Fast-growing insurance provider, Thimble, automates their AP process and gains huge efficiencies.

About Thimble

What they do: Thimble makes insurance simple and fast for any business.

Location: New York City

Employees: Less than 50

Industry: Fintech SaaS

Pain Points: AP process was 100% manual using an Excel spreadsheet and lots of emails. Paying bills wasted hours of time and invoice errors could easily slip through the cracks.

Glean success: Glean automated the AP process, sped up the workflow, and
allowed the finance team to immediately find duplicate invoices and resolve discrepancies in minutes instead of hours.

Thimble: A growing business needs internal systems that keep up

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 was an excellent decision. Not only does Glean 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 definitely increases efficiencies and perfects my AP workflow.”

BEFORE GLEAN: Multi-step Manual Process, Errors, Uncertainty

Before using Glean, 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.

AFTER GLEAN: Automated, Efficient, Proactive

With Glean, 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, 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 to resolve discrepancies with fees. Glean 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’s historical tracking abilities, having everything organized and right there in the system. It allows me to be faster and better at my job.”

‘Gleans’: Powerful, money-saving insights

Glean utilizes machine learning to analyze invoices as they’re processed and produces
informative and prescriptive insights for every invoice that are referred to as ‘gleans’.

Mike realized the full power of his gleans when one of them flagged a duplicate invoice.

“Glean picked up a duplicate invoice that I missed, and that’s when I realized that Glean 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.”

Says Mike, “Extrapolated out, in the long run, gleans will likely save Thimble a significant amount of money.”

Thimble: “Two Thumbs Up for Glean”

Both Jodi and Mike agree that Glean is a necessary tool in any finance team’s technology stack. 

Says Jodi, “I would definitely recommend Glean. The interface, the efficiency, having one database that houses all invoices for tracking purposes – all of it makes our team more proactive and able to add more value to Thimble.”  

Learn how Glean can solve your pain points, save you hours and make you a smarter finance professional. Schedule a demo today