I would absolutely recommend Spendesk, especially for NetSuite users. Please use it!

Efficient spend processes that free up finance team time

Duco’s finance team includes six employees: the CFO, the finance manager, an FP&A manager, a part-qualified accountant, a junior accountant and an apprentice. This small team manages spend for nearly 200 employees across the UK, US, Poland, and Singapore. 

Before Spendesk, Duco relied on credit card statements, Excel sheets, and an expenses tool that was unpopular with staff. The admin, training, and case-by-case chasing involved added days to the monthly close, and took the finance team away from more impactful work. 

Alec needed a solution to all of these issues. Something to save his team time, and keep the rest of the company happy. 

“We looked at other options, but they were either just an expense tool or just a card solution. The massive benefit of Spendesk is that it does everything. It’s far more than just an expense tool.”

User-friendly expense tracking

Before Spendesk, the big problem with tracking expenses was the user experience. “We in the finance team know how to handle expenses, but others don’t. The sales team and upper management always complained about the NetSuite tool we provided them. 

“NetSuite is amazing, but it’s built for accountants. For everyone else, it looks and feels confusing.” This quickly takes the finance team from analytical experts to an in-house support team. 

“Our finance manager also had to onboard and offboard every single user manually. This meant dedicating hours every week to manage all the users. Tons of Slack messages. And we didn’t have enough licenses, so it was always a balancing act.”

All the extra work and complaints from colleagues are gone thanks to Spendesk. The app walks users through each expense claim and eliminates virtually all errors. 

“We needed something that would still work with NetSuite, but which was far simpler for the wider company to understand. It was clear that our teams would love the expense module, and that’s proven to be true.”

Finance-friendly card payments

“Our cards process was the opposite of expenses: nobody else had a problem, but it was terrible for us in finance. Everyone was spending, spending, spending, and it was really hard to collect receipts.”

The finance team lacked real-time visibility over payments, relying on the monthly card statement. This was the single biggest time waster during the month-end close. 

“At the end of the month, we would get the statement, and we’d have to email it around to get specific receipts for each purchase. Our month-end process really revolved all around this, rather than the accounting work in NetSuite.” 

The worst part: the effort didn’t match the impact. “Credit card payments were small in terms of value, but reconciling these was our longest task. We had to try and get all the receipts and go through every transaction in Excel, line by line.

“Now I can keep on top of transactions weekly. At the end of each week, I check payments in Spendesk and then send them on to NetSuite. So when month-end appears, our credit cards are already done. We’re straight onto the next task. We can comfortably complete the monthly close by the end of working day two.”

An “effortless” NetSuite integration

Payment reconciliation typically takes companies days each month, thanks to unclear transaction details, mismatched supplier details, and missing receipts. Spendesk improves your pre-accounting process, so all information is accurate and up to date.

“Working in Excel sheets brought a lot of fiddling around and work to populate all the information. Spendesk does most of this for us now.” 

The tool ensures that all information is provided and aligns with your fields in NetSuite. “I really like that it tells us if a vendor doesn’t exist in NetSuite, for example. We get a warning to say that pushing the transaction through will fail. Which means you can’t really make a mistake.” 

And while NetSuite itself can be confusing at times, connecting to it shouldn’t be. “Implementing the integration was effortless. The Spendesk team did all the connections for us. And when I misaligned things, Spendesk pointed out the errors and it was easy to fix. Once we were in a rhythm, all the data was flowing through really easily.

“The integration has saved us so much time, and we can close at month end so much quicker. Then we can look at the bigger numbers - that’s always more important in the finance team.” 

“We’re down to one day per month to close the books.”

A smarter way to reclaim VAT

In many cases, missing receipts meant real money lost for Duco. “If we didn’t have the receipts, we couldn’t claim back VAT. And even if each individual card payment might be small, they really add up over time. We missed out on quite a lot of money.”

Today, card receipts are captured and submitted on time, and Duco can reclaim all the VAT it’s entitled to. “The difference is incredible. We went from no receipts to receipts for everything. And we’re now capturing VAT easily. And I really like the bot, Marvin. It automatically recognises VAT, so that saves even more time. 

“We can also create rules for certain vendors, so we always know the VAT amount. That makes me even more efficient. I just do a quick check, and it’s all done.” 

Simple integration with HR tools

Duco uses BambooHR as its “source of truth” for employee information. Every team member updates their contact details in the tool, and leavers are easily removed when necessary. And because Spendesk integrates with BambooHR directly, these changes only need to be made once. 

“Integrating Spendesk with BambooHR was really easy. The Spendesk team showed us how to switch it on, tailor the integration and filter by location or apply other filters. It’s really user friendly.

“With our previous expenses tool, we would have to add and remove people manually, and juggle limited licenses. That was a lot of admin work and a lot of time wasted. 

“We know how well it’s going [with Spendesk] because there’s hardly any noise around the integration. I get a notification from time to time that a new person has joined our Spendesk account, and I didn’t even realise we had a new joiner. They’re added automatically.”

This is even more important at scale. “We’ve recently acquired a company and we’re merging, which is a lot of work. Onboarding and migrating all of these new team members over to our systems is an agenda item for our finance and HR teams. But getting them onto Spendesk was easy - as long as they’re in BambooHR, they’re also in Spendesk. That’s a massive win for me. It’s a part of the M&A plan we don’t have to think about.”

“I would advise others to explore all the features that Spendesk offers. For us that’s the expenses tools, the NetSuite integration, and the HR integration. Every integration is another efficiency gain for us. 

“It’s not just bells and whistles - there’s a real benefit to each and every feature.” 

“Customer service is the icing on the cake”

Finance teams have grown used to long, difficult setup processes for new software. But that’s not what Alec found with Spendesk. “The customer experience has been really good. From the first demo and the sales conversations to working closely with our support person, the standard has been so high throughout. 

“We actually delayed things a lot on our side, but I really appreciated the positive and caring way that Spendesk handled those delays. There was always a friendly approach, happy to help.

“We feel respected, and I appreciate that all our emails and feedback are received well. The tool and integration are great, and the new developments and innovations are super exciting, but the customer service is the icing on the cake. I want to thank everyone involved.”