See how Smartcar uses Rillet and SpendHound together to accelerate close, integrate real-time financial data, and negotiate smarter with SaaS vendors.
As the Director of Finance for Smartcar, Emily Frey feels the pain of having to do more with less: Close the books faster, decrease vendor spend, and support company growth – all without adding headcount.
Smartcar is an API platform for connected vehicle data, so they are true believers in the power of integrations. And yet they struggled with disparate finance systems that created more work and made it harder to see the full financial picture.
That’s why bringing together Rillet and SpendHound was transformative. With Rillet automating accounting workflows and SpendHound providing vendor visibility and pricing benchmarks, their finance function became faster, more accurate, and more strategic.
Here’s how.
For Smartcar, accounting and vendor management lived in separate tools. The ERP held the most complete financial data, but it didn’t provide the benchmarking, contract tracking, or renewal visibility needed to actively manage vendor spend.
This created a gap between recording spend and optimizing it. Frey had to rely on manual processes to reconcile data across systems, track contracts separately, and validate vendor pricing.
And, as Frey explained, “As a finance team of one, I can’t afford to spend lots of time on manual data entry.”
Smartcar was clear on what they needed: “a spend management tool that could read the vendor data directly from our accounting software.”
Smartcar chose Rillet, an AI-native ERP, to automate month-end close. With its built-in revenue recognition, invoicing, and AI-powered accounting, it has everything a finance team needs for continuous close in one seamless platform.
As Frey explains: “With Rillet, 99% of the monthly close is automated. All I have to do is reconcile accounts and check that the automations are continuing to function as expected. Goodbye data entry tasks!”
With Rillet, the time savings were immediate and significant.
According to Frey, “Migrating to Rillet has shaved over 5 business days off my month-end close tasks.” So instead of spending time assembling and validating financial data, Frey can focus on higher-value finance work.
While Rillet automates Smartcar’s accounting processes and ensures they have access to accurate and up-to-date financial data, that was just one piece of the puzzle
Says Frey, “We needed a free tool that could easily track our vendor contracts, renewal dates, and also help us with negotiations by providing benchmarking data. SpendHound seemed like the perfect fit.”
One of the biggest advantages of SpendHound is visibility into whether vendor pricing is competitive. With this benchmarking data, Smartcar can approach vendor negotiations with the info they need to get the best vendor pricing.
As Frey sums it up: “Spendhound is risk-free and the benefits are tremendous for any company looking to easily track renewals, spend, and benchmarking data for vendor negotiations.”
And Frey “trusts SpendHound completely. Its parent company (YipitData) is a reputable company and SpendHound is open and honest about what they are doing with our data. SpendHound has plenty of parent-company support to help it keep growing which gives me confidence that the platform will only improve.”
Powerful tools individually, the real transformation came when SpendHound integrated directly with Rillet.
Frey had used SpendHound previously but, before it was integrated with Rillet, that created a challenge. So she asked the SpendHound team if they would consider an integration so SpendHound could read the vendor data directly from Rillet — and Rillet and SpendHound delivered!
Now, instead of manually entering vendor data, Smartcar’s financial information flows automatically from Rillet into SpendHound. Says Frey, “This integration has saved me lots of time because I no longer have to manually update Spendhound.”
But the benefits go beyond time savings. This sync has also improved data accuracy and trust.
“Having the correct data syncing into Spendhound automatically. I have confidence in the SpendHound data,” explains Frey.
With Rillet serving as the source of truth and SpendHound layering on benchmarking and contract intelligence, Smartcar gained a complete and reliable view of their vendor spend.
Rillet and SpendHound solve two complementary problems:
Together, they eliminate manual workflows and enable finance teams to operate more strategically.
For Smartcar, the result has been faster closes, more reliable vendor data, and greater confidence across their financial operations.
As Frey summarizes: “Rillet is a no-brainer for anyone in the Saas space looking to modernize their accounting tech stack. And with SpendHound layered on top, that modern accounting foundation becomes a strategic advantage.”
To learn more about how Rillet + SpendHound are better together, request a SpendHound demo and earn $500 when you sign up for SpendHound.*
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