Fleet Managers and Operation Managers are increasingly convincing their CFOs themselves that cash and fuel cards no longer work, as they experience on a daily basis the immense frustrations among themselves and drivers. The current economic situation and fuel crisis call for new solutions in a transport sector where mutual trust is traditionally low.

Three trends for transport companies

Drivers as well as their Finance and Operations departments experience a lot of frustration around expenses and claims. And those frustrations are increasing, as a result of three key trends for transport companies.

One is that drivers are increasingly having to fill up at other places because of the current fuel crisis. This also occurs at filling stations where the driver does not have a fuel card, while due to high inflation and economic recession, nobody wants to advance costs out of their own pocket anymore. Meanwhile, the huge staff shortage is forcing transport companies to make things easier for drivers with innovative solutions.

1. Drivers sometimes need to refuel in other places
   The current fuel crisis is making it difficult for drivers to invariably fill up at their regular locations. In other cases, the crisis makes it difficult for drivers to fill up at least at the petrol station chain for which they have a payment card. In practice, it means that drivers must swerve on the road, for instance if fuel is not available at certain locations.The war in Ukraine, current economic developments and the high price of diesel and other fuels make it attractive to fill up across the border in more advantageous countries. In other cases, it is necessary, for instance, because certain petrol stations do not have sufficient supplies. If no payment card is available for the alternative filling station, drivers and the transport companies look for alternatives. A payment card from a particular filling station then no longer offers a solution.
2. No one wants to advance out of pocket anymore
   The same economic situation and soaring prices, combined with massive inflation, are creating an additional challenge for drivers. Whereas in the past they were willing to advance unforeseen costs out of their own pockets, this is now much less common. Many drivers do not want to advance the cost, and others simply cannot advance it.They call the transport company they work for to make extra money available. Or they use an emergency envelope with cash money, which in turn the company has no control over. It leads to solutions that both drivers and the transport companies do not like, so for which they would like to find an alternative.
3. Transport companies should make it easier for drivers
   Finally, there is a lot of pressure on transport companies. The current staff shortage in several markets in Europe is leading to great difficulty in finding new drivers. Companies must try harder to attract staff, and then cannot use frustrations over expenses and allowances. It increases the urgency to act now.
   

Much frustration for drivers as well as Fleet and Operations Managers

It is mostly Fleet Managers and Operations Managers at transport companies who experience this frustration. They are often called even in the evening hours and on weekends, by drivers who need extra money on the road. This is true, for example, when they need to divert to another filling station, just as when they suddenly have to spend the night elsewhere, when they need to have a repair done or when they incur other expenses.

And even at the time when a driver only has to incur the regular costs, it leads to a lot of administration, and frustration. Drivers must keep perfectly accurate records of expenses, and then submit a claim in Excel. Or they can use a fuel card, but then it is the Operations Manager who then has to check whether transactions are all correct.

Transport companies have traditionally been reluctant to issue credit cards to drivers. Many of the drivers only work for a relatively short time with the same employer, or even do seasonal work, and therefore do not build strong and loyal bonds. Mutual trust is too fragile to give a credit card in the company’s name, which would allow the driver to pay all expenses. The fuel card is an exception to this, but it does not allow for paying for repairs, overnight stays, and fuel at non-affiliated filling stations.

Solution for (large) transport companies

At Soldo, we offer a solution that works for both (large) transport companies and drivers. Our payment solution allows drivers to settle at the transport company’s expense. That applies to fuel, as well as overnight stays, lunches, repairs, and other expenses. That is, if authorised by the company.
Thanks to restrictions on specific spending categories, certain geographical areas and in other areas, it is possible to set exactly what a driver can spend. Then the transactions are immediately visible, from one clear dashboard.

Good practices at Titans and Sendsio

These advantages is the reason why many large transport companies we work for are happy to benefit from. A good example is Titans Group. They were not looking for a fuel card because it would make them dependent on a specific fuel supplier. On the other hand, they did suffer from high expenses and temporary workers in the peak season. With Soldo, they offer their drivers a simple payment solution, combined with a smart app. This gives Titans Group full control and all the necessary insight into transactions. Drivers, on the other hand, do not have to advance anything, even if they suddenly must swerve and fill up in an unusual place.

Sendsio also chose Soldo. This makes the monthly closing a lot less time-consuming, and day-to-day management is much less burdensome for Fleet Managers and Operations Managers. For them, a declaration now takes 30 minutes, whereas previously employees spent an average of half a day on it. There are no more advances and recoveries for fuel, overnight stays, and lunches. Moreover, the company has interfaced with their SAP software. As a result, even the organisation’s CEO and COO have real-time insight into costs and keep an overview more easily

Faster and with real-time insight and overview: Soldo

At Soldo, we offer a complete, user-friendly, and convenient payment solution. Transport companies use a payment card for drivers, which they can set up themselves. This prevents drivers from having to advance costs themselves or becoming dependent on specific suppliers for fuel, for example. It is no longer necessary to provide a credit card, while drivers can still pay anywhere with credit card is accepted.

