Garden Greens Streamlines Vendor Payments and Cuts Spend by 50%

The challenge

Teams shared one card for purchases, limiting spend visibility and control

Quartzy’s lack of a QuickBooks integration created extra manual AP work

Complex approval workflows led to purchasing bottlenecks

Before Order.co, the Garden Greens team leveraged Quartzy to procure physical goods — from lab equipment to office supplies — across locations. But without a direct integration to its accounting system, bookkeeping was time-consuming and labor-intensive. Each time the accounting manager, Brian Deshaies, received a receipt for purchases made on Quartzy, he manually uploaded it to QuickBooks and coded it to the correct location and product category.

Quartzy’s approvals feature presented its own bottlenecks. The platform required multiple department heads to be included in the approval process, even if their involvement wasn’t necessary. As a result, Brian spent time configuring extra user accounts and incorporating them into various approval workflows. This meant that department heads had to monitor emails for order alerts to ensure they didn’t block essential purchases.

On the payments side, the Garden Greens team relied on one shared American Express card across employees and locations to make purchases outside of Quartzy’s marketplace. Reconciling the corporate card each month meant sorting through a high volume of unapproved transactions and tracking down the corresponding receipts from employees. “There was no control over their expenses,” Brian explained. “When I was reconciling our QuickBooks…there would be 100-150 outstanding transactions on the credit card.”

Securing financing for large equipment came with its own hurdles; each lender required a unique financing application package, which was a lengthy, repetitive undertaking.

The solution

When Order.co reached out to Garden Greens in December 2025, Brian immediately understood that the platform uniquely addressed the specific challenges he and his team faced. “It was a no-brainer,” Brian emphasized. “We did not renew with [Quartzy]. We signed up with [Order.co] right away.”

As it turned out, Brian and his team implemented Order.co at just the right time; a month later, their only corporate card was cancelled. “We had twenty-four hours to pay them in full, and the account was cancelled,” Brian explained. “If we were not on Order.co, I would have had no way to procure products while we were figuring that out.”

The outcome

Accelerated reconciliation

With every Order.co transaction coded automatically and syncing directly to QuickBooks, Garden Greens has significantly reduced manual accounting work without sacrificing accuracy. These benefits have proven particularly useful when creating accounts for new locations, a process which once required tedious, time-consuming data entry in QuickBooks. “We were able to get a new location up and running in an hour or two because we were able to import the GLs from an existing location to the new one very quickly.” Brian shared.

This streamlined setup has also changed how the team handles receipts and reimbursements day to day. Teams purchase through the platform, Order.co pays for those purchases Net 1 directly with the vendor, and then sends Brian invoices that account for all transactions made on the platform each month. As a result, AP no longer needs to track down individual receipts from employees. “[The team is] not having to track down different departments to get individual receipts for everything over $60,” Brian explained.

Controlled spend

With approved products and vendors centralized in one place, teams can now shop from a unified catalog and ensure every transaction is approved before it’s processed. This upgraded workflow has allowed Garden Greens to eliminate 100+ rogue transactions every month. “We have been able to cut down spending by 50% just because people are not ordering stuff that is not essential,” Brian shared.

Moving away from card-based spending and retroactive expense tracking to a procurement system with built-in spend controls also helps Brian and his team stick to budgets without micromanaging employees. “Order.co really gave us a way to manage [rogue spend],” Brian said. “We've been able to control things like people buying food or ordering out.”

Simplified payments with virtual cards

Virtual cards gave the Garden Greens team a flexible, controlled way to handle purchases that fall outside of their curated catalog of approved products — such as marketing services, software subscription fees, and branded trade show materials — something Quartzy didn't allow. Crucially, virtual card transactions appear on the same invoices as purchases made directly on the platform, giving Brian complete visibility over all spending in one place. "The use of the digital cards so you can step outside of what's already in the marketplace ecosystem was so helpful for us."

For new location launches, the flexibility and visibility of virtual cards made it possible to plan and pay for marketing materials — from online advertising to banners to custom merchandise — without creating a separate paper trail to reconcile later. "I was able to program [virtual cards] in five or ten minutes," Brian shared. "[The team] was able to plan events for our launch. I don't know how we would have been able to do that without Order.co."

Virtual cards have also brought order to on-the-ground expenses like partner dinners that previously were difficult to control. If an employee needs to host a partner for a meal, Brian can quickly generate a card with set spend limits for a specific restaurant, and the transaction flows back into his consolidated invoice automatically. "It's done in a much more organized way than going to a steakhouse and running a card where I just get the total, and I don't even see an itemized bill," Brian described. "I work remotely, so with it auto-generating all of that, I don't have to chase people down."

Secured financing

With procurement and payments running smoothly, Garden Greens can also leverage Order.co's financing options to fund new equipment and build-outs. For a team that previously had to complete a lengthy onboarding process with every lender, having financing available through a platform they already use is a time-saving advantage. "With each large purchase, [Order.co] saves us five to ten hours of onboarding time," Brian shared. Favorable financing terms and minimal paperwork mean Garden Greens can move quickly when opportunities arise without straining cash flow.

Ultimately, consolidating procurement, AP, and financing processes in one place has given Brian and the Garden Greens team the bandwidth to focus on growing the business. “[Order.co] has been incredibly helpful in allowing us to reduce the man-hours on silly admin tasks for finance and accounting because it's really done a lot of the legwork,” Brian highlighted.