Airbase and Bushel: Exceeding expectations.

When the finance team at Bushel received a cold call from Airbase, they were looking for a better AP process that would provide better approval workflows.

At the time, Finance was responsible for entering bills, paying them, and approving them in NetSuite.

“Department heads weren’t seeing their bills,” says Rick Kremer, Senior Accountant. “With Airbase, we were trying to solve this lack of visibility.”

Several other processes were in place to manage spending, including Divvy’s corporate cards and Google Forms for expense reimbursements, which ran through payroll. But the team was ready for a more streamlined approach.

“We were looking for a nice clean UI, and more of an all-in-one platform,” says Rick.

Automated AP leads to a faster close.

Airbase’s accounting automation has solved those issues and more.

A big benefit of that automation is an incredibly fast close.

“We’re usually done with the AP portion of the close by business day 2,” says Angie. “The main reason is that entering AP bills is down to the click of a button.” Airbase’s AI-powered OCR takes care of the rest, which is something Angie appreciates.

“AI technology has been around for a while, but thanks to Airbase, this is the first time I’ve used it where it actually works as expected.”

Bushel even has some bills that must be paid by check. Paying them is a simple click of a button, and since the funds are immediately pulled from their bank account, it’s more like an ACH payment in terms of managing the cash flow. If the check isn’t cashed, Airbase follows up.

Airbase pays for itself.

Whenever possible, the AP team uses Airbase’s virtual cards to pay bills — the Airbase dashboard lets them know when a company accepts virtual card payments and offers the option to do so with ease.

At renewal time, Angie ran the numbers to calculate how much additional revenue the team was generating with the cash back. She presented her findings to the company’s CFO to demonstrate the ROI on Airbase.

“Airbase is basically free since our renewal price was equal to the cash back we earn,” says Angie.

Reconciliation in mere minutes and other time savers.

Airbase’s new automated reconciliation feature has saved the team hours of work. Rick says reconciliation that could take hours and even days now takes him “5 or 10 minutes.”

“I pull NetSuite’s beginning and ending balance, then the Airbase report that identifies unreconciled items including the reason they’re outstanding.”

Angie adds that even their auditors were impressed during a recent audit.

“We uploaded the rec report to the auditors and there were no questions asked. All of the reconciling items were clear, the explanations made sense.”

The full audit trail automatically created in Airbase with every transaction also made the audit process easier.

Airbase also saves the team time when processing its 1099s. Thanks to Airbase, they’re able to produce a report showing who’s submitted W-9s, along with other important tax info, making 1099 season “a non-event.”

Better user experiences for all.

The team is more than happy with Airbase’s customer support and is even more appreciative of not having to contact them very often.

“We don’t submit a lot of tickets, we don’t have a lot of issues, but whenever we do, we always get fast responses that make sense,” says Angie. “You know it’s a person answering your questions, not a robot.”

Rick adds that they can often find answers right away in the Help Center.

“Whoever maintains the Help Center does a really good job of it,” he says.

Employees and the finance team have both benefited from the improved reimbursement process. Previously, the company used a Google Form for expenses, which were handled through payroll.

Now, Angie appreciates the greater clarity around expense management. “Keeping expense management and payroll separate — because they are separate — is a really good thing,” she says.

Employees are also reimbursed faster. “In Airbase, they can request a reimbursement and literally have money two days later.”

Sometimes silence speaks volumes.

When asked how their employees feel about using Airbase for their expenses, the two looked at each other and laughed. “We haven’t heard much, but in our company, silence is golden. It means it’s meeting their needs.”