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An upgrade over company cards
Like so many businesses around the world, Bossa Studios relied on standard issue company cards. Despite being debit (and not credit) cards, these still offered very little visibility or security for the finance team.
“Before we had a normal bank debit card, which would get used by a lot of different people across the business. It was very difficult to keep track of who was using it. And the finance department would have to spend a lot of time chasing people for receipts, and trying to work out what these payments were.
“It was a very inefficient process, really wasting a lot of time.”
“So we switched over to Spendesk, and that has basically meant that the responsibility has been delegated to the different teams. It's up to the users to basically provide us with the receipts and invoices for transactions that they've executed using Spendesk cards. So that's really helpful.”
“It saves us a lot of time.
“It's also a lot more secure. Rather than one bank card being shared around, or the details being shared over email, or pictures being taken of that card and stored on people's phones, you generate a virtual card that can be used for that specific transaction. So obviously the security is really good. Plus our bank fees were getting very high. So we save a lot of money with Spendesk.”
Smoother subscription management
As a modern tech company, Bossa Studios relies on a large number of regular subscription services. Online tools and server costs are increasingly common. And managing these payments via a single credit card or invoices is far from ideal.
“We use it a lot for our SaaS subscriptions - we have a lot of annual or monthly services. And we're able to kind of keep track of all of our different subscriptions and their monthly budgets. We know we're not going to get billed a huge amount - we're able to control it.
“As people join the company and then leave, subscriptions get handed over to different people. But inevitably some fall through the cracks.” Which is where Spendesk becomes so useful.
“We’ve got one place where we can see every subscription, when they’re going to be renewed, and when they can be canceled. So we never get a surprise. It's all very visible. And you're able to pause your cards. Before the vendor takes the money, we're able to see how much they're going to charge, and check whether or not that's actually in line with what we expect.
“We can control our spending and also not lose track of what subscriptions we’ve got.
A special plan for large subscriptions
Larger, more impactful subscriptions sometimes require more scrutiny. So Adam has a way to give them the attention they require, while keeping all the smaller payments running as usual.
“We have a special Spendesk card just for our big monthly bills - Amazon Web Services, for example. They send us a monthly bill that I prefer to run through with our tech guy who’s in charge of that relationship.
“We actually pause this particular Spendesk card every month to give us time to look at the invoice. He's able to go into AWS, look at what they're billing us, and see if it's in line with our usage. Once he’s happy, we can go on to AWS and actually charge that specific card. And once it's gone through, we then pause it again until the next month.”
“It's normally fine, but it's just an internal control to make sure that we're not going to get charged for something that's completely out of whack with what we were expecting.”
A simple and clear purchasing process for users
Good expense processes only really work when the whole company can follow them easily. And with Spendesk, Bossa Studios have a way for employees to pay with no trouble.
“The system is very user friendly. Before, people weren’t really sure what they needed to do to execute purchases correctly. Did they need to get an invoice or receipt and send it to the finance team?”
Most team members don’t truly understand finance processes. Which usually causes undue stress. “Now it's very clear. You pay with a Spendesk card and then attach the receipt right to the transaction in the app.”
“And I think people feel that they’re contributing to the company running well overall. They don’t have finance hounding them every day or two for receipts and things. They’re just able to take care of it.
“People have got their own jobs to be getting on with. They don't want to be spending any more time than they really need to be on the admin side of things. Spendesk makes it very easy and user friendly.”
More receipts and more complete payment details
Bossa Studios are early users of Play by the Rules, which helps finance teams capture virtually all receipts on time.
“We've set some rules around the number of missing receipts people are allowed, and the number of days within which a receipt must be attached to the transaction. It saves us a lot of time in terms of trying to track down receipts and invoices. And it means that finance isn’t wasting time chasing people.
“Finance can focus on the more valuable activities that we should be doing.”
“And then, there are other benefits to getting receipts and importing them into our accounting system. We know immediately whether there’s VAT on a payment - Spendesk captures that data. So it’s also made our VAT recoverability much more efficient, and we can get maximum tax back.
“Once again, it’s just handling the things that aren’t particularly complex, but would otherwise take up a lot of time. Which we love.”
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