Thanks to real-time visibility, overview, and possible links to, for example, SAP software and ERP systems, all data are always easily available. Links with the existing accounting software, for example, ensure that transactions are immediately entered correctly in the administration.

Would you like to know more about how Titans Group and Sendsio use our payment solutions? Or are you curious how your company can benefit from this? Together with my colleagues, I will be happy to explain it to you, even if, as a Fleet Manager or Operations Manager, you would like to do the talking yourself to convince your organisation’s CFO.

Check out Soldo.com or book a free, no-obligation demo to experience it for yourself straight away.

How do you control fuel costs made by drivers when they are on the road, across borders, or even in different time zones? It is a challenge many transport companies face. Asking drivers to pay out of their own pocket leads to frustration, and corporate credit cards require a lot of paperwork. There’s an easier, more efficient way to manage these expenses. 

Sometimes, transport companies can resemble administration offices. Operations and finance departments work overtime to process and check all (fuel) payments. Meanwhile, drivers must pay large sums of money out of pocket to do their jobs, save receipts, fill out forms, and wait to be reimbursed.

To add to these challenges, diesel prices have become a huge issue for transport companies. And according to current fuel monitors, there’s not much hope of improvement.

Paying in cash or with prepaid fuel cards

Fuel payments and other business expenses are often disregarded in favour of operation and logistic improvements.

As a result, too many companies with fleets of over 100 vehicles still allow drivers to pay for fuel themselves or with prepaid fuel cards. However, these debit cards are often restricted and come with a lot of limitations, causing dissatisfaction among drivers. These restrictions also make it difficult to cover overnight stays, road repairs, or parking fees.

This solution doesn’t benefit fleet managers and financial controllers either, and may even put the company at risk. Cash payments can encourage fraud, corporate credit cards are often misused, receipts get lost, and there’s no way to track spending in real time.

Admin hassles

For transport companies, accounting can be complex – even if it’s just about fuel costs. It causes a great deal of frustration among drivers, accountants, fleet managers, and eventually CFOs.

Drivers have trouble managing expenses without having to work overtime on a daily basis. Especially when they’re on the road and have to fill up their vehicles – often across borders and sometimes in other time zones. This admin work involves processing payments, managing cash expenses, and processing claims in the company’s accounting system.

Accountants, fleet managers, operations managers, and even drivers waste too much time on these tasks, all at the expense of productivity. These unproductive hours cost money, and can’t be spent on their ultimate goal: getting from point A to point B.

Drivers must also prove what they have spent in cash, which adds to the hassle. Cash payments are hard to verify, but they keep them going and relieve the administrative burden. Checks may prevent business fraud, but they undermine the trust of those making the payments.

Top 5 benefits of using Soldo

Transport companies such as Titans, Girteka, Gruber Logistics, and Wallenborn all chose Soldo because it offered them at least one of these five advantages:

1. Easy payments for fuel and more

With a smart payment card which drivers can use for fuel as well as other expenses, there’s no need to go out of pocket while on the road. They don’t have to use a business credit card and provide guarantees or collateral in exchange. They charge just as easily for overnight accommodation, repairs and parking costs – even in different geographical locations.

2. Real-time view of costs

Soldo gives accountants, fleet managers and operations managers real-time insight into drivers’ costs while they’re on the road. They get a notification whenever a transaction happens, and can instantly top up drivers with only a few clicks.

3. Flexible spending and limits

Smart payment cards make it possible to set what drivers are allowed to spend in a way that works for you. You can choose what type of expenses employees can make, and where (such as specific merchants of geo-locations). This gives you total control over fuel costs and other business expenses while drivers are in transit, even in different countries.

4. All expenses in one place

You can track and manage all fuel and business expenses at once with the Soldo platform. It shows you all incurred costs in detail, whether costs are rising and where savings opportunities exist. And thanks to our auto-tagging feature, payments will be automatically sorted by category.

5. Increased security

Replacing cash with smart payment cards for expenses greatly reduces the risk of false claims and fraud. Moreover, should employees fail to comply with rules and regulations, you can easily lock their cards to disable spending and switch off cash withdrawals.

Smart payment cards with flexible options

Looking for a way to combine all the benefits of a business credit card with a system that saves you a tonne of admin headaches? Give drivers and other employees a physical card as well as a virtual alternative. Virtual cards are great for ad-hoc and online payments, for instance.

