Why Funded Startups Love Brex and Puzzle

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More and more startups are seeking an all-in-one solution and one source of truth for their financial needs. They want integrated systems that seamlessly communicate and unite to provide accurate, streamlined data that facilitates informed decision-making.

And that’s exactly why we’ll dive into Brex today as a part of our Fintech for Founders series.

In this guide, you'll learn:

• Why 1 in 4 venture-backed US startups select Brex for their fintech stack
• What accounting platform works best with Brex
• Why startups are syncing their operating account, credit card, and accounting solution 
• Why founders like Andres Ugarte, CEO and Founder of CoPilot Money are saying, "I'm happy with the Brex-Puzzle integration!"

Why Brex?

Early stage, VC-funded startups choose Brex because they are a complete one-stop-shop for a startup’s complete cash management and spending needs in one platform.

Brex offers startups one place for their operating accounts, credit cards, spend monitoring, and unique travel and treasury solutions that other platforms do not.

‍The alternative? A startup working with three different companies and managing three different logins, accounts, and processes.

Having everything in one central place of truth like Brex is valuable, efficient, and improves decision-making.

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✅ Business accounts

Brex offers business accounts through cash management accounts managed by Brex Treasury (a FINRA-registered broker-dealer). Similar to a bank account, founders can set up a Brex business account to send and receive payments via ACH, check, and wire—even internationally! All Brex customer funds are stored into either FDIC-insured accounts or money market funds. Other benefits of using the Brex business account:

• Diversify your funds across Brex's FDIC-insured partner banks for up to $6M in coverage using just one account.
• Invest your cash in a money market fund for 4.92% yield, and still use it for daily expenses.
• Access to a user-friendly experience.

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✅ Credit cards, reimbursements, and expense management 

• Brex physical and virtual credit cards enable founders to earn up to 7x back and be redeemed for cash rewards, credits, or even marketing campaigns like billboards. With Brex's 24/7 customer support and a 5-star rated app on iPhone and Android, startup founders can view and manage global spend right from their phones. With a platform to enforce expense policies, reimburse employee expenses including travel, and even create and track expense budgets, startups can stay in control of their spend at all times.

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✅ Bill pay 

• Startups can save hours with Brex’s bill pay automation. Teams can forward invoices by email, upload, or have vendors email them directly to Brex. Brex’s OCR technology automatically captures details and get bills ready to pay.

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Brex offers startups several benefits over using just traditional banks. For instance, Brex enables startups to view all of their company finances in one place – even external bank accounts– in a single dashboard. Brex also offers integrations with other tools that startups are already using to manage their accounting, payroll, and team.

Traditional banks often have hidden fees and requirements like personal guarantees, credit checks, and account minimums. Brex customers do not need to worry about any of that. They get an all-in-one financial stack designed to scale with founders from incorporation to IPO and beyond.

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What accounting solution works best with Brex?

Puzzle, real-time accounting software for startups, has a deep integration with Brex and eliminates time-consuming tasks for all users (startups founder and their accountants). This makes bank reconciliations, month-end close, and financial reporting preparation much easier than using other accounting platforms, like QuickBooks Online. Here’s how: 

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🧩 Reliable and accurate insights with 99% auto-categorization 

The easiest banking-spend-accounting workflow

‍The bulk of financial reports are created from operating account and credit card transactions. Puzzle ingests Brex’s data via API so Puzzle automatically syncs all of Brex’s operating account and credit card data directly into Puzzle’s core accounting system.

In other words, every single transaction in Brex is synced to Puzzle in real-time through this API. This ensures all transactions are categorized with more accuracy in Puzzle over other accounting systems. In fact, 99% of Brex credit card transactions are auto-categorized in Puzzle!

Users also eliminate context switching between systems. They don’t need to chase receipts, download or upload data - which means, both founders and accountants have the information they need, directly in the system to reconcile the books.

Also, Puzzle pulls the data via Brex’s API to run automated pre-reconciliation validation checks.

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🧩 Faster business insights

The Brex-Puzzle integration ensures data is synced faster and with more accuracy. This enables business owners the freedom to log into Puzzle and access the startup metrics they need to run a business, while their bookkeeper validates and finalizes the more formalize financial reports.

Puzzle's dashboard also gives founders the ability to see crucial startup metrics like burn, runway, cash, MRR, and ARR.

This means founders can quickly get the information they need to make important decisions. They cannot do the same thing in other accounting systems as other accounting systems are not built with startup metrics in mind.

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Startups choose Brex for startup expertise, ease of use, and a seamless accounting integration with Puzzle

Navigating banking as a VC-funded startup can be quite the puzzle (no pun intended!), given the special needs that founders have. When sizing up the perfect operating accounts, credit card, bill pay, and accounting solution for your startup, it's crucial to factor in industry expertise, user experience, and how easy it will be to maintain.

And guess what? That's exactly why the Brex-Puzzle integration is the favorite choice for startups. 

• Brex offers an all-in-solution for operating accounts, credit cards, bill pay and even expense management. Brex has startup expertise, and have services and rewards that appeal specifically to technology, biotech, and ecommerce founders over traditional platforms.
• Puzzle is a real-time accounting solution for startups that was built with the startup founder in mind. Founders can access startup metrics like burn, runway, ARR, MRR instantly, while their accountants gain more accurate context about transactions through the Brex-Puzzle integration.

Getting set up correctly from the outset with both Puzzle and Brex will ensure you are set up for success from day one.

See how easy it is to connect Brex to Puzzle in just 1-click!
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Stay tuned for more guides from our Fintech for Founders series!