Name: The 2025 Controller Cup Awards Show
Uploaded: 2025-03-12T19:30:08.826Z
Duration: 1 h 30 min 7 s
Description: The 2025 Controller Cup Awards Show

Transcript for "The 2025 Controller Cup Awards Show": Alright. Welcome. Welcome, everybody. Right on time. I see we already have a lot of people in the room. So thank you so much for showing up. We're really excited about today. If you see the q and a, tool in the top right of your screen, if you wanna just, you know, share where you're from, what you do, anything like that, we would love to get to know you guys in the audience. And we'll wait a couple minutes as more people start coming in. I see that number is slowly growing. But, yeah, I would love to see where everyone's from, how you're all doing today. Ian and I are pumped to to meet everybody. Alright. They're coming in. I see Patricia from Arizona, controller with a digital marketing agency. That's awesome. Nice to meet you, Patricia. We've got Itzhak, controller in Salt Lake City, Utah. Rohini from, looks like, Livermore, California. Nice. Glad to hear you're doing great. I'm also from California. Lori, director of outsource accounting. Looks like Tennessee. And we got Carlos based in Mexico City. Awesome. We got people from all over. I see Philadelphia, New York, Alberta. Wow. This is awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So if you're just joining, again, there's a little q and a feature in the top right. That's where everyone's letting us know what they're, what they're up to, what they do, where they're from. All just trying to get to know each other, and then we'll give it a couple more minutes as people start to come in the door. We've almost doubled the amount of people we started with already, so really excited to pack the house today. Got some Pennsylvania. We got some Texas. Another person from California. Jay. Jay asks how California weather is. New York is still pretty cold. Jay, I'm actually in New York right now, so I know how you're feeling. I do miss the California weather for sure. Alright. Alright. Sean, nice to meet you. COO of SaaS company in California. Awesome. Alright. We'll go ahead and get started here. It's now been a couple minutes. I'm sure some more people will keep coming through the door. And, yeah, we'll we'll go ahead and kick it off. So welcome everybody to Rippling Spend's first ever controller cup awards show. This is really exciting for us because, especially over here at Rippling Spend, we understand the incredible work that controllers do every single day, and it just felt wrong to us that there wasn't a way to show our appreciation and really recognize some amazing controllers. So thank you everyone for making this actually one of the biggest or the biggest, webinar Rippling spend has ever hosted. So really, again, just backs up the idea that controllers deserve this recognition. Now before we get started, some quick housekeeping announcements from our end. The chat will be muted for the duration of the webinar, but like you guys have already found, the q and a module in the top right of your screen is where you can interact with us and drop questions throughout the webinar, which we'll get to at the end. And this session will be recorded, but we definitely recommend and encourage you stay for the entire webinar, as it'll be a really good time. So for some quick introductions, my name is Matthew. I work in marketing at Rippling, and I'm really excited to be cohosting with Ian Medina. Awesome. Thanks, Matthew. Hi, everyone. My name is Ian Medina. I'm a solution consultant here at Rippling. My background is mainly in finance and accounting, so I've had that pleasure of chasing people down for receipts and handling the month end close. So I know most everyone on this call knows why controllers are so important, but we wanted some numbers to back this up. So recently, we ran a survey of finance managers and found out that 62% do not feel in control of their out of policy spend, which leads to company spend being a big portion of what's keeping them up at night. So with a solid controller, very much like the ones we're gonna intro on this call today, finance teams can feel at ease knowing their numbers are correct and under control. Now that's why we see controllers as some of the most valuable employees in an organization and why we're so excited to recognize them today. Definitely. So without further ado, let's go ahead and announce our winners for today. Alright. Here are all of the incredible controllers we're recognizing and the winners of the twenty twenty five controller cup awards. Now before we go any further, I'd like to welcome them all on stage. So you should start to see them populate here on screen. They are here live and with us and ready to go, ready to share some knowledge. So in this webinar, we'll be eating, well, excuse me, we'll be meeting each one of these amazing finance leaders, not only to learn why they won, but also learn about some of their best practices and advice for people like you in the audience. Now just like the Oscars, each of these four controllers has won in a specific category. And without further ado, we'll get into that first award. That's gonna be automation all star. This award is for a controller who's able to use automations and streamline every part of their role. The winner for this award was able to drop their month end close from twenty five days to just five days, largely thanks to automation. Their onboarding manager at said they nominated this person because they have streamlined so many previously manual processes, and they've been especially creative in finding ways to continue automating coding using Rippling's policy engine. Alright. The winner is Zoe Manguso, controller at Rejuvenix. So congratulations, Zoe. Please feel free to introduce yourself and Rejuvenix. And I'm curious, what were some of those challenges you faced and overcame as controller of Rejuvenix? Hi, everyone. My name is Zoe Manguso. I am the controller at REJUVINEX. REJUVINEX is a growing chiropractic practice in South Florida. We have 11 locations right now. We are looking to open some more this year though, and we have around 110 employees. So, when I first started at Rejuvenix, they, did not have an internal accounting department. Their financials were being done by an external CPA firm that was actually doing their taxes for them as well. So their turnaround time on their financials was about twenty five days. So what I did is I brought that accounting function in house and then started to chip away at all the manual processes that were being done. And, by automating a lot of those processes, I was able to, shorten