“An improvement in all aspects:" Why Snapdocs switched from Brex, Expensify, and Bill.com to Ramp

Snapdocs’ finance team was struggling with fragmentation when it came to expense management. “We were looking for a way to streamline our AP and reimbursement items,” says Accounting Associate Fahem Islam, who runs AP, month-end close, and payroll at Snapdocs. “Previously with Brex and Expensify, we had to do a lot of manual syncing on our end.”

Snapdocs’ legacy finance tech stack included Brex, which generated virtual cards for the executive team and frequent employee travelers; Expensify, which handled reimbursements for employees; and Bill.com for vendor bill pay. None of these systems integrated easily with one another, and a lack of customizable approval functionality made expense management processes frustratingly time-intensive. 

“We didn’t have a streamlined approval process for employee spending, and it wasn’t always easy to get the correct people to approve necessary expenses,” says Fahem. That led to a constant backlog, which was stressful and time-consuming for the finance and accounting team. 

“At month end, we found that there were lots of manual processes we had to complete to get expenses fully synced into Quickbooks,” says Fahem. “It took a lot of legwork to get that all figured out.” 

The constant need to toggle between systems wasn’t tenable for Snapdocs’ team. “The biggest pain point was having two different tools, each of which required us to manually approve and reconcile data every single month,” says Fahem. “We were doing the same thing with billing as well. We wanted to consolidate everything into a single platform to simplify monthly reconciliation.”

Fahem and his team researched providers that could offer the consolidation they needed, and Ramp quickly emerged as a frontrunner. “We loved the fact that Ramp has the ability to fully sync up with Quickbooks,” notes Fahem. Plus, Snapdocs appreciated the ability to customize its approval processes or reimbursements tailored to specific team changes or specific circumstances. “We didn’t have that level of control with Expensify or Brex, so that was a huge deciding factor,” says Fahem.

The velocity of innovation at Ramp was another factor in Snapdocs’ decision to partner together. “Every time I log into Ramp, I see you rolling out a new feature,” says Fahem. Ramp’s ability to solve acute problems for Snapdocs, plus its potential to simplify other processes in the future, was ultimately attractive enough for Snapdocs to deploy Ramp across the organization.

Since implementing Ramp, Snapdocs saves hours in monthly reconciliation. “We’re not having to comb through expense records for the whole month,” says Fahem. “It’s made our lives a lot easier, and having everything in one spot has been really convenient.” Now, if there’s an issue with a bill or a reimbursement, employees don’t need to dig through their email or Slack channels -- they can respond directly through comments on the Ramp platform. “It’s made things a lot more streamlined and easy for us to stay on top of. It’s been a night and day difference,” says Fahem. Whereas monthly reconciliation took 5-6 hours with Brex and Expensify, it now takes under 30 minutes with Ramp. 

Much of the time-savings Ramp generates is thanks to its excellent automation and OCR features. “The auto-population that happens with Ramp has been pretty phenomenal,” says Fahem. “I feel very confident that when I upload a bill into Ramp, it’s going to line up with what the bill says.”

Ramp’s accuracy and ease of use has given Fahem newfound peace of mind. “I spend maybe 10-15 minutes in Ramp every day, and I know that we’re set. That puts my mind at ease -- knowing that I need to put minimal time into Ramp to have it take care of our needs.” 

Ramp hasn’t just consolidated three distinct systems into one platform -- it’s also offered improvements across the organization. With Ramp, Snapdocs can confidently activate more employees with virtual cards. “We’re open to getting a bit more creative with our card issuance, because another feature we utilize is the spend programs,” says Fahem. “For example, we have a company kickoff coming up in February. Last year, we set up a card for everyone in the company for that event, and it made our lives so much easier.” 

Ramp has also helped Snapdocs’ bottom line by generating more cash back. “We moved some of our monthly vendors to a virtual card instead of a normal ACH bill payment,” says Fahem. “That has resulted in a lot more cash back than what we were seeing with our previous process.”

Ultimately, Fahem says, Ramp has been a wholesale improvement over Snapdocs’ legacy systems. “Not to sound too much like an ad,” says Fahem, “but in all aspects, Ramp has been a massive improvement for our company, full stop.”