Host Erik Zhou sits down with Amber Papp, VP of Finance at Scentbird, to dive into the challenges of e-commerce accounting. Amber shares insights on managing massive inventory, scaling warehouse operations, and making smart automation decisions in a fast-growing subscription business. She and Erik also explore AI’s role in finance and the importance of data integrity. Plus, Amber reveals one of the wildest budget requests she’s ever received—hint: it involves a Cybertruck and a demolition derby.
Host Erik Zhou sits down with Amber Papp, VP of Finance at Scentbird, to explore the unique challenges of accounting in the e-commerce space. From managing a massive inventory of over 700 fragrances to navigating rapid growth and making smart automation decisions, Amber shares firsthand insights on what it takes to keep financial operations running smoothly at a high-growth, subscription-based company.
Amber and Erik also dig into relevant themes like the role of AI in accounting, balancing efficiency with cost when evaluating new financial tools and systems, and the never-ending pursuit of data integrity.
And as the episode closes, Amber shares a truly unexpected budget request—one that involved a Cybertruck, a demolition derby, and a marketing team with big dreams.
Key quote
Time Stamps
Links
0:00:01.6 Announcer: Welcome to Controllers Classified, the podcast where we take a deep dive into the dynamic world of controllers, accountants and finance leaders and hear how their ever evolving roles are redefining accounting and the future of business. And now, here's your host, Erik Zhou.
0:00:24.2 Erik Zhou: Welcome to Controllers Classified. I'm your host, Erik Zhou, Chief accounting Officer at Brexit, and I'm really proud to present our new episode today. We're going to have Amber Papp, VP of finance at Scentbird, on our podcast today. Given Scentbird's business model, we will be covering e commerce accounting, something that we haven't done on the show before, and the practices around that and accounting operations for something like that. So let's get into it. Amber, welcome to the show.
0:00:51.0 Amber Papp: Thanks so much, Erik, for having me.
0:00:53.7 Erik Zhou: Absolutely. I'd just love to kick off every show like this. But how did you get into accounting in the field?
0:01:00.8 Amber Papp: Really had no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up. Just knew I wanted to do something in the business space. So when I was in college, university, I went to, had an excellent accounting program and guaranteed you pretty much a job out of school as long as you had good grades. They had where a year before you graduated, they would set you up with firms in the area so you could interview and get a job offer before you even graduated. Down to good to me. Also had a really great accounting professor, took the class, realized it was one. A lot of people didn't like to take my class, but for some reason loved it and so just move forward with that path.
0:01:38.1 Erik Zhou: I took accounting in college as well. I remember Accounting 101. My professor's name was Professor Janssen. Shout out to Professor Janssen. He. Yeah, he introduced me to like, just the basics of it and I was a math guy or a math person in high school too, and it all just clicked. I love that, like things have to tie out the balance. You have to tie out like everything flowed into each other. There's the matching principle So I just. I'm right with you there.
0:02:06.5 Amber Papp: Things are black and white sometimes.
0:02:09.5 Erik Zhou: Sometimes. Although the more I studied accounting and the more I did accounting work in my career, it be. It all became more gray over time.
0:02:19.6 Amber Papp: In the beginning the comfort was, yeah, if you have a debit, you need to have a credit. But as you get further into it, yes, it does become more gray, which I was not expecting.
0:02:30.5 Erik Zhou: Yes, the debits have to equal the credits, but where do you put the debit? Right. I think that's sometimes the question. I'm curious also. So started off with accounting got into your career, how did you end up at Scentbird?
0:02:46.4 Amber Papp: I went like I was speaking about, they have a program where they set you up with public accounting firms. And I got a job offer from JH Cohn at the time and when I graduated started working in public account accounting and audit for them. I was there for 10 years. Loved it, I really did. Got to see a whole range of businesses and at that time I ended up having a 1 year old son. At my 10th busy season in one of my clients reached out to me and said, any chance you might be looking to get out of public now that you starting a family? And it was a e commerce company that actually approached me and so I went to them and was there for a couple of years. While I was there, saw the company was bought and sold twice. So that was an interesting experience. And then after four years was just looking to make a move. I think the ups and downs of being at a company that was bought and sold, it comes with its own unique challenges. But was just ready to move into a different space.
0:03:56.7 Amber Papp: So just started to put the feelers out there. And a recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn about the opportunity at Scentbird. I met with the CFO at the time and the rest of the team and just fell in love and luckily everything worked out and now we'll be celebrating this August will be my fourth anniversary with Scentbird.
