Meet Airbase – The Only Truly Comprehensive Spend Management Platform For Small And Midsize Companies

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Below is our recent interview with Thejo Kote, the Founder and CEO at Airbase:

Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Airbase?

A: Airbase is the only truly comprehensive spend management platform for small and midsize companies. It combines three products — accounts payable, an advanced corporate card program, and employee expense reimbursements — into one system. Implemented individually, each product has all the core functionality you expect from a best-of-breed point solution. Taken together, Airbase provides a consistent and efficient platform experience for all non-payroll spend. The automation of accounting and approval workflows results in visibility and control, a faster close, and real-time reporting.

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Q: Can you give us more insights into your features?

A: Airbase’s well-designed and intuitive user interface is easy to onboard and simple to use. Features have been designed to support maximum flexibility and customization to meet the specific needs of each company.

Companies customize approval workflows to ensure the appropriate routing of requests while building an audit trail of compliance for every purchase. Approvals occur in Slack, email, or the Airbase mobile app so that approvers can quickly review and approve or ask questions without having to leave their working communication environment. Accounting automation tools for scheduling, accruing, amortizations, and categorizing transactions save time and eliminate errors. A full selection of payment types, including virtual cards, physical cards, checks, ACH, and vendor credits, all from one control center, make AP teams efficient and even open opportunities to optimize returns by selecting payment types that generate cash back whenever possible. When every dollar of non-payroll spend is handled on one platform, actual spending against the budget can be viewed any day of the week by all stakeholders.

Finance teams in small and midsize companies are underserved by existing process automation tools for accounts payable and expense management. The resulting cobbled-together solutions, inefficient processes, and manual workflows place strain on finance teams and can confuse or frustrate employees. Airbase’s single platform solution can replace many of the software tools that are widely used, including spreadsheets, Expensify, Bill.com, Brex, and AMEX. This replacement streamlines processes, eliminates cross-platform reconciliation needs, and even reveals wasted spend. The Airbase platform consolidates three functional areas without asking users to compromise on the quality or functionality expected from a best-of-breed solution. This allows companies to enjoy the benefits of having everything available in one place and standardized to the same workflows without missing the value of legacy point solutions.

Q: Who is your ideal client and why?

A: Our ideal client is the controller, VP finance, or CFO in a 50 – 500 person company who must support the growth of their company so they understand the importance of scalable infrastructure. They tend to be a little more forward-thinking rather than reactive and are willing to replace legacy systems with more modern tools. Our ideal client prioritizes building operational muscle via automation and appreciates the value of comprehensive rather than point solutions.

Q: What are the main benefits of using your spend management platform?

A: Airbase is demonstrably the most fully articulated spend management platform for small to midsize companies. Spend management is a new approach to handling non-payroll spend with a focus on streamlining a process that is generally handled with a raft of point solutions and manual work. Spend management consolidates all spending whether by corporate card or by purchase orders into one consistent set of automated workflows that begin with approvals and carries through to booking to the general ledger. To get the scope and functionality of Airbase, a company would need to pay the price of expensive enterprise-level solutions that are generally over-engineered and complex for small to midsize companies. Our main benefits have to do with the “platform effect” of having all non-payroll spend on one system. It provides visibility and control, real-time reporting, and automation that point solutions simply cannot provide.

Airbase automates accounting and operational workflows to efficiently link payments to a company’s General Ledger.

Companies customize their approval workflows, and the system ensures the appropriate routing and compliance with even the most complex company policies for every payment type.

Current practices can stymie growth, degrade decision-making, and relegate finance staff to manual work. Airbase gives companies the efficiencies they need to grow from the first funding round to IPO and everything in between. Airbase modern spend management unlocks trapped talent, provides visibility and control over all non-payroll spend, shortens the time-to-close, and provides better budget management.

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Q: What can we expect from Airbase in the next 6 months? What are your plans?

A: The future looks bright for Airbase.

Most recently the company launched the third product in its platform solution for managing all non-payroll spend; an employee expense reimbursement product is now included alongside a fully automated accounts payable system and software-enabled corporate cards.

Together they handle all outgoing payments, from employee request and approval, to payment and booking to the General Ledger. Airbase is the one-platform solution that companies can depend on to scale, from founding to IPO.

The new expense reimbursements product processes out-of-pocket expenses quickly and efficiently for employees and accounting teams alike. It does away with the need for cumbersome employee expense reports by providing a simple rule-based system that routes permissible expenses to approvers for rapid response on each transaction. Approval workflows automate even the most complex company policy, and once documentation and information conditions are met, payment is automatically made to the employee’s bank account.

As it races to keep pace with its growth, Airbase has doubled its headcount in the last 12 months and now employs a fully-distributed team located across nine countries. This number is expected to grow as the company seeks to add 50 new members in the next few months including a finance leader and a head business development leader.

Already in 2021, Airbase has made two senior hires by appointing new VP of Sales, Jaakko Iso-Järvenpää, and Archit Shah as General Counsel.

At Dropbox, Jaakko led sales and customer success teams across both Europe and the U.S. He also helped scale up B2B teams at American Express and Google. He is passionate about building people-first teams, and helping both individuals grow in their careers and customers digitize their businesses.

Archit joined Robinhood in 2016 as their first General Counsel and led the legal team to over 25 legal professionals, supporting several highly regulated businesses and advising on a variety of novel legal issues. Archit previously was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, who, as of 2020, are the largest law firm in the U.S. by gross revenue, focused on representing Fortune 50 companies in high-stakes technology litigation.