How Typeform saved 50% of time with FP&A software

Typeform’s finance team used Abacum’s FP&A software to save 2 weeks of manual tasks monthly & drive faster insights to their business partners.

Typeform, the online form creation company, became a fast scaling company shortly after it was founded in 2012. They had raised $52 million in funding, onboarded top-tier customers such as Slack and Superhuman, grew to more than 360 employees, and expanded internationally. Keeping up with its success meant that it attracted a sophisticated finance team to drive better insights into the organization. 

The never-ending planning process

The company’s financial and operational models were managed in one GSheet document that contained 16 tabs, one for each business unit. After each month-end closing, the FP&A team had to update business plan actuals by adhering to the following process: Pulling data from three different sources, putting it into GSheets and manually reformatting. This whole process took one week to complete and required lots of manual efforts. 

However, the process did not end there. Once the models were prepared, they needed to be sent to the different business unit owners to be validated and updated. This required separating the data from each department, send it by email and waiting for the corresponding budget owners to review the numbers and update if necessary. This meant having several back-and-forth conversations by email, Slack, and GSheets comments.

Once each business unit’s actuals were closed, the FP&A team started their analysis but by that time, it was often a rush job. The FP&A team needed a more sustainable solution for the work they were doing – one that had a direct impact on the rest of the organization. Implementing Abacum was a great start to that change.

Abacum as the single source of truth

Abacum’s FP&A software reinvented the data gathering and preparation process by connecting Netsuite, Looker, and BambooHR APIs to Abacum’s platform so data could be synchronized from these systems instantly. The immediate effect of automated manual tasks was the increased time to perform analysis and drive insights. With more time cleared up, the FP&A team had their reports prepared for business partners within a week.

With Abacum’s FP&A software, the FP&A team also began minimizing emails to business partners. Dedicated spaces within the platform were created and kept private, and only made accessible to business partners if shared by FP&A. The quality of reporting also improved because of better communication and feedback between stakeholders. Organizational and financial metrics were updated timely and, from an executive perspective, these enhanced conversations have led to better decisions.

“It was usually a photo-finish just to get insights and reports done for executive meetings. And also, it was just kind of the same analysis month-on-month due to lack of time.”

Maria Guasch, FP&A Director