As a finance leader, you want visibility and control over:

1. Individual spend
2. Company spend across departments, merchants and projects

At Soldo, we make it simple for finance leaders to set budgets for both types of spend. You can easily orchestrate different budgets and get a 360 degree view of where money is going. This post walks through how.

How can I split my company budget across different teams, projects and merchants?

Soldo enables you to split your company budget for different purposes through what we call ‘expense centres’.

You could have, for example, a ‘marketing expense centre’ pulling in money from the company’s main wallet. Let’s say you allocate £500k to the marketing expense centre card. Money from the marketing expense centre can then be distributed into specific marketing team cards like ‘demand generation’ or ‘sales’ with different budgets.

You could have an ‘online advertising expense centre’ pulling in money from the company’s main wallet. Money from this can then be distributed into specific cards like LinkedIn and Facebook. Any employee with permission can spend from these cards.

Who can access the money on an expense centre card?

The use of non-nominative cards means that any person in the business can legally use an expense centre card. This is unlike the use of individual named cards being shared amongst different people which can result in legal implications.

Once you’ve activated your expense centre cards you have the option to assign and re-assign the cards to your users.

Ensure that each user is set-up with their phone number and email address so that when you assign the cards to a user they will have access to the information and spend accordingly.  

Expense centres don’t need to represent a physical person, and can thus be used to satisfy payment needs for areas of your business rather than individuals. Expense centres can be used for departmental, project or spend for any other type of cost centre your company incurs.  

You can create multiple cards under your expense centres, each of those cards will pull from one wallet and therefore share the same budget.  

What are the benefits of expense centres?

• You can track where department cards are being spent and by whom  
• Department budgets and personal budgets will vary. Expense centre cards will give your employees the freedom to spend within their remits  
• They are perfect for subscriptions and online media spend
  You can assign and re-assign non-nominative cards to users from your Web Console
• They are unaffected by employee churn. Once you create virtual cards linked to an expense centre, this is not linked to any individual in your business
• Have oversight on how much is being spent, safe in the knowledge that no ‘under the radar’ charges are being made to your card as you control the transfers and budgets  
• Project based spend: You can create an expense centre for certain projects. You allocate your budget, create multiple cards and assign these to all those associated with the project. You can then track your spend and ensure there’s no over-expenditure  
• Create expense centres for contractors: with a non-nominative card you will not need to replace the card. You can instead can re-assign to another contractor when needed

How can I allocate money to individual employees?

Through Soldo, you can allocate money to individual people via what we call user accounts. This money can be used by each employee by issuing them physical and virtual cards to allow remote spending. The budget on each card is set by an admin.

You can set-up free user accounts for every employee in your business. Once that’s all configured you can decide who should be issued with their personal Soldo Card.  

What  spend access can employees have with their individual cards?

Each individual in your business can have their own card, with their own budgets, rules and permissions. You can issue multiple wallets with multiple currencies and create cards accordingly. Every person in your business can therefore have access to their own company card which you can control through the Web Console.  

Employees can manage their own expenses via the Web Console and mobile app. A user can view all their purchases in their mobile app, snap their receipts on the go, add notes and track accordingly.  

By giving an employee access to the Web Console, they’re able to view their statements as they would with their personal bank account. They won’t be able to view any other information other than their own in the web console –  this just adds another tracking ability to an employees’ personal expenses.

What are the benefits of user accounts?

• You can show value in your employees by issuing each with their own Soldo Company Card. No more hassle of petty cash claims and time consuming expense reports  
• Spend, Snap, Sync – it’s so easy for users to spend remotely with their Soldo card. Automatic notifications after each purchase will appear on their mobile. They can quickly snap a receipt, attach it to their purchase, select the correct category, add any relevant notes and they’re done!  

Can I have a mix of users and expense centres?  

We would recommend having a mix. Think about the org structure of your company and allocate accordingly.

Track spend with individual user cards for personal expenses and work this in tandem with your expense centres to ensure an employee isn’t having to dip into their personal budget to pay for a department or company expense.  

Soldo is set-up to mirror your company function. By creating individual wallets for users and creating expense centres, you can track your company spend in real-time. You can decide what access you give to each of your employees and vary this according to their role and function in the business.

Not everyone will have access to the company wallet and by setting up transfers and rules across both your users and expense centre wallets and cards you can have peace of mind that your company spend is being used in the most efficient way possible.