Vivino Centralizes Multi-Subsidiary AP Operations and Gains Financial Visibility

HQ San Francisco, CA
Customer Since 2020

Industry Marketplace

• Fully automated invoice and payment processing
• Cut payment process down from hours to just minutes
• Simplified vendor onboarding and management integrated with NetSuite

Vivino, the world’s largest online wine marketplace and most downloaded wine app, boasts a vibrant global community of millions of wine drinkers. With over 233 million ratings and reviews across 15 million wine makers, the company is quickly expanding. Vivino is out to democratize wine, bringing the industry down to earth and helping people across the globe discover the best wines for them.

What started as a wine identifying app has steadily evolved into a marketplace for wineries and suppliers as well as smaller businesses and boutique shops. Operating in many countries, Vivino’ finance team communicates regularly with vendors all over the world in their local languages. But that wasn’t always the case. For Becca Simmons, Vivino’s head of finance, being able to localize for the growing business was very important.

Having a platform that had localized languages was a must have for us. That’s kind of how we came to use Tipalti. It really was a no brainer, says Becca Simmons, Head of Finance, EMEA.

Previously, Vivino struggled with both manual invoice processing and approvals, resorting to manually attaching approval email files to NetSuite. With no real vendor onboarding or vendor approval process in place, and a lack of global visibility, it became important to have as much automation in each process as possible.

I really want my team to be able to focus on using their brains for the fun and exciting accounting items, not necessarily the [manual] more monotonous, process-oriented ones.

Vendor management, invoice and payment processing became difficult to track across Vivino’sentities. Additionally, everything had to be entered manually into NetSuite and the bank. A solution was needed that would help them onboard new vendors, contractors, and wine partners in a tax compliant way.

Vivino has always been a global company by nature, with a presence in each country in which they operate. Having tried a couple different AP solutions in the past that couldn’t keep up with just how global Vivino was, the organization looked to Tipalti to automate and streamline their AP and global payment processes.

If a process can’t scale, it’s not going to be global and successful, said Simmons.

With Tipalti integrated with NetSuite, Vivino gains global visibility of invoices due and remitted payments.

A huge benefit to the team has been visibility. Tipalti provides a better interface to see where global cash is flowing each week and provides the full picture required for strategic planning in each of our entities.

Automating AP operations saved time across the board. From finance owners, business owners, and vendors, operations have been expedited and made more efficient, supporting healthy vendor relationships in the process.

Tipalti helps you do the right [vendor] background checks, making sure there’s no issue with the bank accounts, and helps collect the necessary tax information which is really beneficial when doing 1099s at the end of the year.

Overall, time savings has been a real value Vivino continues to experience. Payment processing that used to take hours now
takes minutes. Today Vivino easily pays vendors and partners in over 20 countries, and manages six currencies.

Another huge benefit is future cash planning. We didn’t get this very clearly in NetSuite and it’s something that we’re able to see, with bill due dates coming up in X amount of time for accurately funding our AP Batch for the week.

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