Brooklinen Modernizes Its Financial Operations As Their Luxury Bedsheets Skyrocket in Demand
HQ Brooklyn, NY
Customer Since 2020
Industry eCommerce, Manufacturing
- Eliminated one week a month of manual payments processing time
- Implemented automatic collection of W-9 forms
- Added instant reconciliation with QuickBooks Online
Our vendors like Tipalti because they get paid on time, and they can track when their payments are coming in.
Shawna Stewart | Staff Accountant
Imagine: You’re staying in a suite at the Bellagio Hotel. You slept for 14 hours straight— those fancy bed sheets make you feel like you are sleeping on a cloud. You go online to buy some. $800, pillowcases not included. Would you purchase them?
That’s what married couple Rich and Vicky asked themselves. The result? Brooklinen, luxury bedding with an affordable price. Launched in 2014, their mission was simple: To manufacture affordable, high-quality sheets and towels delivered straight to your doorstep. Needless to say, Rich and Vicky’s startup exploded in popularity.
As a growing company, Brooklinen’s manual payment process was tedious and drawn out. The CEO was hand-writing checks every week, along with the company’s accountant, and mailing them to vendors by hand. Then they had to reconcile payments with their accounting software by manually inputting all the data. This labor-intensive process was time-consuming for the finance team and the CEO.
Brooklinen Staff Accountant, Shawna Stewart, knew that vendors had to provide their W-9s, but did the company receive them? “Not always,” Stewart admits.
Our AP operaI’d ask for W-9s, but the vendors needed their payments, so we’d just go ahead and pay them. About 30% of the W-9s slipped through the cracks.
In need of a new solution, Brooklinen implemented Tipalti to handle vendor onboarding and tax compliance, invoice processing and vendor payments. With one central hub, the Brooklinen AP team could access the vendors’ contact information, billing details, and tax identification—all when the vendor onboarded. The solution future-proofed the business’s AP process, along with its supplier payments strategy and operations.
Since integrating with Tipalti, we have strengthened our financial controls. Once we approve the bill, it automatically pushes through. We see our expenses reflect in our financials in real-time—our CEO knows exactly how much he is spending.
Additionally, Brooklinen has improved its tax compliance and implemented a robust integration with QuickBooks Online.
Vendors won’t receive payments until they onboard and provide their W-9. Tipalti automatically handles the tax forms.
By modernizing AP operations with Tipati, the payment reconciliation process is instant. Stewart explains, “In those instances where I might get two questions a day about somebody’s payment, I’m able to access Tipalti to see where the payment is.”
Even with the country in lockdown, Brooklinen successfully scaled its growing business and elevated its finance operations. In 2020, Brooklinen raised $50 million to expand beyond sleep and bedding to offer a range of goods around comfort at home.
Brooklinen is expanding in vendor relations while maintaining the same headcount.
Our vendors like Tipalti because they get paid on time, and they can track when their payments are coming in. The department heads are getting very positive feedback about the software. It’s been great.
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