How Volopay helped EdgeRed with budget management and spend policies

Based out of Australia, EdgeRed’s mission is to stay ahead of the artificial intelligence and innovative data analytics industry. They were founded in 2018, and specialize in delivering high-quality data-centric solutions to their clients in record time - often as little as 2 weeks. These include, but are not limited to, data transformation, dashboarding, insights analysis, and machine learning applications. 

One of the most complex aspects of data science is the lack of digestible or understandable data. Instead of being the ultimate weapon that it is, it turns into large chunks of unusable information that many companies and individuals end up stockpiling across disparate systems with often little to no documentation. EdgeRed aims to address that issue. They create streamlined, actionable data insights for their clients that can actually help them grow. 

Some of EdgeRed’s recent cutting-edge work include:

• Large-scale automation across Google suite for project management needs and auto-generated data & analytical presentations with insights commentary with a click of a button

• Dashboard deployments across a range of industries and technologies, including Property, Video Gaming, Retail, and Financial Services using the likes of Google’s Looker, Tableau, Microsoft PowerBI, Domo, Qlik, and Oracle Analytics

• Machine learning applications across customer, store, catchment segmentations, predictive modeling on customer churn, and price impacts from supply chain and raw materials changes

• Lack of enforceable spend policies

• No corporate cards

• Reimbursement hassles

• Difficulty with accounting and reconciliation

• Lack of visibility into company spends

When EdgeRed first started out, they created their budgets with the help of employee expense reports. While this is a feasible option for young businesses, it becomes very difficult to manage as the company grows. It creates large amounts of data that is difficult to keep track of or to be able to compute. 

Another issue that makes it difficult to manage spending with a growing company is the hassle of reimbursement. As company employee numbers increased, reimbursement requests did, too. They found it difficult to document these reimbursements, and corporate cards were complicated to use or obtain.

Together, these also created problems with reconciliation and accounting. The lack of easily-enforceable spend policies and expense reporting made reconciliation a gargantuan task, which required a lot of paperwork. The attention to detail that physical expense reporting and sheets require also leaves room for manual error or duplicate data. This data can be difficult to further verify, as it requires chasing down employees and digging for receipts and approval notes.

• Clear visibility into spends

• Accounting integrations for seamless reconciliation

• Unlimited corporate cards for employees

• Reimbursement and claims platform

• Spend policies that are automatically enforced

• Multi-level approval process that follows a maker-checker workflow

Volopay’s dashboard is an all-in-one expense management platform, which allows users and admins to be able to manage their finances from a single place. Instead of creating a complicated fintech stack, they can utilize this one platform for their budgeting, reimbursement, payroll, and accounting needs.

The accounts payable feature lets finance admins keep track of all bills and vendors. Invoices are automatically created, and payments can be scheduled. With the option of multiple wallets, it allows the finance team to control when payments are being made to vendors across the globe. 

These expenses get automatically added to the ledger, and native accounting integrations ensure that all the data is recorded seamlessly in your accounting software of choice (such as integrations with MYOB, Quickbooks, Netsuite, and more.)

The maker-checker workflow of Volopay lets admins assign multi-level approvers for all spends. Whether it is a reimbursement claim or the creation of a new payment, approvers are able to look into each spend and sanction it on the go. Approval requests come to the mobile app, as well, so that there are no long waits and approvals can be done remotely.

Volopay’s corporate cards were another major feature of the platform that helped EdgeRed. With the platform, they can order physical cards with the click of a button — they can also generate an unlimited number of virtual cards for specific subscriptions, departments, and employees.

These Visa cards are encrypted for maximum security and are independent of the company’s bank accounts to minimize theft and fraud.

The ease of card generation allowed EdgeRed to reduce the instances of reimbursements and give employees secure and reliable access to the company funds. If the need for reimbursement arose, employees could access the reimbursement module on Volopay, and easily request payouts for business-related expenses or mileage.

These spends, as well as card limit requests, also follow a multi-level approval process and are automatically reconciled in the ledger.

Additionally, Volopay offered the option to create spend policies. These spend policies let EdgeRed set limits on expenses and assign budgets to specific departments. These policies are automatically applied to all expense requests, ensuring that there is no overspending and that all approvals are easy to keep track of.

“For us, it was a new capability that we didn't have before. We didn't issue corporate cards widely as it was a hassle and we reimbursed employees manually for expenses. The Volopay platform has made creating a new digital card easy — for example, we are organizing a corporate Christmas party now. I can easily set up a new card with a set budget and my team member can use that to organize our event.” – Monica Ly, Co-Founder

With the help of Volopay, EdgeRed was able to equip their employees with corporate cards and empower them to make business spends without the risk of over-budget expenditure, lost paperwork, or improperly reconciled spending.

Their employees have better visibility on how the company spends its money and Volopay provides them with actionable data to create and enforce budgets.

It also makes reconciliation much smoother and saves the company manhours spend doing repetitive, manual work. This time can be better spent by them on making strategic decisions directly linked to their growth.

Their team chose Volopay for the ease with which they can issue digital cards. Their employees also mentioned how these cards are easy to use, and integrate with digital wallets, making immediate global and mobile payments possible.

Volopay helped EdgeRed ease their budgeting and expense reporting concerns and equipped them with smart corporate cards for better spend control.  

• Easy to generate virtual and physical cards for business spending.

• A reimbursement portal that lets employees readily claim expenses.

• Automated expense reporting and accounting.

• No duplicate data, and no need for line-by-line data transfers.

• Departmental budgets for easier finance planning and enforceable spend policies.

If you would like to know more about how EdgeRed can help you with your data, please visit the Edge Red Website.