Iron Gate Business Advisors helps business owners claim tax credits and savings: R&D credits, real estate credits and FICA savings. New business comes in through referral partners, and each partner earns a commission. That means paying hundreds of affiliates once or twice a month.
Before Cleo
Iron Gate's CFO handles the payments, the reconciliation and the 1099s at year end. Before Cleo, each payout was a wire or a bank ACH.
Wires cost $25 each. Bank ACH meant a separate portal, multiple days to approve each new payee, and then multiple days to send the payment. With hundreds of partners a month, neither scaled. "Sending wires just doesn't make any sense," the CFO said.
Collecting W-9s was its own chore. Every partner needed one on file before the 1099s could go out in January.
The switch
Iron Gate opened its Cleo account in July 2025 and created its first 10 payouts that August. By January 2026 it was creating 113 payouts a month. In March 2026 it created 758 payouts in one month.
What runs on Cleo now
Partners sign up through Iron Gate's link and add their own bank account and tax details. The CFO then sends payouts in batches of 50 or more at a time. The median payout goes out 3.6 days after it is created.
All of this runs from one seat. Iron Gate has one active user on Cleo, and 204 of its partners have been paid more than once.
When the CFO asked for a change, Cleo made it the same day. Many of Iron Gate's affiliates are older, and the verification window was too tight for some of them. "Within I think an hour, it was changed to fit my needs."
I'm able to jump into Cleo, send these payments literally within 10 seconds, and I can mass out 50 plus payments at a time without headaches.