The worst part was managing expenses at the headquarters. As the team grew, it became harder and harder to keep track. Each regional office also had its own card controlled by the director. Since regional teams were smaller it was less problematic, but still far from ideal.
Which tools have you tested before choosing?
In March 2016, The Food Assembly decided to add more structure by implementing payment and expense validation processes. Different solutions were then compared using specific criteria such as payment traceability and expense validation. Several solutions stood out from the crowd: BNP company cards (quickly dismissed as being too inflexible), Spendesk and a competitor. These solutions were subsequently tested by the Tech teams, which had the most complex and frequent requests.
Why did you choose Spendesk?
It was immediately clear that Spendesk was a simple, well-designed solution. The financial team appreciated the secure nature of Spendesk’s single usage virtual cards, which were not available with the competing solution. With other solutions, teams had to transfer the image of the card by email, which ends up being worse than handing around a physical bank card.
The Tech team was enthusiastic about Spendesk, particularly about its ability to manage subscriptions - users can create virtual bank cards specially for subscriptions such as software. Managing one “collective money pot” rather than individual cards is also much simpler. In addition, Spendesk's fast and effective support was reassuring and visualizing payment in real-time a real advantage. On balance, Spendesk was clearly the best solution for both employees and management.
Today, how do you handle employees’ spending?
More than 50 people at The Food Assembly regularly buy online with virtual Spendesk cards and 30 people use the plastic Spendesk cards for their “physical” payments. This means that the regional offices are now more independent as they have their own simple payment solution and that the head offices have more control over operations. The teams feel a lot more confident and comfortable about making payments knowing that they won’t be held up and can get on with their work.
The teams are also delighted to know that their company trusts them and gives them more independence. Nearly 400 payments are made via Spendesk each month, from transport to accommodation, offices supplies, IT equipment and subscriptions. Given this success, the international branches also wanted their own Spendesk accounts, which have since been opened in Spain, the UK and Germany. Spendesk enabled The Food Assembly to successfully restructure its operations by simplifying key payment and validation processes.
As Financial Controller, what is the main advantage for you?
With expense reports now a thing of the past, all employees and, particularly the accounting teams, are much more productive. Spendesk saves “bags of time” when managing different kinds of expenses for different teams; and receipts can now be recovered automatically.
Operational teams have been given more responsibility; while financial teams feel more fulfilled as they can focus on value-adding tasks, rather than wasting time with data entry and chasing receipts or invoices.