Coupa Raises $22 Million Series E To Help Companies Track Spending

Coupa, the creator of spend optimization software for businesses, which brings something of a Mint.com-like view into where a company spends on operating resources, is today announcing the close of a $22 million Series E round of funding led by a new investor, Crosslink Capital. Previous investors Battery Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, El Dorado Ventures and Mohr Davidow Ventures also committed to the round.

Although CEO Rob Bernshteyn says that Coupa could be profitable in a month if it cut back on its investments, the company is raising the additional funding to help it expand its product as well as move into new markets.

The new round comes on top of Coupa’s $12 million Series D from February of last year.

Founded in 2006, Coupa now has 250 customers using its service, which includes companies like Rent-A-Center, Salesforce, Pandora, Ross, The Limited, The Container Store, many Subway and McDonald’s franchises (35,000 locations at Subway, 3,000 at McD’s) and even some Fortune 50 companies like Toyota, Armstrong, and Gannett. Customers seem to be pretty happy with the service, too – Coupa’s renewal rate is 96%, Bernshteyn tells us.

“For all of the last three years [2009 to 2010, 2010-2011, 2011-2012] we’ve grown roughly 130% in our recurring revenue, well more than doubling every year,” says Bernshteyn. Plus, he adds, “we’ve had thirteen quarters of sequential growth in new, first-year subscription revenue.”

For those unfamiliar, Coupa is a platform for managing operating expenses, meaning anything that goes into running a business – the purchases, contracts, and suppliers who provide everything from office supplies to temporary labor. In Coupa, customers find the product or service they need, add it to the cart and then get the product approved through a workflow process customized to their business. Over time, Coupa builds up data on how the money is spent (which invites the Mint.com comparison).

But Coupa does more than give businesses insight into spending – it focuses on both the procurement and expense management side of things, and even includes interesting features, like being able to tweet from the platform, “thank” employees when their expense is below the category average, or warn them when they’re high.

On the product side, the company is planning to use the funding to introduce more capabilities around tracking contracts, building out its communities of customers, and improving its mobile footprint. It’s also working on bettering its budget approval app. Updates roll out quarterly, and since the service is paid for by annual subscription, the updates are free for current customers.

In terms of geographic expansion, Coupa plans to increase its presence in Europe, where it has seen “huge demand,” and it will build a channels organization that will help it get more reach, globally.