Customer Stories
The FloQast Effect: Instacart’s Accounting Transformation
On September 19, in one of the most anticipated IPOs in recent memory, Bay Area-based grocery technology company Instacart filed its initial public offering, going public at $30 per share, good for around a $10 billion valuation.
But well before the company’s long-awaited IPO, Instacart found itself in a position many accounting teams could relate to. Looking to establish a centralized location to document processes for a growing accounting team with over 500 recurring tasks, the company wanted a way to improve transparency, consistency, and communication overall. This, plus a desire to identify areas for improvement and maximize individual team members’ efficiency, led the company to FloQast.
“Having used FloQast at a previous company, I knew it would be a simple implementation and wouldn’t take several months,” said Rachael Peeters, former Senior Manager, GL Accounting & Reporting. “We ultimately selected FloQast for its ease of use, intuitive user interface, and ability to get up and running quickly. We also didn’t want to change our processes drastically and needed that interconnectivity with our current ERP vendor, so FloQast became the obvious choice.”
At the same time, Rachael — an early FloQast user who recently left Instacart voluntarily to take a career break and travel — and her team were starting to focus on areas they could automate. Based on her experience with FloQast and understanding of the platform’s growth since she had last used it, Rachael was confident it could help immediately.
“At the time, our focus was on automation and establishing controls, tracking comments, and being able to automatically roll forward checklists, as well as having the interconnectivity with balance sheet reconciliations, which is key for us,” she said. “But in hindsight, given the company’s growth, our tasks have grown immensely, and having FloQast around to track hundreds and hundreds of unique tasks and improving communication has been crucial.”
Having used FloQast since 2019, the company was able to implement quickly and realize its goals within just a few months of completing the implementation process.
“I think it gives real-time visibility to when items change when things are out of balance,” said Sonya Stahl, a Senior GL Accounting Manager. “I appreciate that FloQast alerts me if something’s wrong. Or if somebody’s responded to my review note, I can hop back in. Whereas, when you have Google Sheets, when you leave maybe a note, you need to follow up with an email. FloQast saves a lot of time, and it gives me confidence that the final reconciliation I signed off on is true and accurate.”
