Challenge

Kevin Wong and Sean Ro founded Lunar Hard Seltzer to fill a void in the alcoholic beverage market for products reflecting their Asian American roots, infusing traditional flavors like yuzu and lychee into a modern, refreshing seltzer. As Lunar's popularity grew, the company's accounts payable needs became more complex. Initially, they tried using QuickBooks' Bill Management but found it cumbersome and disorganized, requiring hours of manual bill input and verification to maintain accurate records.

Solution

Frustrated with QuickBooks' Bill Management, the Lunar team sought a more user-friendly accounts payable solution. They chose to partner with Settle, citing the responsiveness of Settle's support team as well as the platform's intuitive interface, which Kevin described as superior to competing AP automation tools: "The UX is super confusing on many of the other platforms - Settle has them beat there."

The UX is super confusing on many of the other platforms - Settle has them beat.

Consolidating all their AP within Settle also streamlined their auditing process significantly: “Having all our AP in one spot is really helpful for audits - Settle is the source of truth, it's integrated with QuickBooks, and what's really nice is that because each bill is classified automatically it's super nice from a workflow perspective and it's really good for when we need to conduct an audit”.

The Outcome

By adopting Settle, Kevin and Sean have eliminated the tedious, manual work involved in entering and verifying bills in QBO Bill Management, saving the team at least 5 hours a month. With Settle streamlining their AP, the team now invests their energy toward more impactful initiatives including new product lines and growing their presence in the Northeast and California regions.

Advice to Founders

Kevin underscores the importance of founders tracking their cash flow and working capital cycles: “it’s a big opportunity cost if you’re over-deploying capital or overcommitting to inventory and you don’t have enough to grow the business. Settle is a great tool for tracking cash flow and feeding data into a model”. Kevin also recommends getting a fractional CFO (like himself!) to help manage cash flow forecasts properly.