0:04:14.8 Erik Zhou: That's a great segue into just what it's like working at Scentbird and what the day to day is for you there. Just to get the audience some context, what does Scentbird do? What do they, what do you guys sell? What's the business?
0:04:24.7 Amber Papp: Yeah, so Scentbird is our main business is we are a subscription fragrance company. So for a monthly fee you get a 30 day supply of one of over 700 fragrances. We have a scent finder quiz that helps you land on your perfect scent. We love to say this way you get to date the scent before you marry it. You don't have to go out and buy a super expensive bottle of perfume which might end up sitting on the shelf. You could try a whole variety of different scents, profiles, you name it. It's a great way to keep it interesting. I have to be honest, wasn't much of a fragrance person before I started here. But you get a subscription as one of your benefits of being an employee and even just having a different scent for oh, if we're going on vacation or if something's happening in terms of family, special events, those things, it's something that's been really nice and have definitely developed a love for it. We also at Denver, we have some other own brands. We have a Deck of Scarlet, which is a makeup line, a vegan, cruelty free makeup line.
0:05:32.4 Amber Papp: We have Confessions of a Rebel, which is our own line of fragrances. Sanctuary, another line of fragrances where a portion of the proceeds go to different endangered species on which the fragrances are based off of. Good Habit, which is a skincare line. And then in 2022 we acquired a company, Drift, which is a car air freshener company. They have really cool car air fresheners. It's similar concept to Scentbird, where every month you get a different car air freshener, but it's a wood block or stone. There's also a bunch of other products that we have now in the mix. There's a home scent diffuser and all these other things. So I don't want to sell it too short. There's just too much to go through. But just a fancier sense, basically. All things sense, yes. We're trying to conquer all things sense. But yeah, it's just, it's a much better looking, higher quality oils than some of the other car air fresheners offerings out there. So yeah, have our. But yes, have our hands in a lot of the Anything fragrance pretty much.
0:06:36.0 Erik Zhou: Okay, so you just described in my head a lot of inventory.
0:06:42.4 Amber Papp: Yes.
0:06:43.0 Erik Zhou: All these different customers that you have, you're sending out all kinds of different scents to all these different subscribers. Then you added car scents. Now you got like a skincare thing. So the first thing that comes to mind when I think of E commerce is one, I guess you could be drop shipping to some extent, but that's not probably your business since you have your own stuff. Tell me about the challenges with that kind of business. In terms of the inventory or. I don't know, I don't know. I'm kind of starting from ground zero to some extent because that's not my background. I'm in financial services, so I just don't know as much about it.
0:07:17.6 Amber Papp: Having over 700 fragrances, it does present certain challenges. We want to make sure as an ecom business that we're giving our customers the best offering. So you want to have as much variety as possible as possible. Obviously at the same time, what that means is you have to house all the different fragrances. There's also other things that we need to consider is not just the fragrance, but then we also have to make sure to put the ingredient listing in the package with all the fragrances. So now you have over 700 different cards. Size of, of everything too is to be considered because we have products that range in size from our 8ml vial, which is what you get on your monthly subscription. So that's nice and tiny. So that could fit in a small location. But we also have candle offerings. Some of the bigger we could do full size bottles. You know, some of the other Drift product, like I said, just in terms of sizing, actually it's gotten to the point where we have so many offerings right now and the business has grown so much between Scentbird and especially Drift. We've seen a lot of growth there and expanding that product line that we are in the process of now getting a second warehouse which when I started with the company we were subleasing a mezzanine section from a warehouse.
0:08:29.3 Amber Papp: We moved into our new warehouse about a year and a half ago. We just finished construction on it fully about a month or two, a month or two earlier. And then now we need a second warehouse just because having, having all of those products, obviously you need a place to keep them. So we've expanded to another location.
0:08:51.8 Erik Zhou: And how do you manage the accounting for all these different sizes and the 700 products? So do they I'm assuming there's some automation at this point for all that stuff, but yeah, I'd love to know that.
0:09:03.5 Amber Papp: Yeah, we would say there's not as much automation as we would love to have at this point. One of the things that you know is while it's a great while, it's great to be growing extremely quickly. It's a good problem to have at the same time growing so quickly. It's hard to keep systems up to scale and to keep things sustainable while you're doing it. And that's the position that we are, we're in right now is we're planning for growth, just not the level of growth that we had this quick. So we're playing catch up a lot with the systems and automation right now expanding into another warehouse. We're hoping to get more of it. There is a lot of ideas that have been floating around about how we can get automation things from instead of there'll be a pick sheet, for example, for someone in the warehouse to pick what needs to be fulfilled for inventory for certain orders. And so that's that's on a, on a paper sheet. Moving to a place where hopefully we're trying to get where you can have. They're just going through the line and it lights up as you're going through it, knows exactly what you need to pick, and it lights up what you need to pick.
