Affinity and Airbase by Paylocity: Doing More With Less Spend Management

San Francisco-based startup Affinity helps people unlock the relationship data hidden in their personal networks, making it easy to find potential sales referrals and other valuable connections.

Michael Zheng, Affinity’s Head of Finance, started at the company when it needed more strategic input from Finance. He came in to set up the company’s budget, kickstart FP&A, build out financial operations, and partner with the founders on the Series B fundraising process.

The Challenge: You Can’t Improve What You Can’t Measure

Michael’s top priority was to get a full view of how the company was spending money. He needed to get that visibility in order to put a budget in place, analyze trends, and predict the burn rate.

Putting together that view was more difficult than he anticipated. Affinity had rolled out corporate cards to a few employees, but most were putting expenses on their personal credit cards.

“I didn’t have any insight into an expense that was on someone’s personal credit card unless they coded it into an expense report,” he explains.

Employees filed expense reports using Expensify, which synced up with QuickBooks, Affinity’s general ledger, for reconciliation.

“Reconciliation involved a lot of manual work. Employees had to draw up expense reports, tag expenses, keep the receipts. If they forgot, their reimbursements were delayed. They had to put a lot of time and effort into spending.”

The tedious manual reconciliation ate into Michael’s time too. It forced him to focus on transactions rather than forecasting or fundraising. He needed a way to “improve the efficiency and operation of finance without getting stuck in the weeds of accounting.”

 

The Solution: Enter Airbase by Paylocity Spend Management

Affinity’s Operations Manager and co-founders had picked up Airbase by Paylocity to help get real-time insight into spending right before Michael joined the company.

Michael had used tools to track recurring software in the past but none came with the operational functionality that Airbase by Paylocity offered. He led the evaluation effort and discovered that it was exactly what he was looking for

Building a process around Airbase by Paylocity.

Michael set up pre-approval policies and trained employees on the new payment process with Airbase by Paylocity.

If an employee wanted to purchase a new subscription, he/she could create a request in Airbase by Paylocity, and the platform would automatically route the request for approval to the employee’s manager and Michael himself.

The new process ensured that finance and the appropriate department heads were always in the loop of recurring expenses.

It was an extra step in operation but the team quickly came to see the value in Airbase by Paylocity because it reduced the time and effort they had to spend on expenses.

Affinity’s managers loved the tool too. “Prior to a service like Airbase, it was really difficult to get a 360 view of spending in a department,” Michael explains. “With Airbase it’s easier for managers to make sure that they’re within budget.”

Overall, Michael considers the change in process a success. “Everyone’s seeing Airbase as a beneficial step for the company,” he says, “I’m happy with how people have accepted it.”

 

The Results: Control and Visibility Across Teams

Michael now has all the transparency and insight he needs to make accurate budgets and hold department heads accountable. “As we create a budget with each department head, I’m using Airbase to check on their expenditures.”

“If it’s an expense I recognize and shows up in the budget, it’s approved. If not, I use Airbase to follow up and make sure they talk to me about why they’re spending money, who it’s for, whether it’s a nice-to-have or a necessity, and what kind of ROI it drives.”

Where Michael used to follow up on an expense, he now uses Airbase to be a part of the planning.