that close time from those twenty five days to five days. Yeah. That's really amazing. And I think what everyone's kind of wondering is how did you actually get your month end close from that twenty five to just five days and what do you think were the top few things that you did differently or or most effective? It really, really came down to automation. When they were doing the financials previously, all of the, transactions from the credit card system had to be manually uploaded into their QuickBooks and then coded at that time and they were only being done at the end of the month. So with a system that actually integrates with QuickBooks, I was able to make those transactions pre coded in that system, flow into QuickBooks already coded, and to do it more real time. So we we, sync transactions as we go through the month versus having to do it all at the end. That was one of the key things that I did to put that on time. Yeah. So a lot of that being just more real time, allowing things to, like you said, get processed throughout the month instead of all at once towards the end there. It makes a lot of sense. And as a controller, you know, there is this balance that you have to maintain, between that strict financial control while still supporting business operations and growth. So how how do you make this how do you maintain this balance? One of the things that was really important to me is that my controls, and our my processes that I was implementing, that they would fit into the operations the way they were working. We have a lot of people who are in the field constantly, a lot of our salespeople, but they're the ones doing a lot of the credit card spend. But unfortunately, they don't have the option to sit at a computer at the end of the month and upload all of their, you know, receipts and things like that. So having a system where they can upload receipts as they go has, increased compliance and definitely, help them work into the system. So Awesome. Got it. Hey, Zoe. I wanted to jump in here, and I thought some of the automations you built out with Rippling were really great. So I'd love to walk through with one today. K. Yeah. So month end, always a time for accountants to review and categorize and catch miscategorizations. So we thought it'd be good to share a policy built out that automatically recategorizes departments on car transactions. So on the left, we have a policy within Ripley. And on the right part, we have a report that what it would look like if you export the SPENDATA. Of course, in real life, there's definitely gonna be more columns to that report. But you can see Zoe's automation in action, automatically recoding expenses to the proper Tampa department for credit card transactions. So really nicely done. So Zoe, I'd love for you to walk us through the use case for this policy and what kind of impact that automation has had for you. Yeah. So what is really important to us is, that we account for our expenses by clinic because we analyze our our performance on a clinic by clinic basis. So what I did is I created a separate virtual card for every clinic, and then I made I forced well, I made a policy that would make those transactions on that particular clinic card be coded to that clinic department. So the default in Rippling is to have a code to the department of the employee, But with my policy, I change that and it's coded, automatically to the clinic that it belongs to. No. That's awesome to hear. I know managing multiple occasions always a fun process for a month end, so that's great to hear that automation. So one thing I know we just took a look at one of your automations, but wondering what else have you been able to streamline and what else do you think that you do differently that allows you to be so efficient as a controller? Well, we definitely I mean, we've done a lot of work through, Rippling to automate the credit cards and that is a lot of our spend. That is where the majority of our transactions go through as far as number of transactions. So that has made a huge difference. You know, we've set up the coding so most of the things are automatically coded and take very little changes from us on our side. So that has been a big game changer. So I think as far as, you know, making me effective as a controller, I think is just looking for ways to change the processes. Just because you know things were always done a certain way doesn't mean they need to keep being done that way. So it's just looking at things in a different light and trying to find efficiencies where we can. Awesome. No. I love that advice and I'd ask I'd love to ask you just for one more piece of advice there. If you you know, given throughout your career, is is there anything you'd like to share with other aspiring finance leaders? You know, I think one of the most important things I've learned throughout my journey, as an accountant and a controller, is, you know, there's always something to be learned from everyone. I've learned from so many people in my career and I've always cherished the things, you know, so it's it's it's about listening to people and it doesn't matter what department they're in because there's always something that you maybe could learn from them and maybe apply to what you're doing. So Awesome. I love the continuous learning approach there. And I think we've got a question from a fellow award winner for you, Zoe. So I'll pass it over to you, Austin. Hi, Zoe. That's a pretty impressive, automation that you have done over there. The question for you is that if you can go back in time to the automation implementation phase, what would you do differently to make the learning curve, smoother? If I were able to go back, I think in terms of, you know, training the organization, I would have been a little bit more robust with that, you know, just kinda getting them into it because, of course, intuitively, you know, me and my team, we understand the way the accounting works. I just would have, you know, kind of talked to them more about, you know, how it, you know, how it flows and things like that. So, we have created training manuals now. So when we get a new hire, they know how it works and what the expectations are for them to use it. So Perfect. