Heirloom achieves 96% employee expense policy compliance with Brex.
The TL;DR
Heirloom tried to enable employee spend with Zoho reimbursement software and a shared Chase corporate card.
The disjointed systems led to slow reimbursements for employees and insufficient spend tracking for the finance team.
With Brex, Heirloom saves hours on expenses every month, reimburses employees fast, and proactively controls spend with customizable budgets.
The Impact
96%
Employee compliance rate with Brex
Company
Heirloom is a fast-growing direct air capture company that will permanently remove CO2 at a billion-ton scale. Their technology rapidly accelerates the natural processes that enable limestone to absorb CO2 from the air from a timespan of years to days. Heirloom is based in the US and has around 100 employees.
Challenge
To enable employee spend, Heirloom was using Zoho reimbursement software and a shared Chase corporate card. Reimbursements were slow and required a separate app, and the finance team had insufficient visibility and tracking.
“We could only see what was spent after the fact, and it was hard to have true control or oversight,” says Candice Chow-Gamboa, Chief of Staff at Heirloom. “We were spending a lot of time trying to reconcile and categorize spend and get accurate data,” she adds.
Heirloom needed a way to proactively assign spending budgets, increase accountability, and track expenses in real time.
“When you can only track spend after the fact, it’s hard to have true control or oversight.”
— Candice Chow-Gamboa, Chief of Staff, Heirloom
Solution
Heirloom evaluated Brex, as well as Ramp and others, upon recommendation from Candice who had used Brex before. They decided on Brex for several key reasons.
First, scalability. Brex offered a complete solution of cards, reimbursements, expense management, bill pay, and travel that can scale as Heirloom grows across the US and globally. “With Brex, I was really impressed with the whole suite of offerings. I want to move quickly, and Brex will work for us today and as we continue to scale.”
Second, enterprise-grade support. “The implementation and ongoing support from Brex are phenomenal, such as in helping us set up our budgets and policies.”
Lastly, Heirloom loved the user-friendly experience and mobile app. “Brex is extremely intuitive, and that means that people will actually use it to manage their own spend.”
“We're saving several hours on expenses every month and employees get reimbursed faster. With less busywork, we have time to focus on things that really matter.”
— Candice Chow-Gamboa, Chief of Staff, Heirloom
Impact
With the ability to create budgets and customize expense policies that apply across cards, reimbursements, and payments, Heirloom can now proactively control spend and increase accountability. “Now I can delegate spend management responsibility to employees and empower them to spend wisely,” says Candice.
The increased efficiency and accountability have been a step change for Heirloom. “Budgets give employees the freedom and accessibility to do their job effectively," says Candice. “We're saving several hours on expenses every month and employees get reimbursed faster. With less busywork, we have time to focus on things that really matter.”
Easier expense reporting has also increased Heirloom’s policy compliance. “I personally love how easy it is to close out expenses by Slack or text,” says Candice. “We’ve seen the employee compliance rate skyrocket to 96% percent with Brex.”
Heirloom has also been able to automate their expense categorization and reconciliation. “By creating a budget for each spending purpose, and allowing employees to use one card, we don't need to continually recategorize spend. It just automatically goes to the right budget. That automatic tracking is huge.”
With the ability to see and adjust spend in real time, Heirloom is also able to optimize business impact. “Now we can tell if we're spending money in the right ways. We can monitor spending by budget and assess if we're on track,” says Candice.
Heirloom now has much greater confidence in their spend data. “For a lot of transactions we had with Chase, even the merchant name wouldn't show up properly, or we were missing data. With Brex, we’ve increased the quality and reliability of information.”
Heirloom would recommend Brex to any company looking for a future-proof spend management solution as they scale. “I would definitely recommend Brex. It allows us to give people the ability to self-serve and to manage their spend while providing guardrails, and has everything we need as we grow.” Candice says.
“Brex allows us to give people the ability to self-serve and to manage their spend while providing guardrails.”
— Candice Chow-Gamboa, Chief of Staff, Heirloom
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