With Spendesk, we can pay our vendors straight away.

A multipurpose tool for busy employees

&Open’s small but mighty finance team uses Spendesk on a daily basis. Made up of a CFO, Financial Controller, Accountant, and Assistant Accountant, the team has been using Spendesk for the past two years. 

The company’s 70+ employees are also well-acquainted with Spendesk. They use it for pretty much everything related to spending: employee expenses, travel expenses, virtual cards, subscriptions, vendor payments, and more.

Emma Friel, &Open’s financial accountant, says that Spendesk’s virtual cards are extremely convenient, especially when dealing with new vendors.

“I see the buying team use Spendesk to pay vendors who are new or aren’t our normal suppliers. If we don’t already have the terms or a contract in place with these new vendors, we need to pay upfront. Spendesk makes this possible.”

Darren Chaney, financial controller at &Open, agrees that immediate payment is a huge benefit. “It speeds up the pace of how our buying team, and other teams, can buy. It eliminates the bank transfer process. You can pay straight away, it’s instant. That’s a huge positive.”

Using a Spendesk card also means orders can be shipped out right away; there’s no need to wait days for bank transfers to go through. Darren explains how Spendesk came in handy when there was a shipping emergency:

"One time, there were goods damaged in one of the warehouses. They needed to restock the product immediately and get it shipped out. It was too late in the day for a bank transfer. If we waited until the next day, then the bank transfer would’ve taken another day, and the shipment would have been delayed one more day after that. Using Spendesk meant we could pay immediately, eliminating the delays and solving our problem."

Faster month-end closing thanks to Spendesk’s integration with Xero

Emma says that Spendesk saves loads of time during the month-end financial close process. 

“Spendesk makes month-end closing super easy. We can export the data from Spendesk straight into Xero.”

“We spend about an hour reviewing transactions, but that’s it.” 

Spendesk speeds up &Open’s monthly financial close process, eliminating the tedious manual tasks normally associated with this period. 

Darren estimates the time saved with Spendesk in contrast with his previous experiences:

Compared to previous companies, the monthly close takes about a fifth of the time. It’s really, really quick. It takes away the pain of having to leave the platform, go to a banking platform, put in the amounts, chase for receipts… you don’t have to do any of that.

Darren Chaney

Financial Controller

No more chasing receipts

Darren reckons that Spendesk’s “Play by the Rules” automatic limits are among his favourite features of the tool.

“Automatically blocking accounts that haven’t uploaded receipts is a very good feature. It stops us from having to chase receipts. The employee’s account is automatically blocked if their receipts aren’t in.”

Emma agrees: “If we didn’t have that feature in place, we would be missing a lot of receipts. It would cause us so much extra admin if we had to email people for receipts or transfer cash at the end of the month. It’s all automatic with Spendesk. It’s a big time saver.”

Spendesk makes life easier for both the finance team and non-finance employees. With a mobile app, automatic receipt capture, spending limits, and the ability to block non-compliant accounts, the finance team can let employees handle their own expenses while still maintaining 100% control over employee spend.

As the financial controller, Darren enjoys Spendesk’s approval feature. “I like the ability to be able to approve expenses and pay them straight from the platform. It saves quite a bit of time.”

Spendesk is a lifesaver for busy finance team members like Darren and Emma.

Showcasing the &Open platform with virtual Spendesk cards

&Open employees use Spendesk daily. But there’s a clever twist: the sales team generates virtual cards for prospects and clients who want to try the platform. 

Emma explains: “On our on-demand platform, we give new clients a virtual Spendesk card to test out our platform. We give them €100 on a card so they can use it.”

It’s a win-win for everybody: the sales team can wow the clients, clients can test out &Open’s platform and the finance team can keep track of company spending without leaving the Spendesk interface.

&Open plans on doubling their revenue in the coming year while keeping headcount the same. Darren is looking forward to the future and knows that he can count on Spendesk. “Spendesk will stay the same, and add the same value as it does now, even if there’s more volume.”

For &Open, Spendesk is a scalable spend management solution, perfect for a scaling business.