly, we can focus on other areas of our whole procure-to-pay workflow, like making sure that our inventory management is going well, and we’re evaluating prices from our vendors, and we’re receiving against what we’re billed for,” says Shawn. “We now have a system that is getting us past the challenges of our old system and allowing us to invest in our process.” 

How does Shawn describe Ramp? “Powerful, convenient, and innovative,” he says. To Heyday, that’s a winning combination.