The only thing warmer and fuzzier than a pair of Bombas socks? The New York-based apparel brand’s buy-one, give-one model: for every item sold, Bombas donates another item to a community organization as part of their mission to help those experiencing homelessness.
Bombas co-founders Randy Goldberg and David Heath came up with the concept after learning that socks are the number one most requested clothing item in homeless shelters, in part because most organizations do not accept donations of used socks. To donate as many socks as possible, the duo needed to sell as many socks as possible—so they embarked on a two year quest to engineer the world’s comfiest socks.
That strategy is working. Since launching in 2013, Bombas has secured a major deal on NBC’s Shark Tank, added t-shirts, underwear, and more to their product offerings—and have surpassed over 100 million donations across their network of over 3,500 community organizations. And with BILL Accounts Payable (AP) streamlining their financial operations, they can focus on balancing growth with giving back.
Melissa Harris joined Bombas as Director of Accounting Operations in January 2022, drawn to the company’s warm culture and commitment to community. Indeed, Bombas sets both business and charitable goals. Besides implementing a buy-one, give-one model, they organize internal community service initiatives and external partner events, and encourage employees to volunteer, even during work hours. Recently, Harris helped cook dinner for a women’s center.
“The founders of Bombas really wanted to contribute their success back to the community,” she explains. “We're glad to say that Bombas is in a position to increase sales and be profitable while still being able to donate to the communities around us and those in need.”
By the time Harris started at Bombas, the company had already implemented BILL Accounts Payable for around five years. It didn’t take long for her to see how BILL enabled Bombas to focus less on manual tasks and more on its mission—in contrast to the AP software she had used in a prior assistant controller role.
Back then, Harris relied on a clunky AP approval workflow that required her to manually specify an approver for each vendor. Paying international vendors only added a layer of complexity to the process. Since her team’s AP system could only make domestic payments, they needed to use a separate system for international payments which also required the creation of a wire.
“To make international payments at my previous company, which didn’t use BILL Accounts Payable, we had to create an export file from our ERP system, then import it into another system,” Harris recalls. “If there were errors, we had to correct the errors before the file could successfully transmit. Then we’d get a printout of the total due, which we would load on the bank as a wire transfer.”
Now, with BILL Accounts Payable, Harris enjoys a simplified AP workflow that allows her to easily assign an individual approver to multiple vendors.
“In BILL Accounts Payable, I can just check all the boxes next to the vendors an approver is responsible for,” Harris notes. “I thought that was just so smooth and so seamless compared to what I had experienced with other AP systems.” Plus, once she assigns an approver to a vendor, BILL’s artificial intelligence remembers to assign that same approver to the next bill from that vendor—but not without letting her double-check the approver and vendor information first.
“In BILL Accounts Payable, I can just check all the boxes next to the vendors an approver is responsible for. I thought that was just so smooth and so seamless compared to what I had experienced with other AP systems.”
BILL Accounts Payable also lets Harris’ team track approvals at every step of the process, further streamlining their AP approval workflow. They can even see how long a bill has been sitting in an approver’s queue and send reminders to review with just one click.
Adding new vendors is equally as effortless. “We just add new vendors onto the existing BILL Accounts Payable workflow,” Harris describes. “It’s a two second update the team makes, but it saves them the time of having to figure out, ‘Okay, who is this bill supposed to go to?”
Meanwhile, vendors enjoy the security and transparency BILL Accounts Payable offers. “My team says that vendors have a seamless experience with BILL’s AP solution,” Harris explains. “They send in their invoices and update their own banking information, which we don’t see. And once they’ve sent their invoice, they can easily check on its status.”
Harris’ team at Bombas sends roughly 50% of their payments to 10 international vendors, primarily for inventory—although that percentage increases when they need to bulk up their inventory in preparation for the holiday rush.
Which is why Harris is relieved that making international payments for the company isn’t a tedious, multi-step process. “BILL Accounts Payable does it all in one shot, using the same process for both domestic and international payments,” she remarks. “It’s been a much more seamless process with BILL than it has been with other AP systems I’ve used.”
“BILL Accounts Payable does it all in one shot, using the same process for both domestic and international payments.”
Harris cites BILL Accounts Payable cash flow visibility as another favorite feature. BILL provides her with a complete view of Bombas’ payables, including a to-do list, summary of unpaid bills. This visibility, in turn, has allowed her team to proactively project spend and plan accordingly.
“I love BILL’s cash flow visibility,” she says. “It’s really helped us create this worksheet to track our spend projections. I can even ask for a cash flow snapshot for a specific timeframe and see what bills are due in the next seven days, for example. I honestly use this feature on a daily basis.”
“I love BILL’s cash flow visibility. It’s really helped us create this worksheet to track our spend projections.”
BILL Accounts Payable not only streamlines Bombas’ day-to-day workflows, but lets them focus on long-term growth, saving them time on their AP workflows even as their payment volume increases, Harris says. With BILL, POs sync diretly from leading accounting software. This efficiency allows Harris and her colleagues to meet their professional goals while still embodying Bombas’ value of giving back. “If someone volunteers for a community service activity, returning to work won’t be stressful because BILL Accounts Payable is seamless,” Harris says. “Even if you come back to 100 invoices, processing them won’t take that long. You send the invoices in, and they automatically get routed to the correct approvers.”
With BILL, Bombas has an AP solution they can comfortably grow into, not unlike a great pair of socks—so they can continue devoting time to serving those in need, even as they scale.