0:10:12.5 Amber Papp: So there's not looking at a sheet, looking up. That way you also just can walk through all the different lines to pick the inventory that you need instead of saying going to one location, another across the warehouse, then going back to the location you were in. So trying to find efficiencies in that process to make it smoother. I do have to say, even though we aren't at the point where we have a lot of automation, our COO and her team have been incredible about trying to find as many efficiencies as possible just in how we operate. So we have with our subscription, most people just get, they'll say, you surprise me. You know what, just give me whatever the fragrance of the month is. I don't need to pick out what I'm getting this month. So that's our largest shipment. So they found certain efficiencies about how they pack and ship all of those at one time and just the way that they do it in organizing those shipments out and then how they end up picking those who decided, you know what, I actually want dead cool extra milk for this month.
0:11:10.2 Amber Papp: So they have to go and and pick that specific fragrance. Luckily, like I said, we have a team that's always thinking of ways to improve things and make more efficient. You know, what they can manually. Automation we've also found too, there are certain automation that we wanted to do in terms of robotics and things like that. You have to have a certain warehouse size, certain spacing between your racks. There are things that you have to have that it's not so easy. It's not as simple as saying, oh yeah, I just want to get some robotics and automation there. Your warehouse and your setup has to actually comply to that too. And we're finding in certain instances it's not. The automation is actually not worth it. What we think that we would, we would get into in terms of improved ROI on certain things actually doesn't outweigh the potential benefits. So it, we're. A lot of these conversations are happening. It's very much top of mind, especially as everyone's talking about AI and automation. It is hard to figure out which ones are right to move forward with and which ones aren't.
0:12:12.9 Announcer: But like I said, exploring all of them to See what we could do best.
0:12:17.2 Erik Zhou: Well, what's something that maybe you decided recently to automate and what's something that you thought about as a team? Decided, okay, let's hold off for a little bit.
0:12:28.3 Amber Papp: For automation, we have been putting one of the things and this might not be so, so recent. This is something that we've actually been working towards for quite a while. But this year, this year seems to be the year that we're going to be able to do it as we've been working towards automating integration of our sales orders into our ERP SO system. So just to say it another way is right now our sales activity, we have to upload, we have to initiate that into, into our ERP system. We're working to have that integrated and have it an automated process so that we have more real time data right now instead of having to wait for manual intervention to see those results.
0:13:13.4 Amber Papp: But that, that's not a recent decision. That's one that we've been trying to work towards for, for a long time. Just as we continue to grow, it just become even more crucial. And in terms of not moving forward with automation, one I recently made a decision on is was trying to look for anything that can save time. I'm always open to learning if it's worth it. So we were just looking for automated reconciliation with certain processes we do for financial month end close and explored a few options.
0:13:50.2 Amber Papp: The cost to do it was almost as much as hiring another person and the amount of time that it would save because there's certain aspects of the process that we've already been able to automate. This would just add an, add another few. So for that we decided not to move forward because with that I go, I'd rather hire another member of our team that can help do these few things maybe to make life easier, but then they would have capacity to do other things as opposed to take on the additional cost for something that will only save us a couple of hours every month.
0:14:23.4 Erik Zhou: Yeah, the, the cost considerations for automation are definitely a concern for me too. Like even, even at Brex and I don't know how many employees are at Scentbird, but we have a thousand employees. I would say the accounting team has called, I think 18 folks at this point. Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff we automate but then the automation, the cost to automate a process, maybe it's even AP like accounts payable or something. We could get another person and that person could do way more than this. One particular task in AP that will save X number of hours per month. Now, there are some processes that we have kind of like decided, okay, we'll pay this cost monthly. Because one, there were a lot of other factors. Like for instance, we automated our Flex process where we compare GL accounts month over month, after the month end close or during the month end close, so to speak, to see if there's anything that pops out that's weird. And we automated that with a new tool and actually uses AI and it generates all of the variance explanations for us. Because you read that's really cool. I can talk to you about it after.