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Zoe, and congratulations again. Now we have the second winner, for today's awards show, and this is gonna be for a category called most money saved. This award is pretty well named, so I won't explain the criteria to win. But this controller has done far more than just save money for his company, which we'll get to in a second. But this winner was able to move almost a million dollars a month in card spending so his team could benefit from the rewards and reconciliation processes with Rippling spend, earning significant cashback awards. Their onboarding manager at Rippling said they are determined to get their company the best software and deals for their bottom line. They maximize the chance to earn more for the company while also being an outstanding finance leader. And the winner for this award is Austin Chang, controller at Honeylove. Congratulations, Austin. So, Austin, could you please tell us a little bit about Honeylove and the challenges you were facing when you took on the role of controller? Yeah. For sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Austin. I'm the controller at Honeylove. Honeylove is a leading shipwear and intimates brand based in Los Angeles. We are known for high quality body shoes, bras, and shipwear design for comfort and functionalities. We have a very strong ecommerce presence serving customers worldwide from The US, and also we have local presence in multiple countries, including UK, Canada, and Australia. Before I joined Honeylove, the company has already in hypergrowth and was facing challenges in scaling accounting operations. Our accounting process won't, keep up with the growth and one of the biggest hurdle was managing expenses. We had expense modules, and credit card scatters across multiple platforms, which make the reconciliation a very manual and time consuming process. And approval was also not streamlined, and we didn't really have a real time visibility into spending. So we were always in the catching up mode. One solution that, I brought in was to consolidate everything into a spend replaying spend management platform, payroll, card, and reimbursements, and streamline the process and, of course, maximizing our rebase. Awesome. That's awesome to hear. Very cool as a controller to to get all that going for you. So, you you know, in addition to maximizing the cashback, you know, I understand you also, as you mentioned, shaved hours off the monthly reconciliation process, cut card dispute resolution times by three weeks, and revamp the company's approvals time. So definitely an award well earned there. But wondering what were the top ways that you were able to drastically improve your accounting control and just gain more, clarity on the expense management process? Yeah. One of the first things I did, when we had a spend management was to really simplify the approval process, utilizing the spend management system to set up policies, automated approval, routing space on the deployment spending limits and vendors and cadence. We also acquired this to the contractor event or preapproved expenses to eliminate the redundant approvals, so things wouldn't get a bottleneck because it has to be approved again. We also build in automations, for the department accounting periods and geocodings like Zoe did, as you mentioned previously, and then that sync directly to our ERP, after the approval. So that really helped to speed things up and make everything more accurate. Awesome. Now I know, like, approvals are always an issue. I used to always have to send reports around making sure that's getting done. So how did you get, like, other departments to get on board with the approval process and make sure they're getting their, you know, invoices signed off on? Yeah. I I I think I think the trick here, not really the trick, but the experience is that you really had to work with the department, understand their flow, understand what needs, what's the bottleneck, and then you you cater the the policy around that pinpoint and then try to get around it. And then, once you once you have the understanding, you design it, it should be a pretty straightforward straightforward process. Okay. Awesome. Now it's a little bit of the same question there, but since expenses really touch, like, every part of the business, like, what advice do you have to give other controllers who might feel siloed in their functions? And what kind of benefits do you see, like, working with other departments and department heads? Yeah. That's a great question. My advice would be to not wait for the things cut come to you. Go out and talk to the departments, understand how their teams are operating and how expenses fit into that. And when you do that, you will get a much better view of where the money is going and how it impacts different parts of the business. It also helps you to create controls. Actually, it makes sense to everyone, not just accounting. The benefit of this is also building stronger relationship and trust. When department know that you are in a loop and care about their needs, they are more willing to follow the process that you put in place. And plus that you may catch issues before they get snow boat or get you you will also get real time feedback and adjust the things as needed. Cool. No. Awesome here. I love, like, the working with other departments and just making sure you understand and that we're all we're all on the same team. And then last question here is something we're gonna ask all the controllers, but, you know, what's the best advice you've either given or received throughout your career that you'd like to share with other aspiring finance leaders? Yeah, I actually learned it from my mentor. So one thing I learned from him is that accounting and finance are not just about the numbers, it's about solving problems and make things work better. It's easy to get caught up in the technical side, but the real impact comes from understanding the business and work with people. I found that the best way to be effective is to stay flexible and open to changes. Every company operates differently, and one it could work in one place but may not work for the other, is whether it's refining the process or adjusting policies. The the key is actually to focus on what actually helps the team to do better than just sticking to the rules for the sake of it. At the end of the day, it's about building the system that make everyone's life easier. When you do that, everything else falls into place. Cool. Awesome. Love adding, like, the human touch to the accounting process. And then just last question we've got from a fellow award winner here. So I'll pass it over to you, Frank. Thank you. First, Austin, congratulations. Now, I've tell you, I am a policy nerd. So if you could tell me what's your favorite policy you created, maybe I can steal it. But let me know what your favorite policy is. Thanks, Frank. I think the favorite policy is probably also a function is that I'm able to whitelist it, the charges or transactions that doesn't really need a receipt. We had a lot of contracts, a lot of recurring expenses that come in through the same dollar amount or, in in for every quarter. And, we it's already preapproved in a contract. As long as the dollar amount, remain the same or agrees to agreement, we don't really need reading to approve it again. So one one policy I said I had, like, about 50 exemptions that doesn't need to receive, and that really help us, you know, not to not to do a lot of redundant approvals and then, really get things going quickly. