Audience: Finance User


Purpose

In this article, we will provide a high-level walkthrough of the spend management experience for Finance users.


Finance teams are key users of the platform, and there are two main functions built for Finance users:

  • Financial Review / Audit: The transactional approval workflow allows for a step where the Finance team provide a financial check/audit before any spend is allowed to be processed and extracted to the Finance system. Not every business requires this step, but when activated is provides a final check that the GST/VAT totals are correct or a final review of any claims where spend policies have been breached.
  • Reconciliation and Extract: The final action in the system once all approvals and audit checks have been satisfied is to check the reconciliation report for transactions that are marked as finalized and ready to leave the platform. This process creates extract files which you can download, and if desired can create an accruals file for all other spend still in the platform going through the process stages should you need to hold this in a suspense account on your balance sheet (and to reconcile any payments made against accounts before the transactions are fully finalized and ready for export).   See the guide here for reconciling and extracting for Neo1.

The Finance role is a formal right assigned to users by Administrators.  In order to be a Finance user you first are created as a User and the role of Finance is assigned to your profile.



Overview

Financial Review / Audit


Financial Review / Audit

The process for completing the Financial Review is very similar to that of a manager approval. Transactions in the platform are triggered for a Finance Review stage in the workflow based on 2 key conditions:

  1. The % Audit rate configured by the Administrator under Settings > Expense > Spend policies. The % configured will randomly ensure a DEFINED % of transactions will be sent to Review by the Finance role for random checks.
  2. If any transactions is in breech of a defined policy defined by the Administrator under Settings.  i.e. Meal is > $80 in NYC, NY, USA.

If any of these conditions are triggered Finance users simply follow the below steps to complete their tasks:

Step 1: Access the “Authorize” capability from the Menu. Here a User with Finance rights will click Authorize>Spend>Review to see transactions that require their attention. The screen below shows the Review view with 1 transaction waiting Finance Action



Step 2: Review the details of the transaction, and get a side-by-side view of the details entered to the digital receipt to be able to ensure consistency. In the example below you can see the expense has been triggered for Review due to a Non Compliance spend for breakfast.  This is indicated in Orange as Non Compliant



Step 3: Select Approve or Reject as appropriate. If you select Reject you are prompted to provide a reason for the user to be able to make any required changes.  As with the Manager view it is best practice to reject an expense rather than edit the transaction on the user behalf for compliance.