0:15:29.5 Erik Zhou: I don't even mind saying it. It's a tool called Numeric and I can introduce you to the founder and everything. It's like this new wave of AI tools. The tool will take all the GL activity in NetSuite for a particular account, then it'll take the other GL activity of that same account in the new month and it'll literally read all the memos and everything and all the vendors and everything and it'll say, okay, this balance increased this month because this spend for this vendor went up by whatever this journal entry is like a new journal entry. It literally lays out in bullet form what they are. It's as good as if a staff were to do it.
0:16:04.8 Amber Papp: That's incredible.
0:16:05.7 Erik Zhou: And the accuracy rate is like at this point, 95% or something like that. It's really good.
0:16:09.5 Amber Papp: Yeah, I'm excited to get to. No, no, no, I'm excited to get to that point because I've heard of offerings like that as well. For us, one of those challenges has also been too is making sure that we have the data integrity we need to, to start leveraging more of the AI tools and automation, if that makes any sense. And I know Scentbird, we have additional challenges because we're a subscription business and we're a subscription with a product. So that has added complexity in terms of integration for our sales orders in the system because revenue recognition can happen until we ship the product out the door. Whereas if we were just a SaaS company and it's a bit easier because it just covers a certain time period, ours is triggered based on shipment. And then we also have customers say they could do three month subscription, six months subscription. But all to say, because the integration and trying to get the integration, we need it more real time to get that real, accurate daily data. I've been having conversations with people to say it's the chicken or the egg situation Is do I start implementing some of these AI tools if I also.
0:17:25.4 Amber Papp: But at the same time have this integration that I'm trying to do to get my data to a better place, like, which one should come first? Do I just start trying to do some of this, or do I push to have the data and the systems to where I need them to be to really leverage those AI tools going forward? I don't know what the right answer is. I've kind of gotten, I've gotten answers in both realms, but I figure if I keep my pulse on what's happening when it comes time and when it feels right, then I can move forward.
0:18:00.0 Erik Zhou: I think that's a difficult one. Yeah, I think there's probably in my, in my mind, I'm just thinking through this a little bit more, and there's, there's a baseline level of integrity that you need in order for the downstream tools that you might consider to be fully useful. Because if ultimately there's like all this stuff in your data that, you know already needs to be better or needs to be more accurate or more complete, et cetera, like, I would fix that first before leveraging some kind of flux tool, for instance, because that flux tool is not going to tell me anything different. You know what I mean? I know that it's missing X, Y and Z and all that. I don't need this thing to tell me. But once you have some of those controls over that data in place already, then I think that the tool is more useful, then it can give you even deeper insights, et cetera, on your processes and like, how your performance is even. I mean, I. So I kind of agree. I feel like the data integrity is the foundation. I mean, at the end of the day, accountants are the original data people.
0:19:00.0 Erik Zhou: Right? Like before we had data science and it was. All the information was all kept in the database and debits and credits and like all the other stuff that we track for inventory, et cetera. And so I truly believe that the data integrity is probably more important to start with.
0:19:16.0 Amber Papp: We've definitely come along a long ways from when I first started, but no, there's always going to be more that we have to do. And it's funny you mentioned data integrity and accountants. You know, accountants being in control of the data. Remember one of my clients, and this was when I was in public accounting and they were a contractor, and at this point at least was far enough along that when we were in public accounting, I remember everyone was Telling me like, oh, you're so lucky because now at least you just have your computer. And there were some papers. But they, when I had started, never had to use it. They gave you one of those rolling suitcases because before then there would just be so much paperwork that everyone would need to house that you would have to, you wouldn't be able to just carry it all in a backpack. And one of this one client that I have.
0:20:07.1 Amber Papp: Everything, all the accounting everything. And this was a, this, the company was huge. They did over the contractor who was doing at least over 250 million in revenue every single year. The accountant had the green sheets with the ledger sheets where he would write everything out to the penny. Those books were so accurate, but it was, it was wild. Did not want to, did not want to use QuickBooks or anything else. But yeah, had the green sheets and the data was all there and the data was all accurate. It was just, it was just on paper and pencil.
0:20:45.7 Erik Zhou: Yeah, I mean like, don't, don't fix what ain't broke to some extent. Right. And especially if the results were so immaculate, so to speak. That's interesting. You know, one of the things that, and you had mentioned to me, I think before, but you had also as a company, you guys, you guys have technology obviously as one of the core components, I think, of your operations. You guys also build some of your own stuff. Right. To manage your business. And I'm curious, like, how that's gone as the company has grown.
