FAQs
Learn everything about Spendesk and the most frequently asked questions.
Learn everything about Spendesk and the most frequently asked questions.
Basic questions about Spendesk.
Spendesk is the first spend management platform built for both finance teams and employees. It gives finance leaders visibility across all company spending.
Employees can spend what they need, and finance has full control of all spending in real time.
Secure, custom payment methods ensure that spending stays on-policy, and approval workflows give managers the right to refuse. Spendesk enables them to benefit from streamlined expense and invoice management through the website and app, whether on the road or in the office.
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.
This is what we’re here for! Our platform ultimately centralizes control for your HQ finance team but decentralizes payments and budget oversight to employees and managers.
Spendesk can help your growing business with multiple spending policies and custom approval workflows. Controllers can set different spending thresholds for different teams. And team approval workflows let appointed managers approve or deny their team members’ requests, streamlining processes for everyone.
Spendesk also supports companies with multiple locations and subsidiaries. You can manage accounts for different entities, and switch from one to another in a click.
All the questions about Spendesk bank cards.
Employees who need to spend online can access single-use virtual cards for one-off purchases, or virtual recurring cards for subscription management and digital ads.
Why is virtual better? Each virtual card comes with its own unique card details. This is more secure than sharing the company credit card on hundreds of websites. And cards can be frozen or deleted at any time from within the platform.
Users can manage how much money is on a card at any given time, and can always see who is spending what.
Yes, employees can use Visa debit cards for on-the-go business travel expenses and in-store purchasing.
Finance teams and appointed managers can control cards in a simple dashboard to:
Set budgets for each cardholder;
Enable cardholders to withdraw cash or not;
Add more funds;
Reduce budgets or block cards at any time.
All payments are itemized within the Spendesk platform. And users take pictures of receipts at the time of spending so that reconciliation can be automated.
Spendesk Visa business debit cards are accepted by millions of businesses, both online or in stores. This makes business spending easy and convenient.
Just look for the famous Visa logo on merchant websites, ATMs, and store windows.
Visa debit cards are protected against fraud, in accordance with applicable law, as mentioned in our terms and conditions.
Learn more about our fraud management process at this link.
General information about Spendesk.
Security is a priority at Spendesk. We value the integrity of your personal data as much as we do our own. Our security measures follow standard practices that have been proven to be reliable and robust. These measures will constantly evolve in anticipation of future risks, and Spendesk will always work to keep your financial data secure.
See our privacy policy and Trust Center for more details.
The funds are held in accounts opened in the customer's name in the books of Spendesk Financial Services (for EEA customers), Adyen (for UK customers) or Sutton Bank (for US customers).
Spendesk is available with full payment services for companies located in the European Economic Area (29 countries including France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc.), the United Kingdom and the United States.
Customers can also use the solution without the payment services features for their subsidiaries located anywhere in the world.
Manually, never!
Ultimately our goal is to do away with expense reports altogether, however, we realize that we still need to cover all spending situations.
Therefore, we provide digital expense claims in the case when employees have to pay out-of-pocket because the merchant only accepts cash.
Employees simply snap a picture of their receipt via the Spendesk mobile app and create an expense claim on the spot. This removes the need for manual data entry and saves time for both the employee and the finance team.
Yes, Spendesk can be connected to most accounting systems.
The platform has several direct integrations, including NetSuite, Xero, DATEV, Quickbooks or Sage 100. We also allow custom exports in CSV or XLS that work well for other softwares.
Contact information.
Getting Spendesk couldn’t be easier. Talk to our team today.
Absolutely! We are here to answer any questions you have both before and after you get started with Spendesk. Our friendly, responsive Success Team is here to not only help you get the most out of Spendesk but to offer helpful tips on how to optmize your spending process. Email us at hello@spendesk.com to chat with one of our friendly team members. We’re happy to help in French, English, Spanish or German.
Our team is available Monday to Friday from 9:00am to 6:30pm, Central European Time.
Our team of spend management specialists is here to fix issues and provide expert advice.