Soldo is the all-in-one management platform your transport company needs. Stay on top of every penny while saving time, and boost employee satisfaction.

We’ve got some exciting news! After a lot of careful thinking and hard work behind the scenes, we’re thrilled to have launched a shiny new range of Soldo plans.

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about our new plans, including:

• Why we’ve launched new plans
• What’s included in our new plans
• How you can move to a new plan

Before we dive in though, we wanted to make two things very clear.

Firstly, these aren’t just new plans for new customers. All existing customers can move straight over to a new plan – whether that’s a simple old-to-new switch or an upgrade to the next plan level.

And secondly, you can find even more detailed information about our new plans by heading over to the dedicated FAQs page on our website.

The thinking behind our new plans

We’ve launched new plans for a simple, yet crucially important, reason: to better serve your needs.

As a business, we’re committed to continuous improvement and constantly evolving to meet our customers’ changing needs. Our new plans are designed to give you even more value and the best possible experience from Soldo.

The plans include a range of exciting new features (more on these below) that put you firmly in the driver’s seat. Advanced control means managing all your company and employee expenses in one place – increased flexibility means doing that in a way that suits you and your business.

No more messy switching between systems and spreadsheets. From splitting payments into multiple transactions and managing out-of-pocket expenses, to identifying and controlling out-of-policy spending. Everything you need to oversee every business expense, ready and waiting for you in Soldo.

Importantly, all of the new and improved features we roll out now and in the future are exclusively available on our new plans…watch this space for outbound transfers coming early 2023.

Let’s talk about the new features

The new features we’ve launched (and the adjustments we’ve made to existing ones) better reflect the needs of our customers today. And that’s just the beginning of a whole roadmap of features that we’re rolling out exclusively for our new plans in the coming months – and long into the future.

With these features, our new plans unlock a truly end-to-end, integrated company spend and employee expense management experience.

To get a better idea of what that means in practice, let’s take a look at some of the features exclusively available on our new plans as well as a few key adjustments.

Spotlight on our new Pro plan

When you move to our new Pro plan, you’ll get:

• Access to brand new expense management features you can use to review, track and classify expenses into customisable categories that make sense for your business
• Three cards for subscriptions/online ads included in the price of your plan, plus a dedicated dashboard to give you complete visibility
• More control over ad-hoc spending with five temporary virtual cards per month included in your plan, valid for seven days and up to 10 purchases
• The flexibility to add between three and 20 users to your account with a card for every user included and up to 30 cards available

We’ve made a few adjustments to make sure the features are better aligned to each plan. For example, transaction reporting and auto-tagging will now be available from our Premium plan level.

Spotlight on our new Premium plan

Our new Premium plan includes five cards for subscription/online ads and 10 temporary virtual cards for pre-approved spend per month. You can add between three and 30 users, each with their own card included and up to 40 cards available.

The best part about moving or upgrading to a new Premium plan is exclusive access to our full expense management suite, meaning you can:

• Add out-of-pocket expenses to Soldo, so you can track and manage all company spending in one place
• Split single transactions into several with the right amount of money attributed to the right employee to get more accurate reporting
• Add spending policy profiles directly to Soldo and run reports that highlight any transactions that fall outside of them to easily identify and manage out-of-policy expenses
• Categorise transactions, so employees can classify payments into categories you’ve defined to suit your needs

On all our new plans

You’ll pay a monthly fee on our new plans. This is based on the number of users on your Soldo account, instead of the number of cards. Monthly fees start from a minimum of three users and every user has a card included.

Check out our pricing page for all the details.

How soon can you move to a new plan?

You can move to a new plan right now in four simple steps:

1. Log in to your Soldo account
2. Go to Company info
3. Open the Soldo plans tab
4. Select the new plan you’d like to move to

When you move to a new plan, we’ll make the change immediately, starting from the current billing period. If you decide to move to a different plan at any time after 24 October 2022, only our new plans will be available.

We recommend moving as soon as possible to start getting the most value from Soldo. You’ll instantly unlock your exclusive access to new and upcoming features only available on our new plans.

Log in now to get started or head to our pricing page to choose the best new plan for your business.

This episode of the CFO Playbook features an interview with Alwyn Jones, Group CFO at Luno, a leading global cryptocurrency company with over 9 million customers in 43 countries that provides services for making it safe and easy to buy, store and learn about cryptocurrencies.

In this episode, Alwyn talks about the novel and evolving space of cryptocurrency and blockchain. He shares advice on retaining and hiring in a nascent industry,  as well as starting an app based bank from scratch. Alwyn also discusses the importance of building personal resilience and embracing the latest financial technology to improve performance.

