How Skin Pharm streamlined approvals, improved procurement workflow, and leveled up its team with Ramp

Skin Pharm’s legacy financial management processes were complex, fragmented, and highly manual. The company lacked both a true expense platform and a true procurement solution. “For expenses, employees would have to upload their reimbursements to Gusto, then all their receipts would go into Google Drive,” says Kaela Patrinely, VP of Finance at Skin Pharm. “We had an AmEx, a Citi, a Chase—one of every bank’s credit card. It was just a plethora across all our different clinics, and we had accounts with every different person, all closing at different times.” The company had thousands of expenses, and getting through them was an incredibly cumbersome, time-consuming manual process.

The procurement process was similarly opaque. “Everything was tracked via Google Sheets,” says Anna Huval, Accounting Manager. The supply ordering process required multiple separate Google Sheets for each clinic. When practice managers needed to order supplies, they needed to list the vendor, required supplies, quantity, and amount in the order log. “It was all separate pieces,” says Anna.

Much of this process occurred via Slack, notes Kaela. “Instead of submitting purchase orders, they were submitting Slack requests,” she says. “Coming from an audit background, knowing that everything was done in Slack and Google Sheets gave me some anxiety.”

These time-consuming manual processes weren’t working for Skin Pharm, particularly as the company entered a phase of hypergrowth. “It just wasn’t scalable with how fast we were growing,” says Kaela. “We needed something that was more automated and streamlined, and where we could get everything in one place.”  

Skin Pharm partnered with Ramp to streamline and automate its cumbersome accounting processes. 

“My goal was to implement systems that could all talk to each other and eliminate manual work,” says Kaela. “I needed a system that fully integrated with NetSuite, I asked peers at other companies and they all mentioned Ramp as by far one of the best.” 

Kaela and her team piloted Ramp with a few of Skin Pharm’s smaller teams. “We planned to do it for a month to see how it went,” Kaela says. “Everyone loved it and was talking about it so much that everyone else wanted to be on Ramp as well.” 

The company deployed Ramp with a card for each clinic. “Each of our practice managers has their own Ramp card, and we know what clinic it goes to because of that,” says Kaela. “Once the card is issued on Ramp, they have approval to go ahead and spend on what they need.” Using Ramp has largely eliminated unapproved spend, Kaela says. “They shouldn’t see anything show up in their Ramp card that wasn’t already approved as a PO.” 

Ramp has also streamlined Skin Pharm’s procurement process and spend programs. “We use one of our spend programs for inventory transfers,” says Anna. “Whenever a transfer is sent, it’s noted as sent in the activity section, and it’s noted as received whenever it’s received by the clinics.” Ramp also enables the team to filter POs and transfers by owner or requester, which helps in narrowing down purchases by clinic and by individual.

Finally, Skin Pharm leverages Ramp Bill Pay, which has automated the bill pay process. “Bill pay now happens automatically, regardless of whether a team member is in the office or not,” says Kaela. “Now we know we’re not falling behind on anything.” 

Implementing Ramp has been a game-changer for the finance team in terms of time saved. The platform has expedited approvals across the board, for both expenses and POs. “If managers wouldn’t approve orders in time, it would set teams back on things they needed to purchase,” says Anna. “Now it’s so simple: managers get a notification, go in and approve it, and then employees know they can go ahead and order their supplies.” 

That automation has saved material time for the team. “Honestly, we went from weeks of waiting to get approval for most things to about 48 hours,” says Kaela. “From a timeliness standpoint, clinics can actually get what they need sooner because their managers are approving their requests on time.”

The team is saving time at month-end close, too—they’ve reduced the process from 25 days down to 10-15. The result of these time-savings is a general upskilling of the finance team.

“Anna got promoted because of it,” says Kaela. “She was able to go from being an inventory analyst to being a manager. Now that we have Ramp, I don’t need someone dedicated to digging into every single inventory item and going through every single Slack and order log.” 

For her part, Anna appreciates that she’s been able to spend more time digging into the data Ramp has generated with confidence. “I’ve been able to grow with Skin Pharm, which I’m very excited about,” she says. “I’m learning new things rather than just spending my time digging into inventory. It’s been really great.” 

Anna notes that Ramp has instilled a new confidence in the quality of the team’s financial data, which has allowed better oversight, real-time visibility, and improved budgeting. “The ability to have real-time conversations and feedback with our ops team and our leadership team, and to have a better understanding of what happened the prior month and where we can cut costs or make things more efficient, is really incredible,” says Kaela. “For example: I already know what all our expenses were for last month. I know what category they were in, I know who’s spent what already. Going forward, we can create new policies or re-examine areas of need.” 

That visibility has enabled better, more precise budgeting. “Historically, making a budget for the following year was a little bit of a guessing game,” says Kaela. “Now, I can budget pretty accurately at this point knowing what we’ll do next month and even next year. I have confidence in the numbers we have, so when I go to the board, our leadership or ops teams, we can have those strategic discussions.”

In general, Ramp has made Skin Pharm’s financial processes tighter, more predictable, and more controlled. “Internal controls are important to me,” says Kaela. “Knowing that every single card holder, every single reimbursement, every single PO goes through an approval process—and everything is actually tracked.” Kaela appreciates the ease with which she can view who approved what and when, and that she can conduct oversight without needing to involve the rest of her team. “It makes my life a lot easier,” she says. “And from an audit standpoint, everything is right there.” 

Ramp makes life easier for Kaela and her team—and it’s been embraced by employees across the organization for its ease of use. “Across the board, employees love the user interface,” says Kaela. “Typically, expense systems are just a little clunky and not super intuitive. Our people love the ability to text their receipts, use the Ramp app, and make purchases without having to carry a physical card.” Ramp makes life easier, allows managers to have better oversight and control over spend, and levels up the Skin Pharm team. “We love Ramp,” says Kaela simply. “Honestly, it’s been our favorite thing.”