How Stays saw ROI in the first month and expanded automation across multiple processes

“The value of the tool became clear in the first month, when we were able to build the first workflow. From that point on, we saw that it really made sense.” — Gabriela Oliveira, Finance Supervisor at Stays

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TL;DR

• Company: Stays — a complete platform for managing vacation rentals and inns
• Team: 11 people across finance and administration
• Challenge: keeping up with operational growth without increasing the team at the same pace
• First process: receivables reconciliation, previously dependent on macros, manual checks, and different data sources
• Automation: integration of five banks and payment methods with the Conta Azul ERP
• Result of the first workflow:
  • approximately 96 annual hours of operational work automated
  • return perceived in the first month
• Evolution: several projects and automations built with Abstra
• New areas: delinquency, equipment monitoring, budget, actuals, dashboards, and financial planning

Who is Stays?

Stays is a complete platform for managing vacation rentals and inns.

The solution allows property managers to centralize calendars, listings, bookings, payments, operational tasks, and financial information in a single system, managing the entire hospitality journey in a more integrated way.

For its customers, Stays helps reduce operational effort and increase management efficiency. Internally, the company faced a similar challenge: how could finance keep up with business growth without simply expanding the team at the same pace?

The finance area, led by Thuanne Leal, Head of Finance, has 11 people and covers accounts payable, accounts receivable, purchasing, administration, infrastructure, and HR operations.

Gabriela Oliveira, Finance Supervisor, follows the team's operation more closely and connects day-to-day demands, financial planning, and leadership decisions.

The challenge: growing without multiplying operational work

As Stays grew its operation, the volume and complexity of financial processes also increased.

For Thuanne, it was clear that the answer could not be simply hiring more people to absorb new manual activities.

“Every time we double the number of customers, we cannot necessarily double the number of people on the team. We need to work efficiently.” — Thuanne Leal

One of the biggest bottlenecks was reconciling receivables from Stays customers.

The process involved information from different banks, payment methods, and systems, including Pagar.me, Stripe, PayPal, Itaú, and Conta Azul. Each source had its own reports, structures, and layouts.

Before Abstra, the team used a macro to support part of the reconciliation. Even so, the workflow remained highly operational.

The team had to:

• extract reports from different sources;
• organize files;
• adjust the data mapping;
• check values;
• analyze line by line;
• manually identify what was or was not reconciled;
• update the macro whenever a report changed.

The fragility of the process was a recurring issue. When a bank or payment method changed a column, format, or report view, the macro stopped working and had to be adapted.

“The macro helped a little, but it still required a lot of time. When a report changed, it no longer worked. We had to look line by line to understand what was right and what was not. It was a very exhausting process.” — Gabriela Oliveira

The first project: automating receivables reconciliation

Reconciliation was chosen as Stays' first project with Abstra because it represented a relevant, recurring pain with measurable impact for the team.

The automation started integrating five banks and payment methods with the Conta Azul ERP, totaling six integrations within the workflow.

How it works

1. Data collection

Abstra automatically retrieves the reports and information needed from the different sources used by Stays.

2. Standardization

Because each bank or payment method has its own format, the data is organized and standardized so it can be compared within a single workflow.

3. Reconciliation

The automation cross-checks receivables information against financial records and applies the mapping used by the team.

4. Divergence identification

Instead of having the team analyze every line, Abstra consolidates the data and highlights only the information that does not match or needs attention.

5. Exception handling

The finance team works on the identified divergences without having to manually execute the entire checking process.

“Today, Abstra already brings us a consolidated view with the information that does not match and that we really need to analyze. It shows what needs to be reviewed.” — Gabriela Oliveira

The impact of the first workflow

Stays estimated that reconciliation consumed approximately 96 hours of work per year between updates and operation of the process.

With automation, that effort moved into a workflow that collects, organizes, cross-checks, and presents the information in a structured way.

The impact was immediate.

“The value of the tool became clear in the first month. When we were able to build the first workflow, we thought: now this makes sense.” — Gabriela Oliveira

In addition to operational savings, automation reduced dependence on a macro that was sensitive to report changes and changed the way the team analyzed reconciliation.

Before, the team had to check the full dataset to find the problems. Now, it receives divergences already organized and focuses only on what requires analysis.

From the first workflow to multiple automations

The success of reconciliation increased the team's confidence to apply Abstra to other processes.

What started as a solution for a specific pain evolved into a journey with several projects and automations, covering different finance needs and other areas at Stays.

Among the initiatives built are:

• financial reconciliations;
• delinquency tracking;
• equipment monitoring;
• financial dashboards;
• consolidation of budget and actuals information;
• automations that support operational routines;
• workflows to organize and make information available to other areas.

