Industry
Recruitment
HQ
London
Employees
300
Key benefits
Paperless expenses across three currencies and four countries
Digital receipt management
Easy cross-platform reporting through integration with Xero
LHi Group uses Soldo to manage all employee spending across eight locations – and it saves them 12 days of admin a year.
Recruitment
London
300
Paperless expenses across three currencies and four countries
Digital receipt management
Easy cross-platform reporting through integration with Xero
LHi is a group company consisting of four recruitment brands within Technology, Life Sciences, Renewable Energy, and the Built Environment. They started with a single brand in 2002, but their early plans for global expansion put them on the right track, and they’ve since seen remarkable growth. Here’s how they’re using Soldo to successfully manage spending in four countries.
The LHi Group’s international focus has driven them to open eight offices around the world: three in the UK, three in the US, one in Paris, and one in Munich. This growth, however, challenged how the company managed employee expenses and company spending. ‘I wanted one system that could cover all our locations’, says Ed Parkes, CFO.
“We liked the idea of a prepaid card because with credit cards it’s quite difficult to change limits. With Soldo I can do it from my phone.”
Ed Parkes, CFO
We’ve heard this before. Ed found that the paper-based systems they used to manage company spending were no longer suitable for the size of the business. They were asking employees to pay for their work-related needs with their own money, which resulted in unreasonable waiting times for reimbursement.
The finance team, including Ed, was also wasting too much time on manual, inaccurate admin work, and chasing staff for receipts that often went missing. With so many offices across the globe, this type of system failed to help Ed and his team monitor and control spending – and, equally important, to keep LHi people happy. (Asking them to pay out of pocket was far from ideal.)
Eventually, they moved to an online expense system, but this still didn’t solve out-of-pocket payments and reimbursement waits – so they tried their luck with a company credit card.
While this solution fixed some of their challenges, Ed thought dealing with the bank or credit card company whenever they needed to change card limits was too frustrating. Plus, adding a different person to the account sent him on a long-winded road of red tape – and their finance team still had to go through mountains of receipts and track down people to get everything in order.
In Ed’s words, ‘it was painful.’ So, after extensive research and weighing his options, Ed found Soldo prepaid cards were exactly what LHi needed.
The first advantage that made Soldo stand out from the competition was the ability to issue these prepaid cards in GBP, EUR, and USD; with LHi’s geographical range, managing offices around the world in local currency means they don’t need to use one spend management system in Europe and another in the US.
To Ed, Soldo exceeded expectations from the start: implementing Soldo across the company was easy and quick. They’re using 15 to 20 cards, managed by Ed and a couple of other people on the finance team.
This team is now free from time-consuming receipt chasing; employees use a prepaid card to make a transaction, then use the Soldo mobile app to upload the receipt. As Ed put it, ‘No one likes holding on to receipts. With Soldo you just take a photo, and it goes through the system in three clicks.’
There are no excuses for lost receipts – and they no longer need an accounts person to manually input the receipts every month. In fact, the entire reconciliation process is a lot easier.
A case in point is that they ordered a Soldo card for marketing expenses, and a different card for office costs, so they can set up different spending categories and export reports on each category. Then, Soldo’s integration with the accounting system they use, Xero, automatically syncs the employee expense data.
The result? They’re saving 12 days a year.
There’s more: with Soldo the finance team gained flexibility, visibility, and control they hadn’t experienced with any solution in the past. They can order more cards as needed (including virtual cards, which Ed is excited to use more regularly), and set limits to each card.
‘If I need to change something up, I can log in now and set someone’s limits very quickly’, he says. Ed also appreciates how secure the system is; they can suspend a wrongdoer’s card in a blink – which would’ve been much harder to do if they were dealing with a bank or credit card company.
Now, Ed and his team know better than ever where company money is being spent. They can track spending in real time using the web console, check each card’s spending history, and receive alerts whenever someone’s card is low on funds. Admins also receive emails notifying them of missing receipts, so they know exactly who hasn’t uploaded their receipts yet. (And at LHi, if you don’t submit a receipt, you won’t be topped up again.)
All in all, employee satisfaction is up since LHi started using Soldo. ‘It makes our team leaders happy that they’re not spending their own money’, Ed tells us. We’re just happy we could help.