Easy reconciliations and fewer mistakes at Club Freelance

About Club Freelance

Club Freelance, now known as Mindquest, has focused on high-end IT recruitment services for over eight years. With over 100-150 contractors, the business fulfils the IT recruitment needs of more than 60 customers and generates over 20M in revenue.

Life before Payhawk

Before Payhawk, Club Freelance was experimenting with company cards but felt frustrated by the lack of flexibility involved with many of the prepaid cards on the market.

Tracking payments and reconciling receipts took a lot of time and sometimes left gaps that needed to be reconciled. They also felt stunted by traditional bank cards as there was no visibility over why a payment hadn't gone through.

Club Freelance used Xero for their accounting software and wanted cards and expense management that would sync seamlessly to manage their finances as efficiently and effectively as possible.

A smart Xero integration

The team at Club Freelance loves the Payhawk integration with Xero. Finance Director Alessandro Lupo shared how easy it is to use, explaining that they can sync the data in just a few clicks. The no-effort integration means that all their spend and accounting data is matched and aligned in seconds, saving them hours of manual admin.

"We use Xero for our accounting software at Club Freelance. And the Payhawk integration saves us a lot of time," Alessandro said.

Reconciliation is easy with the intuitive app

"The Payhawk app is so smart and intuitive," Alessandro explained. "The team loves the app because it's easy and straightforward for everyone to use. We've also seen fewer mistakes now that the built-in OCR tech captures all the receipt data once someone uploads a receipt. So, all they need to do is choose the right expense category, etc."

“The mobile app notifications are also very helpful. Each time an employee uses their corporate visa card; they get a message to upload the receipt. And if a payment doesn't go through, we receive a notification explaining the reason, such as low funds or an invalid PIN. This feature saves us so much time that we would spend on investigating otherwise, and I've never seen this proactiveness with a traditional bank."

Spend reconciliation with receipt matching is far easier to manage too. The Payhawk solution reminds card users to upload receipts once any payments have been made, which saves the finance team hours of chasing and encourages good practices from the wider business.

Moreover, the team is really happy to use the solution as it's so easy; the OCR tech captures all the receipt data so that card users (and the finance team) don't have to.

Combined controls: Cards and expense management software

"The mobile app notifications are also beneficial," Alessandro explained.

"Each time an employee uses their corporate visa card, they get a message to upload the receipt. And if a payment doesn't go through, we receive a notification explaining the reason, such as low funds or an invalid PIN. This feature saves us so much time that we would otherwise spend on investigating, and I've never seen this proactiveness with a traditional bank."

Using debit cards instead of prepaid cards has been a game changer for the company, too, as they've been able to top them up and introduce spend controls (like approval workflows) as required. These spend control features, which are part of the standard expense management software provided by Payhawk, mean that Club Freelance can automate a lot of their processes around policy that would otherwise be super time-consuming.

"Payhawk was a real asset during the COVID-19 crisis, as we tried to contain our costs as much as possible," Alessandro said. "The team wasn't allowed to create many expenses, and since we introduced Payhawk, the finance team has been able to track any expenditures from anywhere in real time."

Does Club Freelance's story sound familiar? Book a demo to see how Payhawk could save your business time and stress.