CASE STUDY
Thimble makes insurance simple and fast for any business. But it's own AP process was 100% manual using spreadsheets and lots of emails. Paying bills wasted hours of time and invoice errors could easily slip through the cracks.
Glean AI automated the AP process, sped up the workflow, and allowed the finance team to resolve discrepancies in minutes instead of hours.
Founded in 2015 and having raised nearly $30 million in funding, Thimble is growing fast. They are quickly becoming the go-to insurance solution for a variety of businesses, rolling out insurance options for unique business verticals such as crafters, pet groomers, and drone operators.
Their AP workflow, however, was not keeping up with their growth. Manual and tedious, the increasing number of monthly invoices was bogging down their finance team.
Says Mike DeGennaro, Senior Accounting and Finance Manager at Thimble:
“My entire process was manual, and it was taking up more and more of my time as Thimble grew. Implementing Glean AI was an excellent decision. Not only does Glean AI make the AP process more efficient, it also makes you a better finance professional because it takes a bit of human error out of the AP process. Glean AI definitely increases efficiencies and perfects my AP workflow.”
Before using Glean AI, Mike’s day-to-day included checking an AP inbox for invoices and manually entering data from those invoices—invoice date, due date, the approver, amount—into a spreadsheet.
Then he’d do it all over again, re-entering the invoices one by one into the accounting system to get them approved and paid. It was a tedious process that took hours, not to mention the inevitable errors, typos, etc.
With so many invoices and bills coming in, errors and discrepancies were missed. Says Mike, “We have vendors who consistently invoice us for the same amount, so it’s easy to miss if they accidentally send duplicate invoices.”
Jodi Ann Bansfield, an Insurance Analyst with Thimble, did notice some billing discrepancies while conducting a review, and she wanted to investigate. “Resolving the issue would’ve meant sifting through countless files, spreadsheets, and paper invoices. It would have been at least a few hours,” said Jodi about the process.
"Glean AI picked up a duplicate invoice that I missed, and that’s when I realized that Glean AI was doing much more than making my job easier –it was saving us money. I was about to pay that duplicate invoice on my next run. Extrapolated out, in the long run, gleans will likely save Thimble a significant amount of money."
With Glean AI, instead of manually entering data points from invoices into a spreadsheet, that process is fully automated. This is a huge win for Mike. “All that manual labor was eating into my day and taking time from value-added activities. Now, I just look at Glean AI, see if an invoice is approved, click pay, and then it's done for me. I’m not living in my spreadsheet anymore.”
Jodi is also saving time using Glean AI to resolve discrepancies with fees. Glean AI stores all invoices and displays them in an interface designed for finance teams, therefore Jodi now has a single reference point for comparing amounts owed. Says Jodi, “I love Glean AI’s historical tracking abilities, having everything organized and right there in the system. It allows me to be faster and better at my job.”
Glean AI is a necessary tool in any finance team’s technology stack.
Payment services for Glean AI are provided by The Currency Cloud Inc. which operates in partnership with Community Federal Savings Bank (CFSB) to facilitate payments in all 50 states in the US. CFSB is registered with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC Certificate# 57129). The Currency Cloud Inc is registered with FinCEN and authorized in 39 states to transmit money (MSB Registration Number: 31000160311064). Registered Office: 104 5th Avenue, 20th Floor, New York , NY 10011.
