Embrace the future of corporate spend management with Payhawk

With Payhawk, you get a complete spend management solution, yes, but also a continuously expanding product that we consistently innovate to ensure it best fits our customers' needs.

"High velocity and solving complex customer problems are the two key aspects of how we evolve the Payhawk product. Every three months we release a new set of features — big and small. This rhythm has been instrumental for constantly delivering new value to our customers. We’re excited to share the most recent releases below." Ivan Kovalov, VP of Product at Payhawk, explained.

With great spend management power comes great behind-the-scenes effort. And we consider how and where we will focus when transforming spend management for our customers by spotlighting some of the biggest challenges faced by global and scaling organisations.

In Q2 2023, we focused our attention on solving a challenge faced by many of our customers who fall into the following brackets:

• +200 employees
• Two entities or more

The challenge? Scaling efficiently in a cohesive way and spending less time manually adding and checking data in their chosen ERP or accounting software.

Data shows (and our customers agreed) that the more complex their financial needs and geographic spread, the more they needed efficiency, control, and standardisation. And they needed them across the whole expense process, from the first card payment to the last reconciliation in the ERP at month-end.

With NetSuite reporting that 53% of businesses with more than 200 employees across the UK, Europe, and the US use Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance for their ERP, the timing was crucial too.

These businesses must be able to avoid manual spend data entry and lengthy reconciliation in order to thrive.

And that's where we come in.

Overcoming disconnected ERP and spend management software

Until now, the advantages of spend management solutions, such as enhanced spend control and streamlined finance automation, have been limited for the finance teams at larger multinational enterprises. They have been forced to connect multiple card and expense management tools to their ERPs to manage spend. However, they have often ended up with a lack of transparency and numerous delays as they try to juggle their many disconnected tools.

To compound the issue, a lack of API integrations with enterprise ERPs has meant extensive manual data transfer requirements and lengthy reconciliation processes, costing both time and money.

"Working without an expense management solution and ERP integration is like driving a 30-year-old car — no comfort and no speed. Some businesses have a back office with 25 people punching in numbers, but it's not efficient or necessary. We prefer to work with Payhawk to automate, integrate, and save money on headcount," Giancarlo Bruni, CFO at Heroes, explained.

Microsoft Dynamics integration suite

As part of our Q2 seasons product releases and improvements, we launched two direct integrations with Microsoft Dynamics.

We became an official partner and one of the first spend-management solutions listed on the Microsoft AppSource marketplace.

This partnership lets us offer live integrations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance. As a result, our customers can experience an accelerated month-end process, automated spend data entry, and time-saving real-time reconciliations, ensuring a seamless and efficient experience.

Multi-entity Management 2.0: Saving time with standardised global spend management

In Q2, our customers also started to enjoy improved Group Level spend management and control thanks to the release of a new suite of multi-entity management features.

Customers are now saving time and improving global standardisation in the following ways:

• Defining expense settings and workflows at the group level (and seamlessly applying them across entities)
• Retaining the flexibility to customise specific settings for each entity as required
• Onboarding entities into the platform faster by applying group settings, no need to set up from scratch
• And all this is in addition to the existing multi-entity management features, which offer a complete overview of spend, funds, and operational work — across the customer's entire group of entities

"Multi-Entity Management has already won the hearts of customers who otherwise find it hard to keep track of their spend, current funds, upcoming expenses, and outstanding operational tasks — all on group level across multiple subsidiaries," Ivan shared. "And we're happy to release the next iteration: helping customers manage their configuration at scale and roll out new legal entities quickly as soon as they're ready to expand their business."

Seamless supplier data syncs

We also launched a supplier management feature, equipped with a two-way fully automated data sync with ERPs and accounting systems, eliminating the need for time-consuming manual data entry.

With our integrations and supplier management features, our customers' master data remains up-to-date and precise, ensuring compliance and reducing the risk of fraud.

What's more, they have the freedom to fully customise supplier data as well as define which expense data fields to make supplier-driven, thus further automating data entry based on Supplier. The best part? This feature comes at no extra cost and is automatically available to all Payhawk customers helping them say adios to manual data entry for good.

What else is new?

Beyond our shiny new releases, we also enhanced our current features. We listened to our customers and set about solving their problems in new, efficiency-boosting ways. Our customers are now saving more time, spending more cost-effectively, and supporting compliance with the following features:

Auto-blocking cards for late expenses
This functionality lets you auto-block cards when employees have failed to submit a set number of expenses, supporting timely expense submission with the correct documentation, and likely increasing your VAT reclaims.

AI-powered camera for expense processing
This newly improved AI-powered OCR feature provides automatic scanning and cropping capabilities, enhancing data capture and input for even greater accuracy.

Linked account top-up
Thanks to our new PSD2 integration, it is now possible to link accounts in the platform and effortlessly add funds to debit accounts or initiate partial repayments of credit through our web portal.

Multiple rates for mileage
This feature helps customers set precise rates according to preferred criteria, such as vehicle type, travel purpose, and more.

Filter expenses by custom fields
This improved feature allows admins and accountants to filter expenses based on their custom fields (such as project or cost centre) during the review process, supporting a faster, more effective expense review.

Approval status filters
The approval status filter gives admins and accountants enhanced visibility into the reasons behind unapproved expenses, supporting quick and well-informed actions.

Line item notes
This new feature lets users easily include notes for each line item when splitting an expense, enabling the finance team to capture additional spend details effortlessly.

Adding reserved funds to Payhawk balance statement
The reserved funds feature offers a transparent summary of all authorisations and pending transfers as of a period's conclusion, helping businesses make informed planning decisions.

Ready to discover spend management that never sleeps?

At Payhawk, we put our customers at the centre of everything. We understand that our product and features can help ensure their ongoing success by giving them visibility and control over company spend — and this is a huge responsibility.

Want to add an award-winning and continually improving spend management solution to your competitive arsenal? Book a demo today and see how our evolving features can change how you spend for business.

*Source: G2 reports - User Satisfaction Ratings 1 April 28, 2023, User Satisfaction Ratings 2 April 28, 2023 - Payment Card Issuance category, User Satisfaction Ratings 3 April 28, 2023, User Satisfaction Ratings 4 April 28, 2023