Confessions of a former IT Consultancy Manager: when invoices ruled my life

Back in my IT consultancy days, I had one sworn enemy. No, it wasn't the competition or those 3 a.m. server emergencies.

My real nemesis was far more mundane, and infinitely more draining: managing software subscriptions. Imagine a job where you’re supposed to be focusing on sales, growth, and managing projects, but instead, you’re buried neck-deep in a swamp of invoices, receipts, and payment reminders. That was my life.

Monday morning with coffee, chaos, and cinnamon buns

The week always started the same way. A lukewarm coffee and an inbox screaming with urgency.

Email 1 (from Finance): “Friendly reminder: the Q3 expense reports are still missing receipts.”

Email 2 (also from Finance): “Final warning: deadline is today!”

My solution? A fresh coffee and a cinnamon bun, used as a bribe to myself for the tedious task ahead. The worst part of this was that most of these subscriptions were bought by my tech team. And on Monday morning, they were still in a post-weekend coma.

So I’d wait.

At 2 pm, I would send the dreaded message.
“Hey team, who has the receipt for CloudifyHubPro? What even is that?”

It was a ritual my team hated, and I hated more.

The turning point

By Thursday, I’d have convinced myself that the software gods were testing me. Every hour spent in this bureaucratic mess was an hour stolen from the work I actually cared about: driving sales, building relationships, and growing the business. I was paying for this productivity software with my own productivity. The irony was painful.

Fast forward one year. I gave up. I couldn’t take it. There are not enough cinnamon buns in the world to make me chase receipts again.

Around that time, some former colleagues launched Cardboard. It was presented as a trusted SaaS expense platform to tame software spends, and to be honest, it sounded too good to be true. But I was desperate. What I discovered was a centralized SaaS spend control system that replaced chaos with control.

The solution that transformed the chaos

Cardboard is a trusted SaaS expense platform designed specifically to manage and streamline SaaS subscriptions for businesses, replacing chaos with clarity and control. Here’s how it would have saved me:

1. Centralized subscription control
   With Cardboard, all those late nights juggling invoices could be history. It centralizes your entire SaaS portfolio into one glorious dashboard. Need a receipt? It’s already there. Want to know who approved that fancy analytics tool you’re not using? Cardboard’s got you covered. You get a unified view of all your subscriptions giving you full control of all SaaS spend in your company.
2. Virtual cards for every subscription
   Cardboard provides unique virtual cards for SaaS payments. This means that you can set and track budgets for each service individually, suspend an employee subscription without affecting other services and that employees can purchase what they need without accessing the company's main card.
3. Automated receipt collection
   This was my personal nightmare solved. Cardboard’s one-email-per-subscription system automatically collects and matches receipts with payments from over 80% of tools from our software catalog. No more chasing team members for submissions. For those that can’t be automated just yet, our system alerts subscription owners about missing receipts, so you don't have to play detective every month.
4. Accounting automation
   Cardboard automates SaaS expense tracking and provides exports compatible with popular accounting software as well as integrations with leading accounting softwares in Europe. All your SaaS receipts are consolidated in one place, eliminating the need to comb through email inboxes. Your finance team can export receipts directly to your accounting system, turning passive-aggressive emails into thank-you notes.

My lost time/potential is your future gain

Looking back, I don't blame the people or the company. I blame the broken process. With Cardboard, I stopped being an invoice-chaser and finally became the leader I wanted to be.

The time I spent digging through emails? I reinvested it into client acquisition.

The mental energy I wasted on admin tasks? I channeled it into business development.

If you're nodding along, knowing this struggle all too well, there is a better way. Let Cardboard handle the complexity of software management. It’s a ticket to getting back to the work that matters most.

Your future self - focused, productive, and finally free from chasing people and receipts - will thank you.