Looking back on 2022 at Spendesk

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Published on December 21, 2022

2022 was a year of tremendous growth for us here at Spendesk. We outgrew old offices, grew into new markets, saw our platform spend grow exponentially, and more!

Thanks to Spendeskers’ hard work, we were able to achieve an impressive amount in 2022. It’s truly a joy to work with so many people who live out our values every day, coming together to change the future of spending at work.

It’s also thanks to our customers’ faith in us that we’re able to do what we love and continue to grow. So, thank you! Without you, none of this would be possible.

Now, join us on a trip down memory lane to (re)discover all that we accomplished in 2022.

Spendesk joined the unicorn club!

2022 started off with a bang when we achieved unicorn status in January!

After raising an additional €100M from leading US investor Tiger Global, with participation from our existing investors Index Ventures, Eight Roads, General Atlantic, and eFounders, we reached a valuation of over $1 billion.

We are incredibly proud to be among an elite group of companies in France with this special status.

This meant that we could make solid investments in our product, and especially our people. We can boast competitive salaries, wellness packages, and other benefits that attract the best talent from all over the world.

And our new status helped supercharge our growth: we were able to hire more Spendeskers, onboard new customers, expand into new markets, and launch new product features… all while staying true to our core values.

Becoming a unicorn wasn’t the end of our story, or even the end of a chapter; it was the catalyst to launch us into even more exciting spaces. After the unicorn announcement at the start of the year, we continued to grow. By the end of the year, we more than doubled the amount spent through our platform.

€10 billion spent on Spendesk

This year we reached an exciting milestone – €10 billion spent on Spendesk!

Spend on our platform increased from €4.6B to €10B over the last year thanks to our +150,000 users!

We are so proud that our customers are increasingly turning to Spendesk for all their spend management needs. And they’re using it in a big way! Our solution is as crucial to finance teams as ever.

This goes to show that it pays to have a smart spend management tool. With real-time visibility over budgets, invoices, expenses, and approvals, companies can make smarter decisions.

It’s also a great indicator of how valuable smart spend management can be in times of economic uncertainty. It’s a wise investment that pays off again and again.

We made our users’ lives easier

Of all the Spendeskers taking a break over the holiday period, Marvin (the robot who reads your receipts) might just deserve some time off the most. He’s processed 7.9 million receipts, which would take us humans 15 years to manually submit!

Spendesk also handled over 1.2 million subscription payments automatically this year. And employees are getting their reimbursements faster than ever too, with the average time for an expense to be reimbursed being drastically reduced.

All in all, Spendesk saved our users thousands of hours in 2022. We hope to see that number increase in 2023!

Welcome, new Spendeskers (all 200+ of you)!

It’s hard to believe, but Spendesk almost doubled in size over the past 12 months. We now number over 500!

We are so thrilled and thankful for our amazing new colleagues and teammates, who come from all over the world to join in our mission to liberate businesses and people to do their best work.

Most notably, we celebrated our success with an epic three-day offsite in Biscarrosse, France.

After three years of keeping our distance due to Covid restrictions, all teams from all offices were finally able to meet in person. We had a blast getting to know each other, building strong connections, and making memories.

Hello new offices…and new markets!

Not only did we welcome new Spendeskers in 2022, but we also have new and improved offices to support these expanding teams!

In addition to our existing Berlin offices, we opened an office in Hamburg to get closer to finance teams in Germany. And our London team moved into beautiful new offices in the bustling Aldgate neighborhood. Light and airy, the team even has an outdoor patio to enjoy the rare sunny day in London!

And some more big news: we officially launched our entry into Spain and Italy! We’re already recruiting for roles and actively looking for Italian and Spanish speakers to support these new markets and bring the power of Spendesk to Southern Europe.

New feature launched: automated end-to-end Accounts Payable

Our users asked for it, and we heard you! One of our most-requested features came to fruition this year: a fully automated end-to-end accounts payable process.

Among all our projects, this one was especially exciting. This new feature means that Spendesk closes the loop on the invoicing workflow.

Finance teams and budget managers shouldn’t have to worry about low-value tasks such as uploading invoices manually. And now, they don’t have to! An automated AP process saves countless hours and headaches.

From procure to pay, you can do it all on Spendesk.

Other notable moments from 2022

It’s hard to fit everything we’ve accomplished into one blog post, but here are other highlights from the year:

Events

You may have seen us at some of Europe’s biggest tech conferences this year. We loved connecting with like-minded people, potential customers, and our clients at events such as VivaTech, Web Summit, and SaaStock. We can’t wait to be back in 2023!