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Austin. Congratulations again on your award. And with that, we'll move to the third award for today, which is a very exciting one. It is undercover controller. So at Rippling, we see countless companies with someone who doesn't technically have the controller title, but they do take on the controller role. And it's our goal at Rippling to try and empower anyone with the ability to control spend, so this award is recognizing all of the business systems, admin, and operations managers, or whatever your title may be, who take on the role of controller with Stride and Impriet. So the winner of this award has also been quoted as having quickly become a policy savant while still being able to wear many hats to keep their business running smoothly. They're the ultimate undercover controller. The winner for this award is Frank Silberlicht, executive camp director at Camp Young Judea. So, Frank, congratulations on the award, and we would love to hear more about Camp Young Judea and your role there. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm Frank Silberlick. I'm not a controller. I'm a camp director. And the truth is, I'm not particularly great at math either. But in my job, I have to wear many hats, and we're a small nonprofit. Camp Young Today is located in Texas, just South of Austin, and we have three primary businesses. One is a summer camp for children, and we have approximately 650 kids. Second one is we rent out the facility as a retreat center year round. And third, not really a business, but a revenue source is, we bring in donations. So altogether, it's, about 4 and a half million dollars for the camp and retreat. And donations, depending on if we're in a capital campaign or not, could be anywhere from half a million to, 4 and a half million dollars. So, but we're small. We have 15 full time staff, and, we scale up during the summer to another 25 people. But year round, I have a part time bookkeeper, works about fifteen, twenty hours a week, and, we also have a fractional, financial person, CFO that basically does monthly reports for us. So it really becomes my job to, control spending. So yeah. Hey, Frank. Thanks for letting us know about that. Congratulations again. It was great to hear more about Camp Young Trudea. Just a quick question for you there. And you mentioned wearing so many hats. So what were some of your main pain points when it came to controllership? I think first one is to make sure everyone's in policy. The second one is to really limit spending. You know, is this really necessary? And the third one is to really categorize everything correctly so that way we have correct information going into our accounting system. Awesome. No. Love that answer. You also mentioned, you know, following policies, so I wanted to speak about a few of the policies you mentioned. So you've been called out as a policies event here, so really wanna dig into some of those here. But we can see that you created an automation that checks the number of outstanding receipt submissions. And if it's greater than nine for any given card or person, you lock that card until their outstanding receipts drops below that threshold. So great way to get people to actually submit receipts. So really powerful and very similar to a policy that our policy architect created, and we'll get to that one in a second. But one other one I wanted to go to is, you start to use some automated GL vendor mapping. So LoveWind controllers are to utilize this feature. So my question for you here is, you know, specifically for the people in the audience who may be in a similar position, you know, an undercover controller, what advice do you have for them if they're struggling to balance all of their responsibilities, and how do you prioritize? Great. So I look at everything more in the long term, so I'll spend a little more energy to ensure I don't have to deal with it. So the bookkeeper for all new, general ledger entries, I ask her to, map the company and what GL it goes to. So for new vendors. So that's one. Second thing is just, really, I don't I try not to get in the weeds. So the idea is that I have middle management to I have them verify all the credit card receipts. And anything over a hundred dollars, I'll take a look at. Anything under, I'm not dealing with, that, trusting the middle management to handle that. Joe, great answer. I love the kind of delegating. And just to kind of pinpoint on that, for delegation and trusting middle managers, kinda how do you, like, herd them or get them all on the same page? I wish I had a easy answer for that. You know, the reality is what I do is I spot check different things. And where there's a mistake, I will let them know and allow them to fix it. I won't fix it myself because then it'll happen again. So I take more time and energy to help really train and not, slap someone on the wrist. And, there it's very clear what our policies are, and it's almost easy. They're not blaming Frank. They're blaming the policy, which is nice. No. I love it. It's just like, hey. This is the way the system works. We gotta work with it. So Exactly. I'll get an answer. So switching gears here, just more broadly of a question, same one we've asked the other controllers here today. So what's some advice you've either received or given that you felt maybe you should have paid for? Well, I didn't someone else said this, so I get no credit. But I remember Ronald Reagan once said trust but verify, so that's what I do. I trust my I trust my people, but I double check things and I verify. Cool. Awesome. No. Again, love that answer. Love just working with the different teams and delegating. But we've got one more question for you, Frank. So I'll pass it over to Zoe, a fellow award winner. Yeah. Hey, Frank. Congratulations. That's wonderful. I really love your policies, especially the one with the, receipt controls. I am I am gonna steal that from you because I think it's great. So with that, what has been the reception of your team to these new controls? Well, at first, there was frustration because, the card would get locked. And we I first started