0:21:15.0 Amber Papp: Yeah, we do have a lot of homegrown systems. And the company that I worked for before this too, same thing, a lot of homegrown systems. And it's interesting being in both spaces. There's some things that are definitely great with having your own homegrown systems. What gets more challenging now is when you reach a certain level of growth, it's either making, it's making the determination, do I take those homegrown systems and build them out to where they need to be for the growth that we have? Or at this point is it just better to go to something that's off the shelf, that can handle the functionality we needed to? But because you have all these legacy systems that are homegrown, integrating them is also a challenge. And that's really where we are now. We've been doing that with our WMS system, our warehouse management system for inventory. We have a homegrown system there, but we have been moving to an off the shelf manufacturing system. So we've been in the process of doing that. And then we have two for some of our customer support and some of our other cash collections and certain things.
0:22:29.3 Amber Papp: There are certain homegrown systems that are in place. And so it has been making those determinations what makes the most sense and figuring out for the for the warehouse management system, for example, there was a lot of research and conversations that happened and the decision ultimately made that in the long term it's better to do something off the shelf than it was for then the homegrown system. But even with that switch to that, we found certain things have been a bit more challenging. For example, with integration with our erp. Funny enough, there was certain technology in our ERP system that we were able to use with our homegrown system. But the off the shelf system doesn't allow us to for whatever reason. So there's pros and pros and cons to both. I've seen.
0:23:19.9 Erik Zhou: And so was that like, okay, I'd love to dig into this. I mean I feel like for your warehouse man, is this basically your inventory management system, right, that tracks all of the stuff that you're holding and cost of sales, et cetera, for stuff that gets shipped and all that. I'm curious, did you know that it wouldn't integrate when you bought the off the shelf or was that like a surprise later?
0:23:41.7 Amber Papp: So it's again weighing all the pros with the cons. So it's integrating with the majority of what we needed to. It was some more more smaller functions that now don't work as a result of it. It's just always interesting to, to see how like things you wouldn't even think of. We. For example, the one thing that I'm speaking about is our ERP system has functionality for landed costs. So that's all about adding the cost of shipping the goods over to us, adding those costs into the value of the inventory. For some reason, the off the shelf WMS, we're not allowed to use that functionality with it. But that's small compared to all the other things that the warehouse management system is going to be able to give us. So for that, for that it's a better result.
0:24:31.0 Erik Zhou: You have to like. And if you build a system, I think there's two ways to manage that system for its life or two sets of scenarios. One is, okay, you built a system. This is for a process that already scales as is with the system designed as is. And so there's a little bit of, you've built this and you set it and forget it. Even if you start growing like 10x, like in theory that system should still work because whatever, maybe the job that it's doing doesn't scale with that growth. The other thing is, well, if it does need to scale, like for instance, we have some homegrown systems and as a result of like Brexit's growth, we have to dedicate like a whole team towards managing that system because there's new business lines that we're forming and like those need to be integrated to the system. And you know, we have other locations that have sprung up like around the world that we operate out of. And so we have to do those that, that work. Like you have to be okay with invest continuously investing in and maintaining the system and like making more.
0:25:31.9 Amber Papp: Yes.
0:25:32.2 Erik Zhou: They're spending more money frankly. And, and so you know, I think, I think, well, do you want to do that or. Frankly, it's more economical. Right. To get something off the shelf. By the way, this system might just be someone else's whole business where they've dedicated their whole company to building out this system and selling it to a variety of clients and prospects, etc. And that's always kind of the build versus buy. Right. But you lose out on some of the customization especially the thing that you just mentioned. Maybe at the end of the day the customization isn't as important as like not spending the money that you would need to spend to maintain the system, so to speak. But that's, that's the way I look at it in terms of some of those build versus buy. It sounds like same, same kind of like decision making that you guys are doing at Scentbird.
0:26:16.9 Amber Papp: Same thing here and same thing it sounds like going on with Brex. We've had where, where the systems worked for what they needed to do when I first started with the company. But now we're international, we have even more product lines. It's. You add on all those additional layers and it, it. Yes, either yeah. Have the systems grow with it or have something that can handle it. And then also thinking out, even when you're buying something off the shelf too, really trying to keep in mind what the longer term plan is because you might be buying an off the shelf system and then who knows if the growth continues, you could be, that could be outdated for you in just a couple of years.
0:26:55.9 Announcer: Yeah, you mentioned a little bit about. So, so you guys are a remote company, I think.
