How VP Logistics Achieves Faster, More Accurate Expense Reconciliation

VP Logistics manages a fleet and team frequently on the road. As a logistics company where employees travel for client meetings, managing corporate card expenses, travel costs, and operational spending efficiently is crucial to their business.

With 22 Chase Visa cardholders, Megan Kline, Accounting Manager , faced a time-consuming manual reconciliation process each month.

The Challenges

Before implementing Sage Expense Management, VP Logistics Construction relied on manual, Excel-based expense reporting. As the company grew, this system became increasingly inefficient and frustrating for everyone involved.

Manual End-of-Month Reconciliation

At month-end, the finance team downloaded Chase card statements into Excel and used VLOOKUP to map card numbers to employees. They then emailed each employee their transaction list, requesting that they provide descriptions and receipts.

The entire process took about 10 business days each month to reconcile and import the data into McLeod Software fully.

Receipt Clutter Across Multiple Channels

Receipts were scattered across emails, Teams messages, and paper copies. The team was constantly following up with employees for missing receipts and transaction details, especially for travel, client meetings, software subscriptions, and office supplies.

Human Errors in GL Coding

Without structured category inputs, employees made errors when assigning GL codes to expenses. Despite review cycles, occasional coding mistakes still occurred.

Lack of Real-Time Visibility

The finance team had no visibility into card spend until the month-end statement arrived.

Issues with recurring charges and digital receipts compounded the lack of visibility, making it difficult to track spending patterns or identify compliance issues.

Transformation with Sage Expense Management

Megan knew they needed a better system to manage expenses. When evaluating solutions, she had specific requirements:

• Retain their existing Chase credit card program (Visa network)
• Easy receipt capture for employees on the go.
• Streamline expense reconciliation workflow.
• Centralized visibility for the finance team.

That's where Sage Expense Management stood out.

Real Time Visibility into Card Spend

With Sage Expense Management's direct integration with Visa , when an employee swipes their Chase card, the transaction appears in Sage Expense Management in real-time.

Employees receive text notifications immediately, prompting them to snap a picture of the receipt and assign the correct category. They can also forward digital receipts via email for instant processing.

Both mobile app and web interface options give employees flexibility to submit expenses however works best for them.

No More Receipt Chasing

With Sage Expense Management's SMS prompts, employees now attach receipts immediately after a purchase, eliminating the end-of-month scramble.

Nearly half of all receipts are submitted within the first 60 minutes of an expense occurring.

Effortless Reconciliation

With the real-time Visa feed and transaction data syncing instantly, the time required to close the books has decreased from 10 days per month to 3 days.

Easy Data Export to ERP

Sage Expense Management's custom export capability, which generates CSV/Excel formats, has eliminated 2- 4 hours every month of manual data reformatting.

The finance team can now export data exactly as McLeod expects it with proper category coding.

The Outcome

Today, the finance team enjoys a streamlined, transparent, and efficient expense management process that keeps everyone, from field employees to accounting, on the same page.