out literally with if you have more than four receipts, it would lock it. And then I went up to nine, and now everyone understands that that's just how it works. So it's what so it's become not Frank's policy, but that's how the cards work. And so they they know how to maneuver and make it work. And then they get a text message when it's, when they have too many receipts that aren't done, and it's something funny but, you know, reminds them, go ahead and do it. Great. Perfect. Yeah. Thank you, Zoe, for the question, and congratulations again, Frank, on the award. Now before we move on to our fourth and final award, just a reminder that if you do have any questions for our all star controllers up here, I see a couple coming in already, definitely put those into the q and a. We'll get to those at the end of the webinar. So don't be shy. Go ahead and start asking those questions. So our final award for today is policy architect. By process of elimination, you can probably tell who the winner is, but I still want to say that this controller has been able to really leverage policies to establish an unprecedented level of control and visibility at her company. She's got some great frameworks that we'll share in just a moment with all of you. And this controller's onboarding manager at Rippling nominated her because she was one of the first controllers to come to her with a plan for how she wanted Rippling's, Rippling's spend to run her organization. She was also the first controller that this onboarding manager had ever seen effectively use policy to block spending when an employee is missing too many receipts. See so this onboarding manager has not met Frank. But this has proven super effective in driving organizational behavior to be more compliant at her company. And the winner for this award is Becca Morley, controller at NEVO Solar. Now, unfortunately, Becca was unable to join us today, but we do have a video that we helped record in advance, and we're really excited to share that with y'all. So let's go ahead and watch Becca's advice. Congratulations again, Becca, on your policy architect award. I was wondering if you could please give us some background on your role as controller at Nevo and what challenges you tackled when you took on this role about a year and a half ago. Mhmm. So Nevo Solar is a fairly new company. We're going into our third year. Our owner, he had a really successful career in solar, but he had a broader vision of what he wanted to be able to do, in offering, you know, whole home energy solutions and other options for the homeowner rather than just putting solar on the roof and moving on. And so it's a fairly new company. I came on about a year and a half ago. When I came into Nevo Solar, all of the accounting was outsourced to a third party accountant. So using a third party, accounting firm is really beneficial for a lot of startups. Right? You don't have the real need to have a huge accounting department, but they also don't know the ins and outs of your company. So my first game plan was to kind of get control of the finances to make sure that things were really accounted for in the proper areas, and then just kind of getting some internal controls, setting some limits for spending, setting, you know, some policies for what expenses are actually approved and getting the right people in the right positions and, understanding cash flow for the company. So Got it. That totally makes sense. I kinda wanna draw from that experience and ask you, let's say a controller enters a new company, things are a bit disorganized or mismanaged. What's the framework and prioritization you take yourself through to right the ship from there? So the first thing I would do is I would and what I did at Nivo, come in and understand where the finances are really at, where the accounting department is really at. Not coming in guns blazing. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this, change everything. Because once you understand the problem or the lack of, information, then you know what to tackle first. So I would tackle immediate fixes first. I would get the finances under control as far as the books. You can't make informed decisions as a company if you don't have the financial reports to look at, to understand the health of your company, where it's at. Then I would look at accounts payable and accounts receivable next. That's an easy, quick, fix you can make in a company so that you can better understand your cash flow. When your money is available, how to use it better, you know, how to maybe set up some strategic accounts payable, accounts receivable interactions. And then I would go to some internal controls. I would set up spending limits, approvals. That's one huge thing that, especially in a start up, you have so few people that everybody's just trying to get everything done. Right? Like, maybe it's not your responsibility, but you're just doing it so that it can get done. But to set up some really strong approval processes for both accounts payable and accounts receivable spend, all of that so that you can make sure that your company is not going to be vulnerable to fraud, that your, spending is where it needs to be. So I would address those immediate fixes. Those are some pretty tangible, quick, easy things. And then once you get those kind of under control, then you can move on to, like, setting up a budget, which I think is really important for a company. Then you can set up some, you know, project based accounting, dimensions, whatever whatever, detail you need to move on. But I would just address those immediate fixes you can make first. Got it. Got it. Makes sense. So kinda on that note of approvals, I see companies often have all approvals routed to the same place without much context. What would you say is the right way to approach approvals and have them be more specific and actively prevent fraud? So there's a few different levels. And, actually, Rippling spend has helped as far as our expenses. Previously to moving to Rippling when somebody had an expense, you know, they just emailed it over to somebody in accounting and somebody put it on their paycheck and, you know, we moved on. The the ability that Rippling has given us is somebody can actually go in to their profile, upload their receipt, request a reimbursement, and, that goes to their immediate supervisor. And we have it actually set up, so there's two levels of approvals. Right? So an immediate supervisor and then either myself, the controller, or our director of finance has to give this second approval. I think that helps people understand better when they're spending that, hey. I'm actually going to