The Spend Management Platform that Saves Time and Employee Churn

Pay first, reimburse later: it’s so passé. But for too many employees, making business purchases still means dipping into their own pockets.

A recent survey found that 92% of employees across Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Spain and the UK pay for work expenses with personal money. Misplaced receipts and other unclaimed costs meant UK workers lost an average of £123 per person, or a total of £962 million, in 2018 alone, according to a Barclaycard study.

And that’s just the money lost. What about the time wasted chasing after people and paperwork to ensure accounts are correct and up to date? But one solution is changing the game for spending: Pleo.

“Before we got Pleo, we were handling people’s expenses every month in a very old-fashioned way,” recalls Kristian Hollmann, CFO at Cobe, an architecture firm in Denmark. “They had a piece of paper they had to clip on to receipts and fill out a form. Our accountant would pay out the money to them, and this was done somewhere between 200 to 300 times a month, taking up [too] much time.”

Source: Pleo

Pleo makes managing business spending elegant and straightforward. It provides physical and virtual cards along with its linked app, which tracks expenses in real-time. Whether it’s buying a cup of coffee, booking accommodation, or paying for online subscriptions, Pleo cards have industry-leading acceptance rates. That’s thanks to partnerships with Mastercard and JP Morgan.

“When I go travelling, it doesn’t matter if I’m in London, Berlin or Prague,” says Jacob Fredsgaard, an IT support specialist at Monstarlab (formerly Nodes), a self-described “app factory” with offices across the world. “I can use my Pleo to pay for whatever expense I have. Having a payment card that works everywhere makes everything a lot easier.”

Any employee can get their own Pleo card, and the company can customise the budget limits and access rights — that includes freelancers and remote workers. Last year, Pleo’s software business grew 150%, and it more than doubled its customer base to almost 20,000, spanning six countries – the UK, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain and Sweden — when working-from-home became widely adopted.

Nearly every user (95%!) says Pleo is easy to navigate. Purchase something at a café, take a picture of the receipt, and you’re done. When you pay for Microsoft Azure, the Fetch feature can automatically match the receipt from your inbox to Pleo. Purchases can be recorded and reviewed in real-time, turning expense management into light work for cardholders and the accounting department. A recent survey found admins save an average of 11.5 hours per month doing expenses using Pleo, with 72% saying Pleo gives them a better overview of how company money is spent.

Having their cards not only lifts the burden of out-of-pocket spending and cuts the reimbursement drama, but it also shows employees that their company trusts them. That trust can go a long way. A Harvard Business Review study found that people working at high-trust companies reported 106% more energy at work, 76% more engagement, 74% less stress, 50% more productivity, and 40% less burnout than at companies with low trust levels. Less oppressive scrutiny shows employees that companies have faith in them, making them feel valued at work. And that is what Pleo envisioned from the start.

Jeppe Rindom, Pleo CEO and co-founder. Source: Pleo

“Since day one, we’ve been committed to creating a spending solution that encourages a work culture built on trust and transparency, instead of overwhelming control and needless bureaucracy,” says Jeppe Rindom, Pleo CEO and co-founder. Those comments came in a blog post announcing the company raised $150 million in its Series C funding in July – the most significant Series C raised in Denmark so far.

“The future of work empowers employees with the tools they need to be effective, productive, and successful,” says Keri Gohman, a member of Pleo’s board of directors and a partner at Bain Capital Ventures.

“Pleo understands this critical shift for modern companies toward employee centricity – providing workers with a fun-to-use spend management app that automatically tracks their corporate spending and generates expense reports, paired with the powerful tools businesses need to create full visibility and management of every penny spent.”

Sounds like a win for everyone.

Get started with Pleo today for a simple and innovative spending management solution for your company.