Take the hassle out of managing one-time spending requests across your organisation

We love the Olympics motto – ‘Faster, higher, stronger – together’ – because it’s so applicable to our working lives. We all strive to be more productive and collaborative, while aiming for stronger outcomes.

Finance and procurement teams are no exception. You are under increasing pressure to control costs, agree budgets, manage and reconcile employee expenses, and support your company’s growth agenda at the same time. It’s a challenge to juggle all these tactical activities with strategic initiatives.

That’s why we are dedicated to liberating you and your business from spend chaos and unnecessary friction when managing employee expenses.

Common challenges of one-off payments

Managing one-time purchase requests is tedious and costly

When we look at a core area of company spend, one-time purchases, and how they’re managed in a large number of companies, there’s a lot of room for improvement.

You can’t give everyone a company credit card, yet everyone needs to spend as part of their job.

Essential one-time expenses include training courses and exam fees, home working equipment, events and special campaigns. But there are many more, spread across your business.

Our customers continually tell us that responding to these one-time spend requests, through emails and other side channels, takes up valuable time and effort.

On top of that, you must then track, process, and reconcile the expenses. This is why most businesses lose up to two weeks per month to the admin work of managing spend. That’s half a year! And there are financial costs too: European companies lose an average of 2% of revenues to poor spend controls.

Sharing card details is risky

As mentioned earlier, some teams share company or procurement cards to make necessary ad-hoc or infrequent purchases. This creates unnecessary security risks and can quickly get out of hand.

Card details can fall into the wrong hands, both inside and outside your company, and cause you significant financial loss.

You also have to watch out for the increase in card-not-present fraud, when a scammer attempts to make a transaction using stolen card details without needing the physical card. It’s a justified concern as online transactions reach new heights following the pandemic.

And you can’t track spend as it happens

Most company credit and purchasing cards only offer detailed billing at the end of each month.

This makes it a huge challenge to keep an eye on expense payments as they arise, and can result in unwelcome surprises down the track.

And without a real-time view of spending, your ability to stay in control of costs is limited.

A new solution to improve online spending: Purchases 

Purchases is the new Soldo tool for managing one-time spend requests in real time.

Purchases handles the request/approval process for you and issues single-use virtual cards which your teams can use to make their purchases.

The transaction data is securely stored in one place and easily reviewed, reported and reconciled in real time. No hassle, no risk, no sweat.

And the benefits don’t stop there! You can also use this tool to:

•  Boost productivity

Purchases cuts the time and effort you devote to chasing and approving one-time spend requests, uploading purchase orders, and processing employee reimbursements. The console streamlines these activities so you can spend time on the things that matter.

• Banish employee reimbursements

Let Purchases replace the manual and frustrating work of handling out-of-pocket expenses. Your teams can effortlessly submit a request, make the purchase with a single-use virtual card, and submit their receipts immediately via the mobile app. It’s as easy as that.

• Protect your business

No more sharing company card details across departments and welcoming scammers. Purchases and single-use virtual cards protect your organisation against fraud: strong customer authentication (SCA) prevents anyone but the requester from using a card’s details, and the card is destroyed once the transaction is complete. And for extra security, each approved purchase, the Soldo console will be capturing an audit trail.

• Cut the cost of processing one-time purchases 

Purchases will help you cut the cost of processing one-off purchases and monitor and reduce out-of-policy spend.

You’ll have a better shot at spotting cost-saving opportunities, have more time to focus on carrying out your business plan, and spare a few monthly headaches.

Enjoy the power of more flexibility and total visibility without waiting until month-end to know what your business is spending.

If you want to learn about Purchases in more detail, head over to its dedicated product page. Go to Purchases.