How The Second City expedited expense management and gained financial control with Ramp

Throughout his career, Second City Controller Frank Byers has focused on implementing new technology to improve reporting processes, reduce processing times, and simplify systems in order to shift the focus to items that truly matter. When The Second City was purchased by a private equity firm a few years ago, the pressure to drive efficiency while focusing on reporting and analytics grew. 

The Second City’s legacy expense management system, though, didn’t best position the accounting department for success. “Getting information from cardholders has always been a challenge,” says Frank. “In our old credit card system, people would have to log in, manually attach their receipts, and add the project number. It was a huge bottleneck for our month-end close.” 

While the organization has solid processes in place on the revenue record side, Frank and his team knew they needed a better system for expenses. “We had a program through our bank that required us to log into a browser and individually attach the receipts, with no automated coding,” says Frank. “Even if people were proactive, it was a time-consuming process.” Frank and his team frequently found themselves chasing receipts until a day or two before month-end close on the 15th. “We wouldn’t have all our expenses in by the 13th or 14th,” says Frank.

Paying bills was similarly arduous. “We had an AP automation tool that was an app built on NetSuite,” says Frank. “It was supposed to scan the bill with OCR technology and pre-populate the vendor. But it didn’t break out line items or code them, and it never scanned the bill properly and matched vendors correctly. That technology wasn’t actually functional.”

The Second City needed an expense management solution with functional technology that could remove bottlenecks to month-end close, improve the user experience, and automate some of the more tedious parts of the expense management process.

The Second City partnered with Ramp to simplify and streamline its complex expense management process. “We have separate legal entities for each location, which Ramp helps us with a lot,” says Frank. “We have a pretty complex reporting structure by location, then by line of business, then by department, and then by specific show. Ramp helps us track expenses at a granular level with automated project codes.” 

That automated coding has removed the highly manual process that once defined expense management at The Second City. Now, employees can snap photos of their receipts and upload them easily to the Ramp portal, which means Frank and his team no longer need to chase receipts. “Before we used to chase people until 1-2 days before finalizing close,” says Frank. Now, we have all expenses in by the 5th, and we close on the 15th.” 

Ramp Bill Pay has similarly streamlined the organization’s previously frustrating payment process. “When we moved to Bill Pay, I was hesitant because we were promised the same type of functionality as our previous technology, which didn’t work,” says Frank. “But Ramp’s OCR works seamlessly-- so it not only recognizes the vendor, but it reads each individual line item and adds individual items and uses accounting rules to code each line item correctly.” That, says Frank, made adopting Ramp Bill Pay a no-brainer.

For an organization focused on reporting and analytics, Ramp has been a game-changer. “With our previous system, we had just one giant journal entry for expenses,” says Frank. “Now we have individual transaction records for each credit card transaction. Ramp has not only sped things up -- it’s also added a layer of reporting that we didn’t have.” 

Now, about 90% of The Second City’s spend goes through Ramp, both thanks to the granularity with which the accounting team can review Ramp-based transactions and the time-savings the entire organization gains when using Ramp cards. 

“Ramp has accelerated the close process, and the sooner I can close the month, the faster I can move on to all the additional reporting demands that come from ownership,” says Frank. “We were able to start our budgeting process a month earlier this year than last year.” By ending the close process earlier in the month, Frank says, he can move onto his main priorities more quickly. 

“It’s allowed us to focus on what’s important,” says Frank. “All the value-added analysis we do, helping with reconciliations that help us prepare for our audit.” These types of things are much more interesting to the finance team, Frank says, than chasing receipts or reconciling credit card statements. “Whereas before we were spending a lot of time doing manual data entry that wasn’t valuable, now our team can actually develop these important skills. They want to learn those skills -- and Ramp helps free up time for them to do that.”