Product Update: October 2019

Staying in control and on top of operational spending can be tough. And doing it well depends on the way your company is structured.

Most companies make it hard for employees to spend when they need to - a limited number of corporate credit cards means that team members can’t buy what they need. It’s inefficient, and actually gives managers less control than you’d think.

That’s why we want to give your teams smart payment methods that let managers approve or deny their team’s requests, and keep finance teams in complete control.

The best part is they’re connected to powerful software, meaning payments are tracked and you have real-time visibility over what’s being spent.

Here’s how we’ve improved these tools this month.

What’s new at Spendesk?

Customize control with approval flows

In Spendesk, when employees need to make a payment, they first create a request. Payments under a defined limit can be automatically pre-approved, which saves everyone time.

But because not every team member should have the same freedom to spend, you can customize this limit for each team. Set up thresholds with the amounts of your choice, and assign the right budget approver. Requests above the pre-approved limit will then require approval.

Approvers are notified instantly to validate or deny the request from their desktop, Slack or the mobile app. Once a request is approved, the funds are available to spend straight away by the requester.

What’s new?

We gave this feature a fresh redesign to let you personalise the level of control you need. We’ve also added multiple thresholds for circumstances where you want different rules to apply:

• Multiple thresholds: Let’s say up to £/€100 you’re happy for a team leader to approve payment, but over £/€101, it needs to be the head of department. Done!

• Multiple approvers: You can also assign more than one approver for team spending - for example, the head of department or the CFO. You might also decide to require two approvals for a single purchase - both the head of department and the CFO. Whatever your heart spending policy desires!

And the best part is, you can mix and match both of these rules. They can be applied to specific teams, and you can change them whenever you like.

Smoothly set up your own team-based approval flows with the level of control you want and empower employees to pay for what they need!

A more powerful Invoice module

This year, we became truly all-in-one thanks to our Invoice module. This lets customers submit, process, and pay invoices through Spendesk, just like the rest of their operational spending.

Invoices have been live since April, but we’ve just made a few improvements:

• Superfast invoice submission: You can now bulk-upload invoices. Upload as many invoices you want at once!

• Save hours and avoid mistakes thanks to automated data entry with OCR: All invoices will be scanned by our powerful OCR robot Marvin. You’ll just have to review Marvin’s work in your Draft Invoices section and confirm your submissions.

• Ability to reject an invoice: This improvement enables controllers to reject invoices that do not match corporate spending policy (or for any other legitimate reasons).

• Faster supplier creation: From now on, every time we spot a supplier’s bank information within the invoice (OCR), we automatically pre-fill the data for you in the supplier creation form.

✨ Get excited for your next invoice submission, and see the magic for yourself!

Download our Chrome extension

Are you using Spendesk for online spending? If the answer is yes, we strongly advise you to download the free Spendesk chrome extension!

How it works

No more going through the Spendesk platform to retrieve virtual card numbers. You can generate cards directly from the merchant’s website with the Spendesk Chrome extension!

It’s very simple and saves you time. That’s the pitch.

How to set it up

If you use Google Chrome, download the extension here. It will be displayed on the top right of your screen.

Simply click on the Spendesk logo at checkout and choose the type of card you want to generate - whether for a single purchase or a monthly subscription. Simply copy/paste the card numbers, finalize your purchase, and voilà. Handy!

Beautiful new Spendesk cards

The future of business spending has arrived with big improvements to Spendesk virtual and physical cards. Spendesk cards!

What’s new

• They’ve been given a fresh new look to help you further impress anyone who sees you spending.

• All cards are progressively being replaced by debit cards, meaning higher acceptance rates, especially for online vendors.

• Pay securely and quickly on the go as the physical are now contactless for all payments under £/€30.

Don’t forget, our smart cards are connected to even smarter software. This means that every transaction is tracked and organized for the spender, their manager and finance to review. Embrace a new safe and efficient spending experience with Spendesk.

Customer Spotlight: una palabra desde Barcelona*

Spanish company Holded recently joined Spendesk. VP Finance Felipe Tunnell shared his love about his first month of usage!

Indeed, getting started with Spendesk is fast and easy. Thanks to our dedicated onboarding team, customers are guided through operational and financial set-up until roll-out of the solution across the company, with support and training for both finance teams and employees.

About Holded

Holded is a Spanish Business Operations System that serves more than 20,000 companies worldwide. Based in Barcelona, this ERP platform gathers sales, finance, operations and human resources apps to help companies better manage their day-to-day business from one single tool. Amazing!

That’s it for now. See you in November 👋

*A few words from Barcelona. Yes! Spendesk is available in Spain !