How Spendesk frees up time for Otta’s finance team

No more chasing receipts

“The main challenge we’re solving by using Spendesk is chasing people for receipts when they've used a card to pay for something. 

“Historically, we had three founders’ cards. People were always asking for these card details around the company. As we got to month end, we always ended up with a long list of transactions that went through the founders’ cards."

“The founders would have to remember who borrowed the card and when, so we could chase these people for receipts. We faced lots of transactions that were difficult to trace in our finance system. We couldn’t remember which was made by whom, and for what.

“Spendesk changes that, because everyone has a profile on the platform. They can request their own virtual cards, and we can even give them their own physical cards. The system prompts people to upload their receipts in a timely manner, rather than us having to chase them. 

“This gives them the responsibility over their payments, not the finance team.

“Now, it's easy to track who spent what, and Spendesk also has the feature where you can stop people from spending if they've got more than a certain number of late receipts. So, Spendesk really helped with that as well.”

Easy employee wellness budgets

“We have a professional development budget per person, and a wellness budget per person. People can buy things with their own money and then get reimbursed as part of this budget. 

“But with Spendesk, they can also request a virtual card and pay straight away with company money. They don't have to spend their own money and wait for reimbursement, which is great.

“These budgets are company-wide, which means that everyone is spending company money. Receipt collection isn’t an issue here, as people either purchase with their own funds and request a reimbursement, or they use Spendesk cards which facilitate the collection process.”

Simple subscription management

“Spendesk is super helpful for subscriptions as well. Those were mainly handled on the founder's cards, but now we set them up on Spendesk’s recurring cards.

“What made it hard on the founders’ cards was that you don't necessarily know who owns the subscription. People would just set up the finance inbox in the billing section of the subscription. It's easier to chase receipts then, but we also might never know if someone wasn't using that subscription anymore.”

“So it's good that it's in the name of the person who owns the subscription. This way, it’s tied to them on a monthly basis. They have to provide the receipt and doing so reminds them if they need the subscription anymore or not. And if they don’t, we can cancel it easily.”

Free time for the entire organization

“I've already had lots of positive feedback from people. Employees making the requests have said it's so easy - it only takes 30 seconds to request a reimbursement. 

“We let team managers approve the expenses, which people seem to be enjoying. The Slack integration was amazing, because it only takes 10 seconds to approve a request, especially if it's already been discussed. 

“As soon as an expense comes through Slack, the manager can just hit “approve,” and it’s done. You don't have to even go into Spendesk anymore.

Reduced burden on the finance team

“It’s a burden to have to reimburse people for things that they paid with their own money. They submit claims one by one, it's all by email, which is hard to track, and eventually things get lost.

“But overall, this product makes it so much more efficient for the finance team. The virtual cards, the subscriptions, the invoices, and also the expense claims - it’s really good to have all in one place.

“I also think it’s great for taking the burden off the finance team for chasing things. Spendesk puts the task of finding missing receipts back onto the people who actually spend the money.

“It creates a stress-free way to handle our spending.”