The finance team at Lambda was frustrated by old school systems for spend and expense management. With BILL Spend & Expense, they got a modern solution that makes coding expenses as innovative as their coding curriculum.

The challenge

Lambda School is best known for its innovative funding solution that allows students to avoid financial risk by paying for courses after Lambda helps them land high-paying jobs. But in the business office, the Lambda finance team was frustrated by old-school systems for spend and expense management.

Stephanie Ho, senior accountant at Lambda, said that Brex, their old corporate card, gave them no way to set spending limits for individuals, which created risks for abuse and overspending. In one instance, a student who was issued a card for program meetups racked up $1,000 in unauthorized charges.

Not only did their corporate card lack controls, it also made reconciliation difficult. According to Stephanie, “Recoding departments and expenses was so cumbersome with our corporate card that I would just export transactions into Excel, fix the coding, and import it into QBO rather than use the sync function.”

Reviewing reports in Expensify, meanwhile, took so much time for managers and the finance team that they started looking for a new software solution that could help save time and frustration.

“Recoding departments and expenses was so cumbersome with our corporate card that I would just export transactions into Excel, fix the coding, and import it into QBO rather than use the sync function.”

The solution

Before joining Lambda, Stephanie learned about BILL Spend & Expense while researching alternatives to Emburse, the card generation and expense management software used by her previous company.

So when Lambda needed a streamlined solution, she recommended BILL Spend & Expense. “I had experience with Brex and Emburse, and BILL Spend & Expense is way more robust,” Stephanie said. “It has better spending control without as much manual management. Plus, the platform is free, they offer great support, and are constantly adding new features.”

She said implementing BILL Spend & Expense was straightforward, but some employees who were used to having no controls are still getting used to spending limits. “BILL Spend & Expense provided really good documentation,” Stephanie said, “which I incorporated into our process instructions for clarity.”

Since making the switch, nearly everyone at Lambda uses BILL Spend & Expense, and the finance team doesn’t worry when they issue cards for student meetups. With BILL Spend & Expense, they can set spending limits, see transactions in real time, and freeze cards instantly if they see or suspect unauthorized activity.

“BILL Spend & Expense is way more robust. It has better spending control without as much manual management.”

In addition to helping Lambda minimize risk, BILL Spend & Expense has also helped maximize time savings. Stephanie calculated that every Expensify transaction took about 30 seconds to process: 10 seconds for managers to review, 10 seconds for her to approve, plus 10 seconds more to book the reimbursement.

“In contrast,” she said, “every BILL Spend & Expense transaction takes 10 seconds total for me to review and book. There were 833 transactions on the old system in July, so potentially 4.5 hours could be saved each month just by using BILL Spend & Expense.”

Lambda has also improved their month-end closing process with the BILL + QuickBooks Online integration. With Brex, transactions automatically synced to QBO, which gave the finance team no time to catch errors. Their work-around involved an extra step to fix coding in Excel. Now, the option to control the sync from BILL to QBO allows Stephanie and her team to “make sure all transactions are properly coded before syncing, which eliminates extra work and saves time.”

And, because many employees waited to submit reimbursements in Expensify, Stephanie said that switching to BILL Spend & Expense—which notifies spenders to complete transactions at the point of purchase—has put an end to expenses coming in months after books were closed.

“Every Spend & Expense transaction takes 10 seconds total for me to review and book. There were 833 transactions on the old system in July, so potentially 4.5 hours could be saved each month just by using BILL Spend & Expense.”