Scentbird processes expenses and accounting 2x faster with Brex.

Disjointed solutions and hours of investigation to close the books

Amber Papp, the VP of Finance at Scentbird, was frustrated with their disjointed financial stack of Silicon Valley Bank cards and Abacus expense management software, which didn’t reliably integrate with their NetSuite accounting software. Scentbird struggled with limited visibility of expenses and manual, error-prone workflows.

Compounding matters was that Scentbird had different brands and global locations and needed custom accounting codes for each. But their setup lacked effective custom coding and automation features, which led to errors as they had to rely on individuals to code expenses correctly each step of the way. Amber shared, “It would take hours of investigation just to figure out the issue when expenses didn’t upload to NetSuite correctly.”

At her prior company, Amber was evaluating Brex as a replacement for Amex and PNC. She caught up with a former colleague who saw the Brex implementation through, and he told her, “With Brex, the onboarding was super easy. In addition to cards, Brex has all this great software for expenses and additional coding features for accounting too.” So, when SVB collapsed in 2023, Amber saw her window to pitch Brex to Scentbird’s leadership — who quickly got on board with upgrading to an integrated card and spend platform with rewards far superior to their SVB cards.

A global card program for every use case with custom accounting codes

Scentbird implemented Brex cards and expense management software and tapped into Brex’s award-winning NetSuite integration. They use their global Brex corporate card program to enable every type of spend across every team, from the CTO to marketing to product development to finance.

Scentbird most frequently issues Brex cards for travel and entertainment, offsites, warehouse supplies, tax registrations, and other business spend. They find that Brex cards are particularly effective for company offsites. According to Amber, “We just issue temporary cards for employees’ per diems and travel, and set the cards to deactivate following the offsite. The one-time usage is super easy and controlled.”

Scentbird is also starting to shift larger invoicing spend, such as for ads and shipping, to Brex cards to maximize rewards and cash flow. Amber’s Brex rep performed a vendor analysis and showed her how to easily onboard vendors in Brex. “He gave me a list of our higher-spend vendors that accept credit cards. He even noted which ones don't charge additional fees. We’ve shared the list with our employees and said, ‘Hey, if a vendor you use is on here, see if they'll let you pay by Brex credit card,’” said Amber.

Scentbird also takes advantage of accounting automation in Brex to support their brands and global operations. “Because we have so many coding fields, Brex’s custom rules have been super helpful. And not only can we create them, Brex actually uses AI to suggest custom rules and settings,” said Amber.

“We are completing expenses and accounting twice as fast with Brex than before.”

— Amber Papp, VP of Finance, Scentbird

Processing expenses and closing the books twice as fast

Perhaps the most noteworthy impact is that Scentbird has doubled their number of corporate card users and volume of spend since moving to Brex — without any increase to their time spent on expenses and accounting. Amber credits Brex's automated controls, expense reporting, custom codes, and NetSuite integration for accelerating multiple key finance workflows. “We are completing expenses and accounting twice as fast with Brex than before,” said Amber.

As a major bonus, switching to Brex and more than doubling their card usage has led to higher rewards — and they expect to reap more as they move more recurring vendor spend onto Brex. Amber says, “Paying vendors by Brex card will give us better cash flow. And we’ll get the rewards for it.”

Employees find the Brex platform easy to use, and Scentbird is averaging a 97% employee expense policy compliance rate. Amber shared: “The Brex platform is much easier. Everybody is very comfortable using Brex — they love it.” Amber also appreciates that her custom codes are available in the Brex mobile app. “The Brex app came out with all the fields available for expense coding and categorization. So now I tell my team there's absolutely no excuse. You can complete everything right now, from your phone, all in one place.”

Scentbird has also gained more control over employee spend. Amber says: “I love how easily Brex lets you set the spend limits. For example, we have a $75 per diem limit. So we can just issue a total amount for the days of the offsite. Brex automatically prevents the limit from being exceeded, and we might even come in under! It takes the burden off our HR team — they don’t even have to review expenses to check if someone is taking advantage of the per diem.”

Closing the books is also monumentally easier with an integrated Brex card and spend management solution that syncs automatically with NetSuite. “Brex syncs directly with NetSuite. And if something doesn’t quite reconcile, Brex highlights what’s wrong with the expense and proposes a resolution. In fact, only two expenses required a fix this month, and it just took a few minutes,” said Amber.

Brex’s custom accounting fields and rules and AI-powered recommendations have gone a long way to streamline workflows. Amber shared, “There were custom fields that we wanted that weren't in NetSuite. Brex worked through it all with us to get it set up. Beyond that, Brex actually recommends additional custom rules we should do. So when I'm looking at everything, it will suggest, ‘for this merchant, do you always sync into NetSuite and want help to set that up and streamline the process?’"

At the end of the day, Scentbird is thrilled to have an integrated card, spend management, and accounting automation solution that saves them time and improves spend controls. They know that Brex cares about their business and can scale with them. “I love that Brex is always improving the product. Brex works to build features we’re actually going to use that will have an impact on our business.”