0:27:02.1 Erik Zhou: Yes. From what I understand they had been actually Toying with the idea of going all remote. Even before COVID And when Covid happened, they had an office in New York and it was just around the same time that their lease ended. So they just took that as a sign that, you know what, that's a sign that we should just move all remote. And at that time we already had international employees anyway, so not everybody was domestic.
0:27:29.6 Erik Zhou: How did that impact, like your. Your day to day life in accounting?
0:27:34.4 Amber Papp: Well, when that happened, I wasn't with the company yet, but the company that I was working for at that time, I wasn't with Scentbird at that time. The company I was working for, they had to obviously make the same move where we were very much in person five days a week and then to move all remote. It was, it was definitely an adjustment. Luckily for us, there were certain things that we already had in the works to be less paper based, to be less in person, just because as we were just keeping up with latest trends and efficiency and those sorts of things. But it was a dramatic shift for, for Scentbird, from what I understand is definitely a transition for everybody. But at the same time, because there was a level of working with people remotely, since they have a large team overseas there, everything already had to be set up to be in a more remote position. So they were more adaptable than say the company that I worked for was when. When everything started to shut.
0:28:35.2 Erik Zhou: Down and then did that kind of change any of your processes, like for month end close or like just doing. Was it. Was it pretty seamless in terms of the transition for you? Oh, well, I guess, I guess you were at the other company when you went remote. So I'm just, I'm conflating some things, but I'm just curious, like for you actually at Brex, we recently went RTO, so we were fully remote. And in the beginning of this year, we went two days back into the office. I have some thoughts about that in terms of, like the reasons why, but I'd love to just understand, like for you, I know you guys are in a different business with. I'm sure people have to be at the warehouses anyway, so you kind of are fully remote then people that go into a place of work in some places. So I'm just curious like how you guys think about that.
0:29:20.8 Amber Papp: There are definitely employees who are not full remote. So we have our creative team that shoots all of our imagery. They very much have to be in a studio in order to shoot that content Our warehouse, obviously we have to have people on site for those operations. I think Scentbird has done a really good job with the culture here where they really make sure to keep everyone connected as best as possible. Because when we have people who interview, I think there's a lot of people who want, thought they wanted to be all remote. And then we've had people who've been here for a couple months and they're like, you know what? This actually really is not, is not for me. Because it can be sometimes. I would love to I actually got dressed because I'm speaking to you today. But I would be lying to say if I wasn't normally just in like sweatpants. Yeah. If I'm on a normal meeting with my team. So you know, there it's, it's great having that connection. You do miss that sometimes when you're obviously when you're full remote.
0:30:21.5 Amber Papp: So having Scentbird that really push for the culture of making sure we have a connection when you're on a call making sure you have your, your cameras on when you're speaking to everybody. So at least you're having a face to face conversation. I think just also the culture, it's really making sure that we have the right people who support somebody who is gonna say, you know what, we've, we've had a few slacks back and forth trying to message about this issue. Let's just get on the phone and, and figure this out. Let's just get on a zoom and, and figure this out instead. You know, I don't think it's as beneficial if you have somebody who is doesn't want to get on camera, doesn't want to talk. Like that could be, that could be a harder challenge. But I do think that making sure that you have our, our people team very much is, has established this great culture of making sure everyone stays connected. So that you know, I, even though I have team members Virginia, Illinois, I have a team member in Peru. Even though we are very far away, I do feel like I'll pick up the last minute, huddle them and have a conversation.
0:31:26.7 Amber Papp: It does feel like we have, that we have a great working relationship. We also too just to help with that is you know, we've had and I think this is very important. Any opportunity we have to see each other in person, we also take. So we had, we celebrated a 10 year anniversary of the company last year. And so they got everyone who was domestic. We all got together for a couple of days to celebrate. And then the international team, same thing. They got everybody together to celebrate. And so even being able to have that connection with somebody in person for a few days helps the relationships now. You know, getting on the phone with them like it just. You learn so much more about them. So in. In terms of remote versus being in the office, I think there's definitely benefits for. For both. I think it's. And I think both it depends depending on the culture, I think depends on what situation is. Is is best for. For that company. Luckily, I think it's. It's worked well for Scentbird the way that we operate, but only because they very much make sure that everyone is still.
