Saving five days a month with expense automation at Chaos Group

Life before Payhawk

Before switching to Payhawk, the team at Chaos Group had a very manual setup when it came to managing expenses. From multiple systems to multiple checks, their company payments and expense management processes took a lot of time and allowed little visibility over spending.

“We used to gather the invoices in Google Drive and reference them in a Google Sheet for the accounting department to use,” Ivan Slavchev, System Administrator, explained. “We made any company payments with bank-issued credit cards. But we only gave the cards to certain people in the company.”

The team knew things had to change. The manual finance admin involved with managing expenses was becoming overwhelming, and the processes were challenging for both finance and non-finance stakeholders.

Powering up process with automation

Ivan and the team at Chaos wanted to remove the manual admin from their financial processes. The data entry, double-checking, and manual tracking took up hours each week and meant that the finance team could not focus on more important strategic initiatives.

“We had to upload the expenses and invoices in a shared drive, paste links into Google Sheets, double-check whether an expense was paid via credit card or bank transfer, and track who made the expense. Then we had to go back and retrack old expenses in case we had missed any details the first time around,” Ivan said. “All of this added up to a massive workload.”

At Payhawk, we handle manual finance with intelligent automation and innovative technology. Our software has helped the Chaos Group to say goodbye to all of their tedious manual processes.

What happens when someone needs to make a payment? They use their Payhawk card (with in-built spend controls set by the finance team), then snap a picture of the receipt for the connected Payhawk app, choose a spend category, and the job’s done. The cardholder doesn’t have to fill in tonnes of paperwork to produce an expense report. And the finance team doesn’t have to chase the cardholder for a receipt, manually add the spend data, choose the category for coding, or update any spreadsheets.

“Simple approval chains, the ability to top up funds without going through a complicated process, visible costs and invoices, and receipts collected in a single place saves us many hours a month in back-and-forth chats and emails,” Ivan explained.

Improving agility with flexible card limits and fast issuance

Corporate cards were one of the other major challenges for the Chaos Group before switching to us.

“Before Payhawk, we used corporate cards from a traditional bank. There was no easy way to issue cards nor to control limits and approvals easily,” Ivan told us. “Cardholders were becoming a bottleneck for company purchases, and traditional bank cards limits and tedious bureaucracy were slowing us down and creating complications for both the cardholders and the accounting department.”

“Cardholders were becoming a bottleneck for company purchases, and traditional bank card limits and tedious bureaucracy were slowing us down and creating complications for both the cardholders and the accounting department.”

Since working with us, Chaos Group has dramatically sped up how they spend without sacrificing control. The team can now issue corporate cards in just seconds, with virtual cards set up and ready to go in a matter of clicks. The team has much more generous card limits, too, meaning they can stay agile and complete projects without pausing to talk to the bank. “We save time and move more quickly as we no longer have to wait for money to be loaded onto cards,” explained Ivan.

The team also uses our built-in card control features to set their company spend policy within the tool. The built-in controls, which can include approval workflows, spend limits, ATM withdrawal blocks, and more, help businesses empower their employees to spend for work without losing control.

“Refunds are easier, too,” Ivan mentioned. “And we get incorrectly paid VAT back faster.” Companies like Chaos Group can make significant savings via VAT reclaims by properly coding their receipts. And what’s more, they can decentralise this to the very people who are spending the money. Cardholders simply need to choose a category every time they upload a receipt or invoice.

“Lastly, we’ve been able to eliminate lots of our cash payments thanks to card issuance and expense tracking in Payhawk,” Ivan continued.

Making invoice and subscription management easy

Invoice management was a big challenge for the Chaos Group as it grew. They were working with multiple vendors and had multiple subscriptions – and all of this wasn't easy to manage using their historically manual process.

"Some expenses had to be paid in cash, and some invoices were on paper," Ivan said. "As the company grew, the complexity and the time required to carry out all tasks related to different purchases took up too much time, and the process was prone to error."

At Payhawk, our invoice and subscription spend management makes managing suppliers easy. The OCR technology pulls out all the relevant invoice data in the same way as it works for receipts. Plus, the subscription management feature means recurring payments get flagged and monitored. No more duplicate subscriptions, and no more cost creep.

"The ability to pay invoices saves us fees, offloads work from the accounting department, and allows me to manage purchases better (no more double paid or unpaid invoices)," Ivan explained. "As some of our vendors do not accept card payments."

Smooth sailing and saved time

“The biggest benefits, in my opinion, are time saved and process simplification. I need to purchase and maintain a lot of software licenses and subscriptions,” Ivan concluded. “And using Payhawk saves me between three and five working days each month.”

If you like the sound of saving time, automating tedious processes, and taking control of spend, just like Chaos Group – then book a demo today.