Building a bank from scratch

Cryptocurrency can be an ambiguous concept. As a leader in a novel financial services sector, there aren’t many preset rules or regulations to follow. While things could seemingly be great at one moment, there could be complete turmoil the next. Upcoming CFOs should be ready for a completely different challenge in this industry.

“Every day is different. Every day could be a curious mix between wild elation of what’s been achieved and being punched in the face, sometimes in the space of an hour. So starting from scratch, it’s a bit of a truism, but you are doing everything for the first time, in many cases.”

Open dialogue among leaders

Uncertainty in a new sector can be troubling, especially for a single leader in the C-suite. Consistent and clear communication among leaders of a company make navigating an evolving space like crypto much more manageable.

“[Cryptocurrency] is definitely becoming more mainstream. I think four or five years ago you could have ignored this. I think now as CFO you need to be at least having a view and having maybe a dialogue with your board about what we should be doing in this space and how we can leverage and harness that technology.”

 

The importance of independent team members

Leaders cannot succeed without a team to follow. It’s just as important to have an open dialogue with your team as much as it is with your board. You want to hire and retain valuable team members who aren’t entirely co-dependent on your every word. In a nascent space such as crypto, it’s hard to source candidates based solely on work experience because it is still an emerging sector.

“You need to hire people who can thrive in that environment, like uncertainty, very much able to shape something independently and move it forward without necessarily having a plan or a playbook or a set of rules for how it gets done.”

 

Progression through adopting new technology

It is important to provide your team with the right tools to succeed in their positions independently. Sometimes new technologies can seem daunting, but taking the time and resources to adopt new tech into the structure of a team can be crucial for progression.

“What technology can do for finance teams, be it, are you using an outsourced ledger system? Are you using a system and a plan? Are you putting all your data in the cloud? All of this technology increases control, increases fidelity, increases speed, and that is priceless in the environments that we’re dealing in.”

We’ve got some exciting news! After a lot of careful thinking and hard work behind the scenes, we’re thrilled to have launched a shiny new range of Soldo plans.

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about our new plans, including:

• Why we’ve launched new plans
• What’s included in our new plans
• How you can move to a new plan

Before we dive in though, we wanted to make two things very clear.

Firstly, these aren’t just new plans for new customers. All existing customers can move straight over to a new plan – whether that’s a simple old-to-new switch or an upgrade to the next plan level.

And secondly, you can find even more detailed information about our new plans by heading over to the dedicated FAQs page on our website.

The thinking behind our new plans

We’ve launched new plans for a simple, yet crucially important, reason: to better serve your needs.

As a business, we’re committed to continuous improvement and constantly evolving to meet our customers’ changing needs. Our new plans are designed to give you even more value and the best possible experience from Soldo.

The plans include a range of exciting new features (more on these below) that put you firmly in the driver’s seat. Advanced control means managing all your company and employee expenses in one place – increased flexibility means doing that in a way that suits you and your business.

No more messy switching between systems and spreadsheets. From splitting payments into multiple transactions and managing out-of-pocket expenses, to identifying and controlling out-of-policy spending. Everything you need to oversee every business expense, ready and waiting for you in Soldo.

Importantly, all of the new and improved features we roll out now and in the future are exclusively available on our new plans…watch this space for outbound transfers coming early 2023.

Let’s talk about the new features

The new features we’ve launched (and the adjustments we’ve made to existing ones) better reflect the needs of our customers today. And that’s just the beginning of a whole roadmap of features that we’re rolling out exclusively for our new plans in the coming months – and long into the future.

With these features, our new plans unlock a truly end-to-end, integrated company spend and employee expense management experience.

To get a better idea of what that means in practice, let’s take a look at some of the features exclusively available on our new plans as well as a few key adjustments.

Spotlight on our new Pro plan

When you move to our new Pro plan, you’ll get:

• Access to brand new expense management features you can use to review, track and classify expenses into customisable categories that make sense for your business
• Three cards for subscriptions/online ads included in the price of your plan, plus a dedicated dashboard to give you complete visibility
• More control over ad-hoc spending with five temporary virtual cards per month included in your plan, valid for seven days and up to 10 purchases
• The flexibility to add between three and 20 users to your account with a card for every user included and up to 30 cards available

We’ve made a few adjustments to make sure the features are better aligned to each plan. For example, transaction reporting and auto-tagging will now be available from our Premium plan level.

Spotlight on our new Premium plan

Our new Premium plan includes five cards for subscription/online ads and 10 temporary virtual cards for pre-approved spend per month. You can add between three and 30 users, each with their own card included and up to 40 cards available.