Awards

Spendesk ranked 7th in the Accounting & Finance Products category at this year’s G2 Best Software Awards. Our users’ feedback is our most precious asset, and we are so thrilled that Spendesk continues to save time and solve problems for finance teams.

CFO Connect

Our CFO Connect community had amazing growth this year, too!

CFO Connect welcomed 1,696 new members into our community for finance leaders.
We held 16 events throughout the year in Paris, London, and Berlin, as well as private dinners, pub hangouts, virtual and hybrid events, and of course CFO Connect Summit.
We facilitated 558 meaningful 1:1 connections via our Member Matching program.
We released the CFO Salary Benchmark, helping shed light on a taboo topic for finance professionals.

It’s never too late to join the community! We hope to welcome even more finance leaders to CFO Connect in 2023.

Looking ahead to 2023

Spendesk is on the road to becoming the new standard of B2B payments, and we’ve set ambitious goals for ourselves in the upcoming year.

But most importantly, we want to make sure that we’re growing at a steady pace, when and where we need to, and continue to make good decisions that benefit both Spendeskers and our customers. Looking forward to 2023, “sustainable growth” will be our guiding principle.

We will open offices in Spain and Italy in 2023, following our launch into the Southern European market this year. We look forward to growing in these countries!

I hope you have a safe and happy end to your 2022. We can’t wait to share all that we have planned for 2023!

Product Updates

Rodolphe Ardant

Rodolphe Ardant is the co-founder and CEO of Spendesk, the all-in one-spend management platform helping businesses spend smarter. Before Spendesk, Rod was founder in residence at startup studio eFounders, COO for the car rental startup Drivy, and founder of Wozaik, a digital advertising startup acquired by Solocal Group in 2013.

Get started with Spendesk

Close the books 4x faster, collect over 95% of receipts on time, and get 100% visibility over company spending.

Business spending includes different types of spend:

Strategic spend is usually centralized and managed by C-level executives with dedicated spenders. It can be managed through invoices, wire transfers and purchase orders.
Discretionary and operational spend is also centralized, but spending is done by managers and employees during their daily professional lives. It includes card purchases, subscription payments, digital ads, events, office orders, and business travel.
Expenses, unlike strategic spend, represent a significant amount of small purchases that can be difficult to track. These include card payments, expense claims, team perks, and travel expenses.

Spend management is the process through which companies manage business spending. It takes into account the end-to-end process when someone needs to spend: getting purchase approvals, providing payment methods, submitting and processing invoices, submitting and reimbursing expense claims, chasing receipts and invoices for reconciliation, and assigning the right analytical codes, expense accounts, and VAT rates to all those expenses for bookkeeping.

Spend management tools become necessary when the number of employees increases and the need for clear processes, better visibility and control starts to grow for finance teams.

Employees need flexible, user-friendly tools, in order to spend easily and be empowered to do their job.

That’s when Spendesk can be a good fit.

Spendesk provides payment methods for modern businesses, and a powerful platform for finance teams to manage spending. This includes debit cards to replace old-fashioned company credit cards, virtual cards for online purchases, and automated expense reports for unexpected payments.

For employees
Employees no longer need to spend out-of-pocket. They request funds for a particular purchase, and can use their Spendesk card or virtual card to execute the payment.

If for any reason the employee can’t use their Spendesk card, they snap a picture of the receipt via the Spendesk mobile app and create an expense claim on the spot. This is sent directly to their manager for validation, and on to the finance team.

For finance teams
Each employee has their own Spendesk profile and debit expense card. So unlike the company credit card, you always know who’s spending company money.

The platform lets controllers create spending limits and pre-approvals. C-Level executives or managers will have a different level of pre-approved spend from other staff. Should a team member need to go over their pre-approved budget, they can make a request to their manager via the mobile app or the platform online.

When an expense is made with a Spendesk card, the employee simply snaps a picture of the receipt at the time of purchase. Which means no more lost receipts.

Finance teams can see real-time company spend and follow up on missing receipts or invoices by sending reminders to employees via the platform.

Reviewing expenses is also easier as finance teams can group expenses and assign them the right VAT rates and expense accounts before exporting everything easily to their accounting tools.

Spendesk streamlines the whole business spending process, making spend management intuitive, simple and efficient.