Early-stage startup Treet manages all company spend on Brex.
The TL;DR
Treet struggled with manual, slow reimbursements and poor visibility of expenses.
They need a full stack of cards, ERP integration, automation, and an operating account.
With Brex, Treet eliminated hours of manual work for expense tracking, money transfers, and reimbursements.
The Impact
4 hours
Saved by CEO per month
20 hours
Saved by employees on training
Company
Founded in 2021, Treet is a seed-stage startup that helps fashion brands grow revenue and reduce their footprint by launching branded resale sites.. With around 20 employees, Treet powers 60% of all branded resale sites live worldwide, including for brands like Girlfriend Collective, CUTS Clothing, Tentree. To date, they have raised $6.4M in funding from Techstars, First Round Capital, and more.
Challenge
Treet was burdened by a highly manual reimbursement process, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) corporate cards that lacked controls and visibility, and an SVB bank account that didn't offer sufficient diversification for their operating cash.
Employees had to use personal cards for expenses, travel, offsites, and stipends and request reimbursement via email to the CEO. The CEO then had to enter their requests into a spreadsheet, collect receipts, and process reimbursements via payroll at month end. Furthermore, none of this auto-synced to their QuickBooks ERP, which resulted in manual, error-prone reconciliation.
As the company grew and opened a second office, they needed a more efficient, scalable financial stack. “I asked myself, why am I doing this every month? I didn't know a solution like Brex existed that would be this easy, yet still appropriate for small and growing teams,” said Jake Disraeli, co-founder and CEO at Treet.
“Until we hire a CFO, I’m handling the day-to-day financial management. As an early-stage founder who wears a lot of hats, having tools like Brex makes it so much easier."
— Jake Disraeli, co-founder and CEO at Treet
Solution
For a strong foundation, Treet chose a Brex business account offering diversification and stability, which enabled them to facilitate payroll on time during the SVB crisis. “Having the Brex business account during the SVB crisis was a huge asset. We were able to get a wire out and diversify our institutional risk by having another account that offered up to $6M in FDIC insurance.”
They also switched to Brex corporate cards with budgets (essentially, spend limits allocated for a specific purpose with auto-enforced controls for amount, permitted categories, and required documentation). Brex’s spend management software was also implemented to accelerate and automate reimbursements, which are paid from Treet’s Brex business account in 3 days or less and tracked to the same budgets as with cards.
Treet set up customized employee permissions based on role and gave secure access to their contracted bookkeeper. With Brex’s QuickBooks integration, every transaction flows automatically to their ERP, which makes it easy for their bookkeeper to close their books each month.
Impact
By setting up auto-transfers between their Brex business account and their SVB bank account, Treet ensures timely funding for employee spending and payroll. They also use the Brex dashboard to track external bank accounts in one place, including SVB and Chase. As a result, they saved hours of manually transferring funds back and forth and logging in multiple times a month to track balances.
Driving efficiency and accountability, Treet has issued corporate cards to all 20 employees and created budgets with built-in expense policies for different purposes. Jake remarked, “We issued Brex cards for everyone, including for health and wellness stipends. We have set budgets, and what's great is if they happen to use their personal card, they can easily submit a reimbursement in the Brex dashboard or app. I can approve accordingly and have all that be more or less automated.”
Treet has gained visibility and control, and employees have gained the convenience of using one corporate card for any purpose with automatically generated receipts and memos. “We’re using Brex for all of our company expenses, including our annual offsite. With Brex budgets, our employees have autonomy to use their card to help out the team or for one-off expenses like dinner with a colleague,” said Jake.
Time is money for a CEO, and Jake is saving 4 hours per month on tracking employee spend, chasing receipts, paying out reimbursements, and transferring money between bank accounts. “Until we hire a CFO, I’m handling the day-to-day financial management. As an early-stage founder who wears a lot of hats, having tools like Brex makes it so much easier,” said Jake.
Whether employees are using their personal card or Brex card, it all flows into the same budget and to Quickbooks ERP. As a result, Treet’s last offsite was on budget, tracked, and reconciled in the same month. Plus, Brex’s intuitive experience saves 1 hour per employee on training. Employees can simply log in and use their Brex card from their first day on the job.
The icing on the cake is Brex’s founder-friendly rewards. Treet recently received a billboard in San Francisco from Brex, and Brex offers all customers the ability to redeem their card points for Billboards in key locales, including Time Square. “The billboard reward was surreal. We did not expect Treet to be featured in that way until many years down the line when we have a much larger marketing budget,” said Jake. Friends and family texted team members and turned it into a massive boost to team morale.
“I didn't know a solution like Brex existed that would be this easy, yet still appropriate for small and growing teams."
— Jake Disraeli, co-founder and CEO at Treet