The best part about moving or upgrading to a new Premium plan is exclusive access to our full expense management suite, meaning you can:

• Add out-of-pocket expenses to Soldo, so you can track and manage all company spending in one place
• Split single transactions into several with the right amount of money attributed to the right employee to get more accurate reporting
• Add spending policy profiles directly to Soldo and run reports that highlight any transactions that fall outside of them to easily identify and manage out-of-policy expenses
• Categorise transactions, so employees can classify payments into categories you’ve defined to suit your needs

On all our new plans

You’ll pay a monthly fee on our new plans. This is based on the number of users on your Soldo account, instead of the number of cards. Monthly fees start from a minimum of three users and every user has a card included.

Check out our pricing page for all the details.

How soon can you move to a new plan?

You can move to a new plan right now in four simple steps:

1. Log in to your Soldo account
2. Go to Company info
3. Open the Soldo plans tab
4. Select the new plan you’d like to move to

When you move to a new plan, we’ll make the change immediately, starting from the current billing period. If you decide to move to a different plan at any time after 24 October 2022, only our new plans will be available.

We recommend moving as soon as possible to start getting the most value from Soldo. You’ll instantly unlock your exclusive access to new and upcoming features only available on our new plans.

Log in now to get started or head to our pricing page to choose the best new plan for your business.

We’ve got some exciting news! After a lot of careful thinking and hard work behind the scenes, we’re thrilled to have launched a shiny new range of Soldo plans.

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about our new plans, including:

• Why we’ve launched new plans
• What’s included in our new plans
• How you can move to a new plan

Before we dive in though, we wanted to make two things very clear.

Firstly, these aren’t just new plans for new customers. All existing customers can move straight over to a new plan – whether that’s a simple old-to-new switch or an upgrade to the next plan level.

And secondly, you can find even more detailed information about our new plans by heading over to the dedicated FAQs page on our website.

The thinking behind our new plans

We’ve launched new plans for a simple, yet crucially important, reason: to better serve your needs.

As a business, we’re committed to continuous improvement and constantly evolving to meet our customers’ changing needs. Our new plans are designed to give you even more value and the best possible experience from Soldo.

The plans include a range of exciting new features (more on these below) that put you firmly in the driver’s seat. Advanced control means managing all your company and employee expenses in one place – increased flexibility means doing that in a way that suits you and your business.

No more messy switching between systems and spreadsheets. From splitting payments into multiple transactions and managing out-of-pocket expenses, to identifying and controlling out-of-policy spending. Everything you need to oversee every business expense, ready and waiting for you in Soldo.

Importantly, all of the new and improved features we roll out now and in the future are exclusively available on our new plans…watch this space for outbound transfers coming early 2023.

Let’s talk about the new features

The new features we’ve launched (and the adjustments we’ve made to existing ones) better reflect the needs of our customers today. And that’s just the beginning of a whole roadmap of features that we’re rolling out exclusively for our new plans in the coming months – and long into the future.

With these features, our new plans unlock a truly end-to-end, integrated company spend and employee expense management experience.

To get a better idea of what that means in practice, let’s take a look at some of the features exclusively available on our new plans as well as a few key adjustments.

Spotlight on our new Pro plan

When you move to our new Pro plan, you’ll get:

• Access to brand new expense management features you can use to review, track and classify expenses into customisable categories that make sense for your business
• Three cards for subscriptions/online ads included in the price of your plan, plus a dedicated dashboard to give you complete visibility
• More control over ad-hoc spending with five temporary virtual cards per month included in your plan, valid for seven days and up to 10 purchases
• The flexibility to add between three and 20 users to your account with a card for every user included and up to 30 cards available

We’ve made a few adjustments to make sure the features are better aligned to each plan. For example, transaction reporting and auto-tagging will now be available from our Premium plan level.

Spotlight on our new Premium plan

Our new Premium plan includes five cards for subscription/online ads and 10 temporary virtual cards for pre-approved spend per month. You can add between three and 30 users, each with their own card included and up to 40 cards available.

The best part about moving or upgrading to a new Premium plan is exclusive access to our full expense management suite, meaning you can:

• Add out-of-pocket expenses to Soldo, so you can track and manage all company spending in one place
• Split single transactions into several with the right amount of money attributed to the right employee to get more accurate reporting
• Add spending policy profiles directly to Soldo and run reports that highlight any transactions that fall outside of them to easily identify and manage out-of-policy expenses
• Categorise transactions, so employees can classify payments into categories you’ve defined to suit your needs

On all our new plans

You’ll pay a monthly fee on our new plans. This is based on the number of users on your Soldo account, instead of the number of cards. Monthly fees start from a minimum of three users and every user has a card included.

Check out our pricing page for all the details.

How soon can you move to a new plan?

