Clara Technologies

About

Clara is a legal operating system that digitizes and automates startup legal expertise. They educate and empower founders to address many of the tasks currently performed by lawyers, including incorporating companies, drafting agreements, building cap tables, and structuring data rooms. At the same time, Clara acts as a collaboration and information-sharing tool for founders, investors, and lawyers so that the key players in the global startup ecosystem can work together more efficiently.

We sat down with Lee McMahon, Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer of Clara to get his thoughts on how Alaan has helped transform the way in which expenses are handled in the organization.

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Problem

A spend management system that necessitated time-intensive manual reconciliation

Expenses and reimbursements at Clara were handled ad-hoc, the management required a lot of administrative help to chase people on invoices and receipts and as a result, it meant that they struggled to close their accounts on time at the end of each month

“Expenses were really just a pain for us as it is with most companies”, says Lee “Alaan came at a time when Clara was growing quite quickly, and as the world opened up post covid, more and more expenses were coming through to our accounts team. A lot of these expenses were holding us back at the end of the month because a lot of people were losing their receipts”

“We thought we would have to hire an accounts junior just to help us with closing our accounts every month - Alaan helped us avoid this”

As Clara was growing, more people were traveling and spending money on behalf of the company, and it was only getting harder and harder. When Clara found out that there was an application like Alaan that made this entire process easier - it was a no-brainer for them to get onboarded

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Solution

A centralized platform to streamline processes and drive efficiency

Once the team at Clara found out about Alaan, they realized that having an all-in-one spend management platform helped solve almost all their problems. As soon as the management got a demo of the actual Alaan platform, they were convinced immediately and signed up right away.

“The onboarding process was seamless, we breezed through it in no time and got up and running extremely fast”, said Lee ”We were instantly issued virtual Alaan cards, and the team started to use them for subscription and SaaS expenses right away. Once we received our physical cards, we used them to pay for all of our expenses, whether traveling or making purchases outside the office”. The management centralized the company’s spending management quickly and easily with Alaan’s platform and never looked back

According to Lee, Alaan truly helped increase the efficiency of employees at Clara. The platform proved to be a two-faced solution, it helped the team with accounts at the end of the month when they had to close their books and chase receipts, as well as staff who had to previously store their receipts.

“It was highly stressful for staff who may have lost their receipts from a trip taken 2 weeks ago, so this was really helpful for us from both sides - the spender and the admin”

The key feature which Clara really enjoyed with Alaan was how expenses are instantly triggered and documented from the card to the Alaan platform. Being able to track the expense to the receipt immediately, and the ability to take a photo and directly link it to the expense was the most significant source of convenience for the firm.

"While that receipt is fresh and in front of you, you get to take a picture and match it to the expense on the Alaan app right away - rather than go home and lose it“

For Clara, Alaan gave employees the piece of mind that when they've done uploading their receipts, they've done their bit and that it's gone to accounts - and that's what matters the most.

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Ready to take the leap like Clara and transform the way expenses are handled at your organization? Our experts are ready to help, schedule a demo now!