have to be accountable. And I think setting up these approvals helps with consistency. And that's why I'm big on policies, why I'm big on procedure is I think consistency helps build trust. You know? If not only your customer, but your employees know a consistent plan and what's expected of them, they can trust it. If there's continual inconsistencies, then you you have a lack of trust. You have a lack of accountability. And so that's one way that we implemented some approvals. Sometimes it's just based on anything over a dollar amount needs two levels of approval. And that's something that we are big on at Nivo is two layers of approval. It just makes sure that everything's accounted for, that there's gonna going to be no questions later, and, really, it's to protect our employees. Right? So that it's not nitpicking or, you know, what their approvals it's more to to protect them and just say, hey. No. They got the appropriate approvals. They've you know, everything in place, and nothing's ever gonna come back on them later and question what was spend or what was purchased or what was paid out, that kind of info. Yeah. Lots of great nuggets in there. You know, having those approvals go directly to their direct supervisor, those two layers of approval sounds key and that consistency and policy to create trust. I really liked that point. Now I wanted to quickly switch our attention to a policy that you created as you are our policy architect award winner today. This policy actually locks an employee's corporate card if they have five or more outstanding receipts or memos for a transaction. So how has this impacted compliance at Nivo? This was the main one of the main things that stuck out to me why we chose to switch over to Rippling. We had a previous card spend in place, and it was a real struggle to get employees to upload receipts, and to put memos. And so I could go in and manually freeze cards and say, hey. Please upload receipts. But it was taking so much of my time. People were getting frustrated with me, really not understanding why I was doing it. I think they were thinking I was trying to make their life difficult. We came over to Rippling, and it was really easy to just present this new spend plan and say, hey. It's a privilege to have a company card, but along with a privilege comes some responsibilities. And now there's gonna be some accountability. And not only do I require, receipts, but I also require a memo with the receipt. And this makes it really easy because when they're out of compliance, they can't spend. Right? They're stuck. The thing that I love about this, though, as well is I don't have to do anything. I set up the policy, but it's automatic. So as soon as they upload that receipt and memo and they're under five transactions, they can use it again. It has actually been really beneficial in our company because some of our worst abusers of not uploading receipts in our previous spend now are, you know, our best receipt uploaders. And it's also really easy for them because as soon as they make a transaction, they get a text message, and they can just take a picture right there of their receipt, send in a little memo, and they're done. We did have to, you know, figure out the policy. At first, I had it at three transactions, realizing when people travel and that kind of stuff, that was a little unrealistic. So then we upped it to five, and we found that that's been a really successful number. Even if you're out traveling, most people aren't, you know, using a card more than five times. So by the end of the day, you can upload your seats, memos. It's made our accounting a lot cleaner because now I actually know what the expenses are, how to account for them. It's really nice to, just have the card users have accountability for for their cards. So Yeah. Again, a lot of great points there. I really love how you actually tested the optimal number of outstanding receipts for this policy to kick in and how you communicated why you actually need these receipts to your employees. Lastly, I wanted to ask about the metrics and reports that you track most closely as a controller. For us at Nevo Solar, breakeven analysis is a really big sticking point. You know, we have, you know, breakeven points based on kilowatts sold, on installs completed. And I'm really big on budget. So our budget versus actual, and we have a static budget. So it's based on, you know, the variable expenses based on how you know, if it's a busy month. The nature of solar is up and down. And so looking at our budget really helps us to plan and to forecast. But I would say, you know, breakeven budget and the basic financial statements are what I rely on. And, you know, daily, I'm checking our AR, AP, those kinds of things just to make sure that I'm aware of the health of the company and what what we need to plan for going forward. Alright. Thank you so much, Becca. It has been a pleasure, and congratulations again on your award. Alright. Thank you. Alright. Once again, that was Becca Morley. So congratulations again to Becca. Again, unfortunately, she wasn't able to join us here live today, but, hopefully, you all, found that video valuable. So, again, congratulations, in fact, to all of our winners for the first ever twenty twenty five controller cup awards show. These were all incredibly well deserved, and thank you for sharing so much so much of your knowledge with us here today. We do have a q and a session next with all of our winners, so definitely keep your questions coming in from the audience. Before we get there, though, if you take a look in the top right of your screen, you should see a poll feature. And we just have one quick poll for all of you today. So if you click on poll, our quick question is just to see if you'd be interested in a thirty minute meeting with one of our specialists for a consultation on your current spend management challenges. If so, definitely let us know with this poll, and we will be sure to reach out. But, really, overall, we just hope this webinar has been valuable and informative for all of you in the audience. Alright. While that poll is wrapping up, this webinar is not over yet. We do have some questions, and we've been organizing them in the background. So we're excited to dive in. Alright. We'll get started with some q and a. Perfect. Ian, you wanna kick it off? I think you might be muted there. Yep. There we go. Yeah. So first one's up for you, Zoe. I know you mentioned bringing that close time to five days. So how long did that take you to reduce it to five days? It we reduced it in in increments. So I would say it took about overall maybe about five or six months to