You can move to a new plan right now in four simple steps:

1. Log in to your Soldo account
2. Go to Company info
3. Open the Soldo plans tab
4. Select the new plan you’d like to move to

When you move to a new plan, we’ll make the change immediately, starting from the current billing period. If you decide to move to a different plan at any time after 24 October 2022, only our new plans will be available.

We recommend moving as soon as possible to start getting the most value from Soldo. You’ll instantly unlock your exclusive access to new and upcoming features only available on our new plans.

Log in now to get started or head to our pricing page to choose the best new plan for your business.

Are you doing a spend analysis at least once a quarter? Have you ever done a spend analysis before?

Not to worry if you haven’t – it’s never too late to build a new healthy habit into your company spending strategy. And, as the cost of living crisis continues to put pressure on your pocket, a good company spending strategy has never been more important.

Doing a regular spend analysis is essential for making sure the rules you set out in your expense policy on paper, are actually being followed in practice. Some people find spend analysis easier than others – their eyes seem to find patterns in spreadsheets, and meaning in piles of crumpled receipts. Others find the range of numbers disorienting and stressful, which is why the task is so often neglected.

The good news is that there are three simple steps you can follow to find meaning – and savings – in your list of business of outgoings:

• Spend analysis step 1: see it
• Spend analysis step 2: sort it
• Spend analysis step 3: study it

Spend analysis step 1: see it

The first step of your spend analysis is all about visibility. If you can’t see it, you can’t analyse it. At this stage you’ll want to focus on unearthing everything you possibly can about the money your business is spending.

If you haven’t done this before, it can be quite overwhelming. Fortunately, your second spend analysis is almost never as gruelling as your first.

Round up the data

If you want to analyse your spend you have to know where to find the data.

Depending on how your business is structured, you may need to source information from a few different teams, so make sure you leave yourself enough time to do that during this first step.

For smaller businesses, rounding up the data might just mean opening a box of receipts in your desk drawer, or doing a search for invoices in your email inbox. Be thorough and always double check that you haven’t missed anything.

If you’re using Soldo, this step won’t take long at all. Just log in to the admin dashboard and download reports for the period you’re analysing.

Assess the round up process

Before moving on to the next step, take some time to reflect on how easy (or difficult) it was to round up the data. If it was difficult, this is a great opportunity to tweak your expense process so step one of your spend analysis runs smoothly next time.

If it was easy, don’t rest on your laurels – you should still look for other ways to make the process even better.

Spend analysis step 2: sort it

Now that you’ve sourced your data, you’ll need to sort it in a way that makes sense. That way your spend anaylsis won’t leave you feeling dizzy. The goal at this stage is to be systematic, so that like can be compared against like.

Say yes to tech

This is where technology comes in to your spend analysis (if you haven’t been using it already).

Excel is still the most widely used tool for expenses but spreadsheets can get messy pretty quickly and mistakes can slip in unnoticed. There are some great alternatives out there to help you manage and analyse company spend, including accounting software such as Sage, Quickbooks and Xero.

Although you might not consider yourself tech savvy, don’t underestimate how much you’re already doing on a normal day with your smartphone. From checking work emails or messages on the go to using your business banking app and maybe even tracking your morning run.

A spend management platform like Soldo brings these two kinds of technology together. You and your employees can use our mobile app to snap a picture of a receipt right at the point of purchase so you always know who spent what. And because our platform integrates with your accounting software, you’re never left with hours of month-end reconciliation or time wasted on tracking down missing receipts.

Sort purchases into spend categories

The best way to be systematic about your spend data is to organise it by category.

Your business will have specific categories depending on where you and your team need to spend money but here are some of the most common ones:

• Travel
• Food
• Accommodation
• Software
• Office supplies
• Marketing
• IT
• Telephony/internet

It’s really important to get the categorisation step of your spend analysis right. It’s even more important that you make categorisation a central part of your company spending strategy – if you haven’t already done so.

If you’re a Soldo user, you can create your own categories in the admin dashboard, and add the relevant category to every purchase – it only takes a couple of seconds. If you’re using accounting software such as Xero, you can add categories when you upload your expenses, or review and accept the software’s automatic suggestions.

Spend analysis step 3: study it

Ironically, analysis is the final step of the spend analysis process. Making your expenses visible, and then sorting them into categories, often takes longer than studying them for patterns and opportunities to save your business money. But if you’ve done the seeing and sorting steps properly, the studying step should be relatively straightforward.

Search for patterns

Start with one category, such as travel, then try to zoom out and look at your company spend with fresh eyes. You’re looking for patterns and trends in your company spending that you might not have noticed otherwise.

Finding patterns is not an end in itself. Instead, patterns are a means to spotting opportunities to cut costs or shift budget from one spend category to another. Patterns often highlight old habits that your business has taken for granted as ‘just the way things are.’ Challenge this. Why are you spending in this way? How could you do things differently?

