Payhawk's direct integration with NetSuite: Benefits and insights

Many companies use NetSuite to help them manage multiple business initiatives and offer a single source of truth over business performance and function. From accounting, customer relationship management (CRM), and financials to project management and e-commerce, NetSuite can equip even complex businesses to stay agile.

Giancarlo Bruni, CFO at e-commerce company, Heroes, explained, "we use our ERP across all our departments. We have it in the People Team, for example, for payroll, taxes, etc. And in Supply Chain, too, for inventory planning, etc. It's relevant for every single department."

So, what if you want to take advantage of NetSuite’s great ERP features but also arm your teams with corporate Visa cards, implement spend controls, and save hours in manual admin a day through digital data capture?

The answer is simple: you can use Payhawk as your spend management solution and integrate directly with NetSuite as your ERP. This native integration will let your spend data flow seamlessly from our solution into NetSuite in accordance with the accruals concept. While still allowing you to leverage our expense management software to maintain spend control (with daily limits, spend caps, and more) and encourage efficiency with time-saving technology, like auto-receipt chasing and OCR.

Convenient ERP integrations: Get all your stats in one place

A good ERP integration can help you get a complete picture of your business performance and operations by pulling data from various sources.

For example, imagine you have three apps tracking your sales, inventory, and invoices. And each uses a different database to store its information. You'd have to export all three databases and merge them into one spreadsheet — which is time-consuming and error-prone.

At Payhawk, our native NetSuite integration does things differently as it follows our key integration strategy, prioritizing the seamless flow of accurate data. For example, you can do the following:

• Select 'mark as reviewed' to bring the invoices up instantly in NetSuite
• Get one source of truth via the ERP. With info on tracking categories, account codes, VAT rates, classes, and more
• Save time on reconciliation. All the expenses in Payhawk have an invoice and payment date to accurately reflect the timing difference in accordance with the accruals principle
• Use 'true' transaction types to support the accounting/ ERP logic
• Swerve potential errors, as it uses purchase invoices and bills (and bank receipts and payments) instead of manual journals
• Treat foreign exchange transactions correctly (thank to the IAS 21)

Automatic data capture from invoices and receipts

While we're on receipts and invoices, data capture is essential for any business to keep track of its spending, but manually capturing and entering data takes time away from core business functions.

Not good so far, but here's how simple it can be with Payhawk. Your cardholder makes a payment using their Payhawk card. Photographs and uploads their receipt into the app and selects a custom spend category from a dropdown (which has been previously populated by the finance team). Our OCR tech then scans any invoices and receipts and extracts all the relevant information, such as prices and descriptions, so that all the data is now in the system and your finance team can see the spend in real-time and which category/budget it sits in.

What's more, you can support the above with strict spend controls. With Payhawk, you can build your spend policy right into the app so that it's easy for your cardholders to stay compliant. From spend caps, daily limits, and ATM withdrawal blocks, there are tonnes of ways to support spend control before your colleagues even swipe their cards.

And if someone forgets to capture their receipt? Then the software automatically chases them to help ensure no receipts go unuploaded.

"Payhawk's direct integration with NetSuite is a game-changer. It's basically 'one click and done' to export any info. It's much more time-efficient and gives me real-time visibility on the ERP," explained Eduardo Felipez, Management Accountant at Heroes. "Now, I can say how much we've spent, what we can spend, if we need to pause budgets, update budgets, optimize, etc., at any time. If a Senior Leader asks, what is this expense? And why are we spending so much here? I can comment and update policies in just a few clicks."

No more manual data reconciliation between multiple platforms

We help save you time by automating the data reconciliation process, too. Thanks to our integration with NetSuite, you don't have to manually enter data from multiple platforms into spreadsheets or accounting systems to match corporate company card transactions and perform bank reconciliation. It's all done automatically. With our all-in-one spend management solution, companies can quickly see how much they're spending on business expenses and where they're spending it across the different departments.

"We have five entities, with approx 300-500 expenses a month in the parent company. It used to take me one whole day per entity to review, import and export, and put the expenses in the correct format. With the direct Payhawk integration to NetSuite, I spend just an hour daily on this. It's an enormous help," said Heroes Management Accountant Eduardo Felipez.

Error-proof processing and reporting

You may have experienced the frustration of reconciling a report only to find several glaring errors. That error is often due to mistakes made when entering data. Our direct integration with NetSuite provides you with the tools you need to eliminate error-prone bookkeeping and finance processes. As a result, you can:

• Submit and approve expenses in real-time, eliminating paper forms and manual data entry
• Automatically process payments (if reimbursing) or fund requests (if your colleague is using a Payhawk card) based on pre-approved budgets, ensuring that each employee only receives what they are owed and no more or less

Eduardo Felipez, Management Accountant at Heroes, said, "we wouldn't work with an expense management provider that didn't have integration with NetSuite or another chosen ERP. We process 300-500 invoices a month. So, if our expense management solution didn't integrate with our ERP, we would have errors, and everything would be harder and take longer."

Key takeaways

As Heroes CFO Giancarlo Bruni says, "Working without expense management and an ERP 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."

Learn how you can save time and stay agile with smart, direct ERP integrations. Book a demo today.