get everything because we had to implement all these things. But we we started to pull it back gradually. So. Awesome. Sorry. Just trying trying to find the optimal layout here so we can all kinda see our beautiful faces. There we go. Alright. This next question is for Austin. So how do you track budgets that are spent on all of your corporate cards? How do you track the, yeah, the budgets there? Well, there's a few ways. One is that if you have a very specific project and and and the budget dollar amount, I would just issue a car with that fixed budget as the credit limit. So whatever goes on that will be still in the budget, and then you monitor that the the progress of it and make sure that you won't go over the budget. And the other thing is really the policy setting. So it's it is that the immediate manager has to approve, the transactions, the spend, and then that has to fall into the budget. And and once that's approved, if it's over a certain dollar amount, it will go to another, layer of review. And then, sometimes it will be most likely will be me just to make sure that you wouldn't go over the budget, overall. Got it. Yeah. I I like that approach of just having those multiple layers of security. You know, you're taking you're you're using your budget to inform that credit limit on that card directly. So it's it's pretty hard to get through that in the first place, but then also having that direct supervisor and yourself coming in to to make sure everything is tied up. Thank you. Yeah. And I'll take the next one here. The question from the chat is, how do you manage virtual cards that serve multiple departments? So in Rippling there's a few different ways. A popular one is you have an unlimited virtual cards in Rippling, so you can go ahead and issue a virtual card to every department. They get their own so we know exactly what's going on with each department. If you want a specific card for multiple departments, what we can do is assign and o someone as an owner of that card, and via policies they can go ahead and just see everything that's going on and making sure, hey, I know where my spend is at. As soon as they're swiping that card, transactions come in and they're able to view them in real time and view if that's actually a business expense or not. Makes sense. Awesome. Zoe, another one from the audience for you here. How do you control and ensure the employees are uploading their receipts to the correct transaction? For context, their employees use the text feature to upload receipts, and they are often uploaded to the transaction. Well, first of all, Rippling has a great control. It will look at the receipt and kinda give you an indicator of whether or not the receipt actually matches the transaction amount. So that's a good a good place to start is kinda seeing, you know, what's really out of policy to begin with. And, then we do we do kinda glance at them as we go. So it's a it's a real quick check. You just click into it. Okay. Good. And then you you sync. So it's pretty quick. Perfect. Alright. And this next question is a question for all three of our winners who are joining us live here today, and maybe we can start with Frank. So do you have any recommendations for accounting forums or networks where accounting leaders can join and ask questions regarding best practices, policies, software tools, etcetera? In other words, what's your information diet? Well, as a undercover controller, I got nothing. I'm not good for that answer. Alright. Fair enough. Austin, or, do you have any? Well, I actually have some peers on LinkedIn. So usually, I saw my chat over there and try to get, get people to respond or try to try to loop in the the connection so I can get, information I need. Got it. And Zoe? I have connections with, like, former colleagues as well. You know, just kind of picking their brains and getting the information I need to. Got it. So it sounds like kind of kind of just building your network. And I think reaching out to people who are really in it day to day might be even more helpful than any, you know, online forums. Maybe a little bit harder to get deeper specific with those. Awesome. Cool. Yeah. Next one's up for Zoe. So the question is, you know, they liked how much you talked about having a car that's already precoded, but there are scenarios where employees work, you know, multiple clinics, you know, 10 different clinics as an example, and they would need would they need 10 different corporate cards or how would you able to manage someone that needs access to all that? We manage it by asking them to put the information in the memo. So if we know it's somebody that's gonna be at multiple locations, we do have some people like that. We're like, put in the memo what, you know, what clinic you were working at or what clinic you were going to, and then we will code appropriately. So it does take a little bit more review in that case, but it's still pretty quick. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. I know one of the other features to be able to help that in in rippling spend is we can have forms that basically require them to say, hey. If they select location, there's additional information that can be popped up other either drop down or additional questions they can answer just to again get more information on that. Yep. Perfect. Another question from the audience for all three of the winners here today. If you need something to make the accounting function more efficient, like, let's say, buying new software or additional headcount, how do you get buy in from leadership? So maybe we can start with Austin, Frank, and Zoe. Yeah. I think that's a tough one. I I feel like is you had to present the pro incomes, why we needed, you to do the analysis, how that fit into the budget, your cash flow, if the dollar amount is significant. But most likely, you really have to prove that you you have more, more benefit than, than drawbacks, and then that benefit of future is not something like a a temporary patch and it's one time use. I I think it definitely is the communication to make sure that, that the management unders understands that. I think for us, it's a return on investment, but also looking at the budget. Is there room in the budget to do this? So there are things that we'll do that we realize will overspend this year, but years two, three, four, and five will be less. Right. And for me, it's kind of I I do also do the analysis and, you know, kind of presenting to management, you know, the numbers, you know, why this makes sense from a financial standpoint, but also why it makes sense from an operational standpoint. And also, I I tend to present