Some projects are smaller and solve specific day-to-day steps. Others, such as the budget and actuals dashboard, now provide visibility beyond finance.

“We have smaller automations that help unlock the operation a lot. And we also have projects that bring visibility and clarity into business data end to end, not only for finance.” — Thuanne Leal

From operations to business visibility

One of the most relevant current projects brings together budget and actuals information in a dashboard built in Abstra.

The goal is to allow leadership to monitor numbers in a more visual, interactive, and simple way, accelerating analysis and making it easier to turn information into presentations and reports.

Another example is the delinquency dashboard, which centralizes information for everyone involved in the process and makes it easier to monitor customers that require attention.

These projects show an important evolution: Abstra no longer supports only task execution, but also the organization and analysis of financial information.

Before and after Abstra

Indicator	Before	After
Reconciliation	Dependent on macros and manual checks	Automated workflow with consolidated divergences
Data sources	Separate reports and different layouts	Five banks and payment methods integrated with Conta Azul
Analysis	Line-by-line checking	Work focused on exceptions
Operational time	Approximately 96 hours per year	Process absorbed by automation
Macro dependency	High and subject to report changes	More structured and adaptable workflow
Use of automation	One initial reconciliation case	More than 20 projects and automations
Visibility	Data spread across processes and tools	Dashboards for budget, actuals, and delinquency
Team role	Manual execution and checking	Analysis, exception handling, and continuous improvement

A new mindset inside finance

The expansion of automations also brought more maturity to the team.

At the beginning of the partnership, the team was still gaining familiarity with workflow building and the use of artificial intelligence in operations. Gabriela was one of the first people to participate directly in structuring the process.

Over time, other professionals on the team began to take ownership of building and evolving different projects.

This experience created more autonomy and changed the way finance looks at new demands: when a manual process appears, automation is already considered as an alternative.

“It was a turning point for bringing artificial intelligence into the team. We started with little experience, and today there is more access, autonomy, and maturity to work with automations.” — Gabriela Oliveira

Finance's experience also helped expand this mindset to other areas at Stays.

Building together from the first project

Stays began its journey with Abstra without complete clarity on how to turn operational problems into automated workflows.

During the platform evaluation, the team joined demos and meetings to see practical examples and understand how their needs could be structured.

That support continued during the construction of the first projects.

“The Abstra team would open the workflow with us and say: ‘Let's build it together.’ That gave us a very clear direction.” — Gabriela Oliveira

For Thuanne, support from the evaluation stage was important to reduce the initial uncertainty.

“At the beginning, it was still very abstract for us. We could not visualize how to take our problem and turn it into a solution inside the platform. That support from the start was essential for us to move forward.” — Thuanne Leal

Throughout the partnership, close contact with the Abstra team helped solve questions, adjust workflows, and keep projects moving.

“In addition to fast responses, there is a real willingness to help and get hands-on. Our cultures are very similar in that sense.” — Gabriela Oliveira

Why automation gained scale at Stays

Three factors were essential for the company to move from a first project to several important automations:

1. A first case with measurable impact

Reconciliation addressed a relevant pain and made it possible to prove the return on automation quickly.

2. Development of internal capability

The team did not remain only as end users of the workflows. Professionals learned how to build, adjust, and identify new automation opportunities.

3. ROI evaluation before each project

Before starting a new automation, Stays evaluates the operational effort of the process and the expected return.

“In every project we start, we calculate ROI to understand whether there is enough operational work and whether it really makes sense to have an automated workflow doing that for us.” — Thuanne Leal

This discipline avoids automation for automation's sake and directs the platform toward processes that bring real gains to the operation.

What comes next

Stays intends to continue expanding the use of Abstra in financial and operational processes.

Among the next steps are:

• finishing adjustments to the budget and actuals dashboard;
• expanding the use of data for leadership analysis;
• identifying new manual processes with automation potential;
• increasing autonomy for other people and areas to build solutions.

The journey is still evolving, but the mindset has already changed: automation has become part of how Stays thinks about efficiency, scale, and process improvement.

A finance team ready to support growth

Stays' experience shows that automation does not need to start with a broad transformation of the entire area.

It can start with one concrete process, a clear pain, and a measurable return.

By automating reconciliation, Stays proved the value of the platform in the first month. From that result, the team developed knowledge internally and expanded the use of Abstra to several projects.

Today, the company does not use automation only to reduce manual tasks. It uses technology to connect information, increase visibility, give the team autonomy, and support growth with more efficiency.

“Abstra brought learning, commitment, and support. We started without knowing where to go, and today we have autonomy to build solutions that make sense for our operation.”

Gabriela Oliveira
Finance Supervisor
Stays

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