Expense management · Production

How Ramp helped Barry's save 400 hours/month on expense report headaches

The problem

Barry's legacy finance systems imposed two-to-three-day lead times on expenses and transactions, required the controller to spend 3-4 hours per week manually coding expenses and an additional 2-3 hours chasing outstanding submissions, and consumed 1-2 full days of her time plus 2-3 days of a colleague's for each month-end close—with no real-time spend visibility at any point during the month.

Workflow diagram · grounded in source
1
Ramp cards issued company-wide
Trigger
The finance team rolled out Ramp cards across the organization to capture all spend at source.
▾ source quote
“The finance team has rolled out Ramp cards across the organization”
2
Manager-set card rules and limits
Validation
Managers set their own card rules, enforce spending limits, and create vendor-specific virtual cards.
▾ source quote
“has enabled various managers to set their own card rules, enforce spending limits, and create vendor-specific virtual cards”
3
Automated expense reminders
Output
Ramp automatically reminds all employees to submit outstanding expenses.
▾ source quote
“there's a button in Ramp to hit that automatically reminds everybody to submit their expenses”
4
Duplicate and cost-saving opportunity flag
Ai action
Ramp automatically flags cost-saving opportunities including duplicate vendor charges.
▾ source quote
“Ramp's ability to automatically flag cost-saving opportunities. "One of my team members wanted to sign up for a vendor another marketing team member already uses," says Steve. "I got a notification from Ramp alerting me that I already had a …”
5
Real-time studio financial dashboards
Output
Individual dashboards for each studio predict topline revenue and display OpEx and labor spend in real time.
▾ source quote
“Steve has been able to create individual dashboards for each studio, which predicts topline revenue, analyzes labor spend relative to budget, and incorporates Ramp data to ascertain OpEx and fixed charges in real time”
Reported outcome

After deploying Ramp, Barry's saved nearly 400 hours a month collectively by eliminating manual expense reporting, generated an approximate $5,000 cost saving by catching a duplicate vendor charge, and the team gained real-time studio-level financial dashboards with no further manual expense work for the controller.

Reported metrics
Hours saved per monthnearly 400 hours a month
Cost savings from duplicate vendor detectionapproximately $5,000
Controller weekly manual expense coding time (before)3-4 hours each week
Controller weekly reminder and tracking time (before)2-3 hours
Show all 7 reported metrics
hours saved per monthnearly 400 hours a month
cost savings from duplicate vendor detectionapproximately $5,000
controller weekly manual expense coding time (before)3-4 hours each week
controller weekly reminder and tracking time (before)2-3 hours
controller month-end close time (before)1-2 full days
system lead time (before)two to three days, if not longer
days saved per month5 days saved
Reported stack
Ramp
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Source
https://ramp.com/customers/barrys
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Frequently asked questions

What did this team achieve with this AI workflow?

After deploying Ramp, Barry's saved nearly 400 hours a month collectively by eliminating manual expense reporting, generated an approximate $5,000 cost saving by catching a duplicate vendor charge, and the team gained…

What tools did this team use?

Ramp.

What results were reported?

Hours saved per month: nearly 400 hours a month; Cost savings from duplicate vendor detection: approximately $5,000; Controller weekly manual expense coding time (before): 3-4 hours each week; Controller weekly reminder and tracking time (before): 2-3 hours (source-reported, not independently verified).

How is this expense management AI workflow structured?

Ramp cards issued company-wide → Manager-set card rules and limits → Automated expense reminders → Duplicate and cost-saving opportunity flag → Real-time studio financial dashboards.

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