0:32:33.6 Amber Papp: It's. It still feels like a great place to work and you don't feel like you're isolated and making sure that you're having all those necessary the water cooler conversations as they. As they say. I think that's a lot of concern sometimes is that I think that's what a lot of return to office from what I'm understanding because my old company was that it was at. Everybody obviously was at home for Covid. But then they were working to get everybody in. And the main reasoning being they said the water cooler conversations. And I do get that to a certain extent. I do think though if you have at least in a remote space, if you have individuals who have no hesitation reaching out and knowing when to talk to those people and have those conversations and make that connection, you'll still be in the same place. I think it's about knowing it's the type of individual I think you have working for you remote that some. Maybe it. It just works better than. Than being in the office. There's some people I think. Yeah, you just being in the office is it just for whatever it be or certain industries is definitely.
0:33:37.2 Amber Papp: You know, better from a finance side at least for what we need to do and looking at numbers. It's not like we need to. We need to be like in the office tangible product like seeing it together doing all those things like the teams we have that doing it. Yes, they very much still have to meet up for. For those and when they're shopping different fragrances or you know those sorts of things, it. You still have to have that physical connection. But I do think there's opportunities that the remote works well too.
0:34:05.3 Erik Zhou: Yeah, We went hybrid. We're not RTO every day we went two days a week. I have, I have two thoughts on. Okay, so one, when we were fully remote, we had to spend a lot of time thinking about connectivity and keeping people like engaged with each other. You lose all that water cooler talk. I have a different, I have a different perspective on what the definition of water cooler talk is. But you know, because you lose out on that. It's. You kind of have to schedule everything every time you want to talk to somebody. Just, okay, I have to find some 15 minutes or 30 minutes on someone's calendar just to talk to that person. There's no kind of like opportunity since I'm here in this house and he's over at his house or she's over, it's their house, that to engage. And that's something that you just have to consciously work at. I think when you're fully remote and for a lot of companies, I think that's totally worth it. You know, you gain maximum flexibility. I think employees can in generally be happier because they don't have to do this hour, hour and a half commute or something.
0:35:07.3 Erik Zhou: And you get more time back in your day to do things that are really important. That being said we went remote and I think of like workplace communication really only happening in four types of ways. So one is a zoom or a phone call. I group those together. So kind of like a conversation that you and I are having now. Another is slack or instant messaging. I could just slack anybody, et cetera. And then something similar to slack, but I will categorize as something different is email. I can always email somebody, then wait for a response, blah, blah, blah, block. And there's like different, I would say communication, like habits, different habits that you, that you expect from someone in each of those three different types of mediums. And then when you're remote, you lose out completely on the fourth, which is just like in person needing something from you, hearing what's going on in the background from another table on a topic that you, that may impact you and you just lose out on that kind of like dynamic collaboration that may occur all day long if you're all in an office together.
0:36:12.2 Erik Zhou: And so I, I feel like that's super valuable, especially for me like sometimes, yeah I got something going on and there's like an issue. And then like, I can slack somebody. And then when I slack somebody, honestly, I kind of have to wait, I have to wait for this person to like, get back to me. And if this person doesn't get back to me for three, four, whatever hours. Like there's a little bit of okay, well I'll just keep waiting. But if I'm in the office and I have this question, I turn my chair around and I'm like, hey, can you give me that number for this or that? I need to see how much this grew year over year over the last three years. Like he knows that I really care about it. And then I maybe it's a little bit selfish of me to care about that stuff, but to some extent I just need to get something done and, and I'll do this. I would do the same thing for him too. Like if, or if someone is asking me a question and getting, get like once, just, just quick advice on how to solve like an issue.
0:37:05.5 Erik Zhou: I'm right there too. Versus he's slacking me, he's waiting for me, I'm like blocking him because like I'm working on something else. I have like thousands of slacks, you know what I mean? And so I think it's a trade off, you know.
0:37:19.5 Amber Papp: Oh yeah, yeah. And it's definitely different muscles that you have to flex being in an all remote environment from being in person. And it is to your point too when you're saying sometimes if you're looking to move forward with a project and you're talking to somebody and somebody can overhear and be like, oh wait, you need to also consider X, Y and Z for sure that happens. And that's just one of the things that they had to pivot towards. So we have a very robust, what we call project intake and then project steering and where all the stakeholders get on calls together to make sure as new requests are coming in, everybody's on there. So that's the opportunity where everyone can raise their hand to say, you just have to consider that with this project or we can't do it because of this reason or that sounds great, let's move forward. It should be really simple. And then steering just to make sure once we decide these are the projects that we want to move forward with, every single week we're on the phone to make sure that any new issues that pop up, anything that's happening, everybody's getting that visibility to it so that anybody can raise alarm bells as they need to or just update on what's happening, which it's, you have to, I mean, that's crucial.