Patterns can also show an over-reliance on a small range of suppliers. Challenge this, too – especially now as you’re faced with weathering an economic storm having just traded through a global pandemic.

Your suppliers may have had no choice but to increase their prices but, if you’re a loyal customer, could you negotiate a bulk discount? Is there a way you could organise your buying over the year to make better use of existing bulk discounts? Are you over-reliant on one supplier for a crucial regular item? What would happen if they folded or were unable to fulfil an order? Would it be safer to explore your options?

Study the outliers

The other reason to seek out patterns in your company spending is so that you can easily identify outliers.

• Are there any expenses that stand out? Why do they stand out?
• Has your business paid twice for something in error? Or have you overpaid?
• Has your company spend unexpectedly increased in certain categories?
• Should you adjust your budget to align with new needs, or adjust your spending to realign with your budget?
• Are all of your employees or teams adhering equally to your expense policy? What can you do to ensure that everyone is sticking to the rules?

Studying the outliers is not about being picky for the sake of it. It’s about checking that everything makes sense – that every expense can be tied to a relevant business need.

The bottom line

Once you’ve analysed your company spend, it’s worth dedicating some serious thought to the time it took you to make sense of all the outgoings. If you manage your company’s spend well, seeing it and sorting it will be condensed into just a few clicks. And, once everything is in order, studying it should be fast, accurate and stress-free.

Find out how Soldo can make your next spend analysis a breeze or subscribe for more articles like this one.

We’ve got some exciting news! After a lot of careful thinking and hard work behind the scenes, we’re thrilled to have launched a shiny new range of Soldo plans.

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about our new plans, including:

• Why we’ve launched new plans
• What’s included in our new plans
• How you can move to a new plan

Before we dive in though, we wanted to make two things very clear.

Firstly, these aren’t just new plans for new customers. All existing customers can move straight over to a new plan – whether that’s a simple old-to-new switch or an upgrade to the next plan level.

And secondly, you can find even more detailed information about our new plans by heading over to the dedicated FAQs page on our website.

The thinking behind our new plans

We’ve launched new plans for a simple, yet crucially important, reason: to better serve your needs.

As a business, we’re committed to continuous improvement and constantly evolving to meet our customers’ changing needs. Our new plans are designed to give you even more value and the best possible experience from Soldo.

The plans include a range of exciting new features (more on these below) that put you firmly in the driver’s seat. Advanced control means managing all your company and employee expenses in one place – increased flexibility means doing that in a way that suits you and your business.

No more messy switching between systems and spreadsheets. From splitting payments into multiple transactions and managing out-of-pocket expenses, to identifying and controlling out-of-policy spending. Everything you need to oversee every business expense, ready and waiting for you in Soldo.

Importantly, all of the new and improved features we roll out now and in the future are exclusively available on our new plans…watch this space for outbound transfers coming early 2023.

Let’s talk about the new features

The new features we’ve launched (and the adjustments we’ve made to existing ones) better reflect the needs of our customers today. And that’s just the beginning of a whole roadmap of features that we’re rolling out exclusively for our new plans in the coming months – and long into the future.

With these features, our new plans unlock a truly end-to-end, integrated company spend and employee expense management experience.

To get a better idea of what that means in practice, let’s take a look at some of the features exclusively available on our new plans as well as a few key adjustments.

Spotlight on our new Pro plan

When you move to our new Pro plan, you’ll get:

• Access to brand new expense management features you can use to review, track and classify expenses into customisable categories that make sense for your business
• Three cards for subscriptions/online ads included in the price of your plan, plus a dedicated dashboard to give you complete visibility
• More control over ad-hoc spending with five temporary virtual cards per month included in your plan, valid for seven days and up to 10 purchases
• The flexibility to add between three and 20 users to your account with a card for every user included and up to 30 cards available

We’ve made a few adjustments to make sure the features are better aligned to each plan. For example, transaction reporting and auto-tagging will now be available from our Premium plan level.

Spotlight on our new Premium plan

Our new Premium plan includes five cards for subscription/online ads and 10 temporary virtual cards for pre-approved spend per month. You can add between three and 30 users, each with their own card included and up to 40 cards available.

The best part about moving or upgrading to a new Premium plan is exclusive access to our full expense management suite, meaning you can:

• Add out-of-pocket expenses to Soldo, so you can track and manage all company spending in one place
• Split single transactions into several with the right amount of money attributed to the right employee to get more accurate reporting
• Add spending policy profiles directly to Soldo and run reports that highlight any transactions that fall outside of them to easily identify and manage out-of-policy expenses
• Categorise transactions, so employees can classify payments into categories you’ve defined to suit your needs

On all our new plans

You’ll pay a monthly fee on our new plans. This is based on the number of users on your Soldo account, instead of the number of cards. Monthly fees start from a minimum of three users and every user has a card included.