alternatives. So if I'm looking at one option, I don't just give them one option. I'm gonna look at a few other options and do a comparison either to what we currently have and also these other choices that we have and why this one is the best. So Love it. Thank you, guys. Cool. Next question I'll take here is, you know, how can you freeze or limit spending if the company only has one company card across all departments? That's a tough one. One way we solve it inside of Rippling is every employee can have their own personal card, a physical one, and then you do get unlimited virtual card. So kind of referencing back the previous answer is each department can go ahead and get their specific virtual card, and then we can set controls on that. Different limits, how often those limits get updated, and if there's ever a need to say, hey, it's a busy month, we need to update the limit on a certain, you know, for the marketing department, they can go ahead and the employee can log in, request that limit change for temporary, and go through that proper approval flow. Great. Thanks, Ian. And this one is really just for anyone who wants to maybe raise their hand and answer. Happy to hear all three of your takes as well. How do you best support non accounting teams? Who should I be focusing on helping outside of accounting? So whoever wants to jump in. The non accounting teams, like, contract contractors? Could be contractors, could be, people, at other parts of the business, other functions. And if the answer is, you know, you're really heads down in accounting, then that's totally fine too. Well, I I think it's the same that, you know, understand what their needs, like, if they want, if it's more of the the payment or the contractual relationship that they need to get paid, and we need to verify it, just understand what it needs, design the process for it. And then, if it's through the credit card, through the the reimbursements, we can set it up in replaying in the spend management. If they don't have access to it, it just have to be something else, but we have to work around it and make sure it's the best approach. Definitely. I I might look at it that, accounting asks for a lot of things. Receipts, memos. They need all this information. But the reality is how do we make the whole accounting process help the rest of the company? How do we support them in what they're doing so that they can be more effective? So, you know, I think that's kind of, what I try and do is minimize how much energy they have to spend with accounting and let, accounting be supportive for their needs. Yeah. I definitely view accounting as an internal service department in a way because we're here to manage, you know, the finances of the company, which keeps the company going, which serves them, you know, but also to do it with as little pain as possible, like Frank said. Certainly. Love those answers. Thank you all. Cool. Another question for you, Zoe. People are really loving that you managed to close the close your five day accounting time. So one question is, like, for that, what percentage of the month end close entries are accruals due to the timing in the data or any delays? We don't have a lot of accruals. So I'm gonna say maybe maybe 5% at the most. So Okay. Perfect. No. That's awesome. Is there is that mainly because they're credit card transactions? Yeah. Most of them are credit card transactions, so they're real time and there's not, you know, there's some there's some accruals I do on some other things, but not related to credit cards. So Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Next question up here I'll take. So can we set rules based on budgets for expensing and limiting card use? Absolutely. So in Rippling, we have a policy engine that basically acts as like a giant conditional, you know, if then statement be saying, hey. If it meets any of these certain conditions, whether it's an MCC code or swipe or someone, is it trying to categorize something to DoorDash and we don't wanna let them do that, We can block certain vendors and making sure we're getting that control under spend and all that data is in real time. So we can see it come in, report off at it, build KPIs, and just make sure we're viewing all that, so we can make informed decisions there. Awesome. Perfect. And then another question here for anybody is, how do you deal with virtual cards at hotels? Do you run into issues where employees are not able to use the virtual card when checking in? How have you navigated these situations if you face them? Maybe we can go reverse order this time, Zoe, Frank, and Austin, if you guys have run into the issue before. We have well, sorry. Go ahead. No. Go ahead, Zoe. Okay. We have run into this occasional situation where a particular vendor will not accept a virtual card. And in those cases, we have tried to work, you know, give them a card number over the phone, you know, use an alternate card. Occasionally, we have had a manager with a physical card go to the location and take care of it, but it's very, very rare. We hardly ever run into that situation, but we have worked around it. And and we do have many operation, staffs that travel and, what I usually do is I issue a physical car along with a virtual car So they can carry that card around when they travel, but when they need to purchase something, through the Internet or just virtually, they can use the virtual card. Perfect. Frank, have you ever run into this? I have not. Now I'm worried. Awesome. Well, thank you. And then I think the last kinda question here is, will this presentation be emailed after the live session? That's when I can answer. The answer is yes. It will be emailed to all of you afterwards as a recording. Alright. I think that is it for today. The last thing we wanted to mention is that if you wanted to see more of the stats, like the one at the very beginning of this, this webinar, which talked about what finance leaders are, faced with in terms of challenges or in terms of things that they're prioritizing, you can definitely click on the docs tab in the top right of your screen and download our free report on the state of spend. And aside from that, I once again wanted to congratulate all of our winners. Thank you all so much for being here, for providing so much great advice and for walking us through how you set up everything within Rippling Spend, and how you've really, turned all of your organizations into such tight ships and how you've been able to do so well in your positions as controllers and, in some cases, undercover controllers. So thank you all again. Perfect. Alright. Thank you, everybody. Have a great rest of your day.