0:38:31.1 Amber Papp: If we didn't have that, then yes, it would very much be somebody can be moving forward with something that could end up having impact to other departments that we wouldn't find out until after the fact. So that's one thing they've made sure to really have in, in place for us. And the one nice thing about it too, candidly is you know, I was talking about one of the things that I loved about being in public for 10 years was seeing the variety of clients. Being in that space where we have to be informed of everything that's going on with the other departments to make sure we plan accordingly. Also gives you insight into what's happening with the company and all these other things. You know, my accounting brain, I'm always really excited to hear, oh we might be launching this new partnership with marketing or same thing with our business development team that you know, they're working on launching these new fragrances or creative talking about what new imagery they're trying to do. So it does I'm an accountant by trade but I also love the creative side of things.
0:39:31.4 Erik Zhou: So it's a wonderful opportunity for me to feel like I'm involved, I'm not doing it, but at least I'm involved. So makes me feel, makes me feel good I really enjoyed this conversation because the things that you talked about were so far beyond just like the accounting was more strategic for the entire company and like you're understanding even when you're talking about the warehouse and like the how the, how people had to do the pick list. Was it the pick list and then going through the different aisles to get the pick list and then obviously you want something more efficient versus going out to aisle and then going back to the original aisle that you were at when you're going I, I really, I love that like you are so deep into just the day to day operations of the business versus just like the numbers and the debits and credits. So I really admire that we are nearing the end of the show we always have a segment that we end that called Finance Leaders are fun too. And you know, I'd love to just tell the audience or share for you to share with the audience if you have any funny stories about accounting, any debacles, unusual expense reports.
0:40:35.4 Amber Papp: I have had a really unusual request. One of our team members, and this was more on the marketing side, put a meeting on my calendar and it was just very blank. So as always I reached out and go anything I could just have prepared ahead of time. Anything I should know for this and they're like, no, no, I just have to ask you a question. Got on the phone with them where they started with a presentation, trying to make the case for purchasing a cyber truck to put in demolition derby. And this was to promote our drift business, the car air freshener company. And they let me know that Cybertrucks are pretty indestructible. They were asking me for about $125,000, which I think was to cover the cost of the Cybertruck and also to wrap the Cybertruck. So it was going to have the drift logo along with the American flag and bald eagle on it. But they said everything should be pretty fine. It should be pretty good. These things are pretty sturdy. Not knowing demolition derby that well myself, I just was sitting there not nodding along to the request because I wanted to be the cool accountant and I didn't want to shut down dreams immediately.
0:41:47.0 Amber Papp: Although in the back of my head, I'm going, I'm just Insurance is going to say, this is a no, so it's going to be canceled anyway, but at least I don't have to be. Have to be the bad guy. So it was definitely the strangest request. Come to find out, it was totally a prank, the whole thing. And so, yes, it was totally a prank. So strange request legit. Luckily, it was not a legitimate request. But I did not say no to the cyber truck on camera. So I always have that.
0:42:15.0 Erik Zhou: They were trying to prank you to say no or what? Like. Or I'm like, at the end of the day, you said yes. Now you're the cool account. Yeah, I love that.
0:42:24.7 Amber Papp: Yep. So strangest expense requests that I've ever had. And just in terms of funniest moments, luckily I haven't had anything. There's been nothing too crazy. Just a few, which I know my managers always used to think this was hysterical is when people left the L's out of public and public accountant and sent those emails over to partners but.
0:42:49.6 Erik Zhou: Left the eyes. I'm not familiar with this one.
0:42:51.2 Amber Papp: I mean, I left the L's out instead of the eyes. Not the eyes. So you're a public accountant instead of a public accountant. They used to think that was hysterical. Oh, wah wah. I remember when I first started, one of the staff, I guess it sent one of the partners an email that said certified public accountant instead of public. They thought that was hysterical. Yeah, that. That one. When I started, I go, oh, gosh, this is totally stereotypical humor for you.
0:43:19.3 Erik Zhou: Well, Amber, this is great. I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing about all your experiences and telling us a little bit about how like E-Com, company and inventory management warehouse management works. I would say best of luck as you continue to search for ways to automate or even make good decisions not to automate as you guys are growing tremendously. So thank you very much for coming on the show.
0:43:41.3 Amber Papp: Thank you so much for having me.
0:43:44.5 Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to Controllers Classified presented by Brex. Brex is an AI powered spend platform with global corporate cards, expense management, reimbursements and travel. Visit brex.com and follow Brex on social to see how they can take your accounting game and your company to new heights!