Case Study: Candidate Labs achieves faster month‑end closes and reduced wasted spend with Airbase

A veteran at building high-growth startups chooses Airbase as his spend management foundation

Candidate Labs, a 25–50 person search firm led in operations by COO Michael Zheng, needed a robust spend management foundation that could support a meticulous chart of accounts and avoid the backend limitations they experienced with Divvy and Brex. After evaluating options, Candidate Labs chose Airbase’s spend management platform — including virtual cards, AP automation, and advanced workflows — to give them precise expense coding, streamlined approvals, and a better user experience.

Airbase implemented virtual cards, auto‑categorization, advanced approval workflows, and QuickBooks‑friendly AP processes, working smoothly with Candidate Labs’ outsourced accounting. The results: month‑end close time fell from a couple of days to a few hours, roughly 95% of employee spend flows through Airbase virtual cards for clearer visibility, and the team saw reduced training time and fewer spend mistakes — delivering measurable time savings and avoided wasted spend.

Candidate Labs

Michelle Zhang

COO