Check out our pricing page for all the details.

How soon can you move to a new plan?

You can move to a new plan right now in four simple steps:

1. Log in to your Soldo account
2. Go to Company info
3. Open the Soldo plans tab
4. Select the new plan you’d like to move to

When you move to a new plan, we’ll make the change immediately, starting from the current billing period. If you decide to move to a different plan at any time after 24 October 2022, only our new plans will be available.

We recommend moving as soon as possible to start getting the most value from Soldo. You’ll instantly unlock your exclusive access to new and upcoming features only available on our new plans.

Log in now to get started or head to our pricing page to choose the best new plan for your business.

How do you control fuel costs made by drivers when they are on the road, across borders, or even in different time zones? It is a challenge many transport companies face. Asking drivers to pay out of their own pocket leads to frustration, and corporate credit cards require a lot of paperwork. There’s an easier, more efficient way to manage these expenses. 

Sometimes, transport companies can resemble administration offices. Operations and finance departments work overtime to process and check all (fuel) payments. Meanwhile, drivers must pay large sums of money out of pocket to do their jobs, save receipts, fill out forms, and wait to be reimbursed.

To add to these challenges, diesel prices have become a huge issue for transport companies. And according to current fuel monitors, there’s not much hope of improvement.

Paying in cash or with prepaid fuel cards

Fuel payments and other business expenses are often disregarded in favour of operation and logistic improvements.

As a result, too many companies with fleets of over 100 vehicles still allow drivers to pay for fuel themselves or with prepaid fuel cards. However, these debit cards are often restricted and come with a lot of limitations, causing dissatisfaction among drivers. These restrictions also make it difficult to cover overnight stays, road repairs, or parking fees.

This solution doesn’t benefit fleet managers and financial controllers either, and may even put the company at risk. Cash payments can encourage fraud, corporate credit cards are often misused, receipts get lost, and there’s no way to track spending in real time.

Admin hassles

For transport companies, accounting can be complex – even if it’s just about fuel costs. It causes a great deal of frustration among drivers, accountants, fleet managers, and eventually CFOs.

Drivers have trouble managing expenses without having to work overtime on a daily basis. Especially when they’re on the road and have to fill up their vehicles – often across borders and sometimes in other time zones. This admin work involves processing payments, managing cash expenses, and processing claims in the company’s accounting system.

Accountants, fleet managers, operations managers, and even drivers waste too much time on these tasks, all at the expense of productivity. These unproductive hours cost money, and can’t be spent on their ultimate goal: getting from point A to point B.

Drivers must also prove what they have spent in cash, which adds to the hassle. Cash payments are hard to verify, but they keep them going and relieve the administrative burden. Checks may prevent business fraud, but they undermine the trust of those making the payments.

Top 5 benefits of using Soldo

Transport companies such as Titans, Girteka, Gruber Logistics, and Wallenborn all chose Soldo because it offered them at least one of these five advantages:

1. Easy payments for fuel and more

With a smart payment card which drivers can use for fuel as well as other expenses, there’s no need to go out of pocket while on the road. They don’t have to use a business credit card and provide guarantees or collateral in exchange. They charge just as easily for overnight accommodation, repairs and parking costs – even in different geographical locations.

2. Real-time view of costs

Soldo gives accountants, fleet managers and operations managers real-time insight into drivers’ costs while they’re on the road. They get a notification whenever a transaction happens, and can instantly top up drivers with only a few clicks.

3. Flexible spending and limits

Smart payment cards make it possible to set what drivers are allowed to spend in a way that works for you. You can choose what type of expenses employees can make, and where (such as specific merchants of geo-locations). This gives you total control over fuel costs and other business expenses while drivers are in transit, even in different countries.

4. All expenses in one place

You can track and manage all fuel and business expenses at once with the Soldo platform. It shows you all incurred costs in detail, whether costs are rising and where savings opportunities exist. And thanks to our auto-tagging feature, payments will be automatically sorted by category.

5. Increased security

Replacing cash with smart payment cards for expenses greatly reduces the risk of false claims and fraud. Moreover, should employees fail to comply with rules and regulations, you can easily lock their cards to disable spending and switch off cash withdrawals.

Smart payment cards with flexible options

Looking for a way to combine all the benefits of a business credit card with a system that saves you a tonne of admin headaches? Give drivers and other employees a physical card as well as a virtual alternative. Virtual cards are great for ad-hoc and online payments, for instance.

Soldo is the all-in-one management platform your transport company needs. Stay on top of every penny while saving time, and boost employee satisfaction.