How Cortex automated billing and reduced overdue invoices by 50%
About Cortex
is the leading platform for engineering excellence, empowering the world’s top engineering teams to scale efficiently and deliver high-quality software with confidence. As the company scaled, its finance team faced increasing challenges in managing billing, revenue recognition, and collections with limited resources. Cortex needed an automated solution to reduce manual workload and improve accuracy, leading them to adopt Tabs.
The Challenge: A fragmented billing process undermining growth
Finance operations were struggling under manual strain:
- AR and collections managed in spreadsheets; tracking overdue status was laborious.
- Stripe was inadequate for complex deals involving seat-based pricing, terms, and custom SKUs, leading to frequent manual corrections.
- Invoicing and revenue recognition were slow and error-prone, consuming “several days each quarter.”
- With hundreds of customers and rapid growth, Cortex needed a scalable solution—or more finance hires.
“Our process prior to working with Tabs was incredibly tedious and very manual… it really wasn’t scalable.” — Evan Pincus, VP Finance & Operations, Cortex
Why Tabs?
Cortex evaluated options but found Tabs’ AI-powered approach and team distinct:
- Contract-first design: Tabs ingests the executed contract—not just CRM data—and handles billing nuance.
- Native integrations: Seamlessly connects Salesforce with QuickBooks for a unified revenue view.
- Rapid onboarding: “We were up and running within weeks, even importing five years of history, and it worked within minutes.” — Evan
- True partnership: Cortex co-designs priorities with Tabs through close collaboration and shared feedback channels.
Life With Tabs
The difference was immediate. “When a sales rep books a deal, it gets marked closed-won in Salesforce and Tabs automatically ingests and parses the contract,” Evan explains. From there, invoices are sent automatically, accounts receivable is visualized in real time, and revenue recognition is automated and audit-ready under ASC 606. Reporting, once manual, is now fully automated and can be sliced by customer, product line, or geography.
The results have been significant:
- Average time to collection improved from ~45 days to 25 days
- Overdue invoices were cut in half
- Effort per invoice dropped from 5–10 minutes to seconds
- Month-end close shortened from ~7 days to 3 days
With Tabs, Cortex has scaled revenue operations while keeping finance lean. “It’s just myself and our controller,” Evan says. “Tabs has allowed us to scale without scaling humans.”
Tabs’ AI also powers cash application — automatically matching bank payments to invoices — and cash forecasting, which incorporates historical payment behavior to improve FP&A visibility. “As we approached our first audit, doing revenue recognition in spreadsheets just wasn’t acceptable,” Evan adds. “Tabs made it accurate, reliable, and aligned to accounting standards.”
Slack-native workflow with Tabs Agent
Tabs Agent transformed workflows further: invoice approvals now happen in Slack.
“On any given day multiple invoices come through my inbox for approval. I can quickly say ‘yes,’ and Tabs Agent handles the rest.” — Evan
Tabs Agent operates quietly—surfacing only what needs human input—and acts like a virtual teammate:
- Sends follow-ups
- Coordinates with customers
- Manages billing logic behind the scenes
“Tabs Agent has been a total game changer for us—it’s our new favorite coworker.” — Evan
Cortex’s verdict
Evan describes Tabs as a partner—not a vendor. Real-time support, collaborative roadmap development, and consistent delivery make Tabs an invaluable finance ally.
“Tabs’ AI-native technology is what differentiates it. If you’re a CFO not using Tabs, you’re truly operating in the Stone Age.” — Evan Pincus
