How Yoto Scaled Financial Operations with One Comprehensive Platform

The Challenge

Manual Invoice Processing Drains Resources

Yoto’s growth in the children’s audio player market exposed inefficiencies in their AP processes. The lean AP team faced an overwhelming workload: they were managing approximately 500 monthly invoices for more than a thousand suppliers, including 600 international vendors. The manual nature of their processes was inefficient and error-prone. The team manually processed invoices by receiving them via email, uploading them individually into NetSuite, and executing payments through multiple bank accounts to handle GBP and USD currencies.

This time-intensive system consumed most of the AP manager’s time each week, leaving little room for strategic tasks and increasing the risk of errors, such as duplicate payments or misallocations. Yoto’s manual processes were unsustainable, creating a need for an automated solution to streamline operations and support an expanding global supplier base.

Automating payouts to creators was critical. As Yoto scaled from 50 creators to thousands, bimonthly royalty payouts became impossible to manage using manual spreadsheets. 

Yoto managed expenses across three entities, each with up to 80 expense categories, creating an urgent need for an integrated, efficient reimbursement system.

The Solution

Automating AP and Global Payments, enabling Mass Payments, and Streamlining Expenses

Yoto used a single platform to manage AP invoices, creator royalty payouts, and employee expenses across UK, US, and Singapore entities. They could effectively scale creator payouts and streamline expense workflows, but the biggest transformation was in AP. 

To address their manual AP challenges, Yoto integrated Tipalti with its existing NetSuite ERP system. This integration automated the entire invoice lifecycle, from the Invoice Capture Agent and Invoice Coding Agent, which capture and code invoices automatically, to approval workflows and multi-currency payments, reducing the need for labor-intensive processes. Tipalti’s platform enabled Yoto to efficiently manage payments for its 1000+ suppliers, split evenly between domestic and international, while handling transactions in both GBP and USD.

The implementation process was smooth and required minimal involvement from Yoto’s internal IT team. Tipalti’s engineering and customer success teams worked directly with Yoto’s finance department to customize the system to meet their unique needs, including global supplier onboarding and multi-currency capabilities. This collaborative approach ensured a streamlined transition, allowing Yoto to focus on scaling its business without being bogged down by administrative bottlenecks.

The Result

Reduced Close Times and Scalable Efficiency

With Tipalti in place, Yoto’s entire financial operations process has become significantly more efficient, enabling the company to scale. Rather than adding headcount to manage its growing supplier base, Yoto leveraged automation to handle high-volume invoice processing, allowing the existing two-person team to reallocate their time to high-value work.

Yoto shortened its month-end AP close by 30%, syncing invoices seamlessly with NetSuite and centralizing payments in Tipalti. This automation minimized duplicate payment errors and gave suppliers better visibility into their accounts. Integrating with NetSuite enabled them to automate invoice capture, streamline approval workflows, and more efficiently manage supplier payments across multiple currencies. The team eliminated manual fund transfers by using Tipalti to manage multi-currency payments across GBP and USD accounts. 

By implementing Mass Payments, Yoto deployed a self-billing workflow to pay creator royalties bimonthly and automated tax calculations and payment processing for the growing creator base. Automating royalty payments eliminated manual spreadsheet calculations.

With Expenses, they configured expense management across three entities with manager approval, improving review workflows and speeding up reimbursements. 

The changes had an immediate impact on team efficiency: Email, browser, and mobile approval options for invoices and expenses reduced approval cycle bottlenecks that Yoto previously experienced. By reducing manual work, the lean finance team could manage expanded operations across multiple entities, payment types, and geographies without a proportional increase in headcount.

These improvements have not only enhanced operational efficiency but also provided a scalable foundation for Yoto’s continued growth, ensuring its finance team can support the business’s expanding global footprint.