How Payhawk helped us become a cashless business

VP of Finance at Luxair, Tineke Van Maerken, mentioned that before introducing Payhawk, the airline had manual cash registers for its tour guides in 40 destinations. The tour guides then each submitted an excel cash register with scanned ticket copies every month. The accounting team then had to manually enter all of the information in the accounting system based on a paper scan of over 80 cash registers.

Life before Payhawk

Before moving to Payhawk, Luxair employees had to pay for all their business-related expenses from their own personal bank account. Then, all receipts had to be stuck to a handmade expense order, copied twice, and sent to the HR department to be reimbursed. It was a slow process, and the airline wanted to improve it.

Also, at this point, Luxair didn’t have a digitised overview of company spend. They couldn’t see what the company was spending per category or guide. And data mining was cumbersome. The approval process was manual, too, requiring an approver’s signature via a scanned document or email.

Luxair wanted to become cashless, control its spend more efficiently and understand who was spending, how much, and where.

Why Payhawk

Luxair decided to move on with Payhawk for three main reasons. “First, the accessibility to fast credit card issuance. You can issue a card on the web platform, and cardholders will receive it in less than three days. Second, the user-friendly expense management app linked to corporate cards.

"Payhawk allows even employees without company cards to submit out-of-pocket business expenses to the app."

Van Maerken also explained that they can now centrally manage the tour guides’ budgets with company card limits and better control the business’s overall spending.

“Good governance leads us to having traceable expenses in each and every business,” Van Maerken told us. The airline has real-time info on what it spends on its tour guides — and it successfully digitised its authorisation process. Plus, it can now create valuable expense reports automatically at the end of the month.

“As an administrator, I can adapt the card limits instantaneously to suit the business needs. Every cardholder has a monthly limit, but if unexpected expenses occur they can request funds quickly via the app."

The employee simply sends a request through the Payhawk app for additional funds, including an explanation, and I can instantly approve it, empowering our team on the ground,” Van Maerken said.

Feeling empowered

One of Luxair employees told us that after switching to Payhawk, “I feel totally empowered, and for sure, it’s a sign of trust from my employer. We received some training on how to use the cards and upload card receipts and other personal expenses. But the best thing of all is that I now have my own monthly budget”.

If you want to learn more about becoming a cashless business like Luxair, you can download our free ebook to build your cashless business. Or, if you’re ready to take the next step, book a demo with us.