How Outtake Scaled Usage-based Billing with Agents, not Headcount

About Outtake

Outtake is an AI-native cybersecurity company on a mission to enable digital trust. Its platform helps some of the world’s largest brands find and remove online threats, from fraudulent domains to impersonation and misinformation. Using AI to identify threats and automate takedown workflows, Outtake can respond to the growing volume of scams online at a scale that manual processes cannot support.

The Challenge: Revenue Was Getting Harder to Manage as Outtake Grew and Usage Scaled

When Jacob Chorches joined Outtake as its first dedicated finance hire, the company was growing quickly and its finance infrastructure had not caught up. Customer contracts had been written in different ways over time and pricing varied by workflow. Adding to the complexity, a subset of customers had usage-based billing requirements.

The biggest issue was revenue recognition. Outtake knew its ARR, but its accounting records did not always reflect revenue correctly. Jacob inherited a process that relied heavily on outside accountants and manual corrections. He spent his first few months reviewing revenue recognition by hand and fixing inconsistencies, even though accounting was not his primary area of expertise.

“Our revenue recognition was a mess. I spent quite a lot of time correcting it by hand. We knew our ARR, but our revenue was hazy and, at times, incorrect.”

— Jacob Chorches, Finance and Revenue Operations, Outtake

At the same time, billing still depended on manual steps. Jacob inherited spreadsheets for tracking invoices, and there was no automatic trigger to make sure an invoice went out as soon as a contract closed. In some cases, invoices were not sent until 20 or 30 days later.

Outtake needed to solve several underlying problems:

• Revenue recognition required manual review and correction.
• Contract structures varied enough that finance had to repeatedly interpret billing terms.
• Invoice creation depended on someone remembering to start the process after a deal closed.
• Existing spreadsheets were becoming harder to sustain as customer volume increased.
• Outtake was looking for a system that could support its core annual billing model alongside a growing set of usage-based contracts.

Why Tabs: Freeing Up Time for High-Value Work

Jacob had evaluated Tabs at a previous company and remembered that the product could address the revenue recognition problems he was now facing at Outtake. This time, the need was immediate. He wanted a clear system that could work with QuickBooks, interpret Outtake’s contracts, and make sure revenue was recorded correctly.

Implementing Tabs also gave Outtake a way to systematize finance operations before growth made the existing processes harder to unwind. Instead of spending hours reconciling billing manually, Jacob could put a more scalable foundation in place and direct his time toward work across the rest of the business.

“There’s a million things that need to happen, and spending hours trying to reconcile the billing by hand is just not a good use of my time when I could be helping our sales team or making our engineering team more efficient.”

— Jacob Chorches, Finance and Revenue Operations, Outtake

Turning contracts into reliable revenue recognition

One of the biggest benefits for Outtake was Tabs’ ability to read customer contracts and translate their terms into finance workflows.

That mattered because Outtake’s earlier contracts were not completely standardized. During implementation, Jacob worked with the Tabs team to calibrate the contract-reading agent, review what it extracted and correct details where needed. After several rounds of testing, the process held up well even as Outtake continued to evolve its pricing.

“Having an agentic process that could read the contracts clearly meant I wasn't having to go back and reread every contract to correct the billing and rewrite the revenue recognition.”

— Jacob Chorches, Finance and Revenue Operations, Outtake

For Jacob, that also changed the monthly close. Revenue recognition had been one of the areas he expected to be especially difficult. With Tabs in place, it became one of the easier parts of the process, giving the team more time to address other accounting priorities.

Getting invoices out faster

Before Tabs, a closed contract did not automatically kick off invoicing. Someone had to remember to create and send the invoice, which meant invoices could sit for weeks after a deal closed.

Tabs helped Outtake speed up that first part of the order-to-cash process. Invoices get out sooner, automated reminders make follow-up easier and Jacob has clearer visibility into where each invoice stands.

“The close to invoice send-out timing has improved quite a lot. It’s easier to collect an invoice if you send it out on time.”

— Jacob Chorches, Finance and Revenue Operations, Outtake

That improvement carries through the broader payment cycle, Jacob said Outtake is getting paid faster overall because invoices are reaching customers sooner, while Tabs’ automated reminders remove additional manual follow-up.

Supporting new pricing models as Outtake evolves

A number of Outtake customers pay an annual upfront fee for a workflow or module, and others pay based on usage. Tabs gave Outtake one system that could handle its standard billing model while supporting customers with different requirements.

That flexibility is becoming more important. As Outtake explores additional consumption-based products, Jacob wants the finance stack to support new commercial models without billing becoming a constraint on what the company can sell.

Jacob's philosophy is straightforward: billing should never stand in the way of a sale, whatever the commercial terms, finance should be able to support it.

Reducing the manual burden of AP portals

Outtake’s customer base creates another finance challenge. Many of its customers are large enterprises with highly structured accounts payable processes, often managed through platforms such as Coupa or Ariba.

For Outtake, following those processes can take significant manual effort. A single invoice submitted through an AP portal can require an hour or two of work across its lifecycle, from initial setup to resolving issues when a payment is delayed. Missing one required step can force the process to start over.

Outtake has begun using Tabs' AP portal capabilities to reduce that work as its customer base grows.

“It can take an hour or a couple of hours for a single invoice. As those pile up and we have more customers like that, it takes a lot of time.”

— Jacob Chorches, Finance and Revenue Operations, Outtake

For a lean finance function, automating more of that process offers another opportunity to keep administrative work from growing at the same pace as the company.

Life With Tabs: More Time for Finance to Help Drive the Business

With Tabs, Outtake has moved critical finance workflows out of spreadsheets and manual processes and into a system built to support the company as it grows.

“The more consistent and faster billing is, the easier it is to close the books and have financials that I can use to strategize with our CEO on the direction of the company.”— Jacob Chorches, Finance and Revenue Operations, Outtake

The immediate benefits show up in accounting and billing. Revenue recognition is easier to manage. Invoices go out sooner after contracts close. The payment cycle has accelerated as a result. Just as importantly, Jacob no longer has to spend the same amount of time in the weeds keeping those processes moving.

The impact includes:

• Faster invoicing: Reduced a process where invoices could previously go unsent for 20 to 30 days after contract close.
• Less AP portal work: A single invoice can require 1 to 2 hours of manual work, giving Outtake a meaningful opportunity for additional time savings.
• A faster payment cycle: Jacob reports that the overall time from contract close to payment has become significantly shorter.
• An easier close: Revenue recognition went from one of the accounting processes Jacob expected to be most difficult to one of the easier areas to manage.
• More pricing flexibility: Tabs can support Outtake’s annual upfront model alongside its existing and future usage-based offerings.

As Outtake scales, Jacob sees that foundation as critical. Reliable finance operations give him cleaner financial information and more time to use it, including working with Outtake’s CEO on the direction of the company.

For Jacob, that is ultimately the role automation should play in finance. Systematize the operational work that needs to be reliable so finance leaders can spend more of their time as strategic partners to the business.