Pleo — growing fintech business that automates expense reports and simplifies company spending.

Pleo 4.6

Pleo, a regulated e-money institution, helps businesses manage company expenses. It helps employees with work-related purchases with its on-demand virtual and plastic credit cards for online and in-store payments. Its cloud-based comprehensive company expense solution that comes with virtual and physical company cards, reduces administrative complexities, simplifies bookkeeping as well as enabling businesses to take control of all expenditures.

What is Pleo?

Usually small or medium-sized companies have a few credit cards for work-related purchases which basically are given out to top management and a few other employees. Then these few cards are further lent out to others for work-related purchases. It could be a lot of work for the finance department to gather all receipts and identify who actually spent them. Another issue is keeping the balance between company cards and expenses to be reimbursed. Pleo’s expense management solution handles all such issues. It streamlines business expenses through its physical and virtual company cards with a single click of a button. It is basically a web and app-based business expense software that reconciles every expense as soon as you take a snapshot of the receipt.

Pleo is mainly used by small and medium-sized companies who want easy-to-integrate software for receipts management and expense handling. Its two main features are spending management and expense reporting. In terms of reporting, there is no tracking of time and expense, and no reimbursements management currently. Furthermore, it is not a multi-currency software, and transactions on the card always appear in local currency. But it is very useful for workflow management and spending control along with approval process control.

Pleo lets businesses issue cards to multiple personnel, and control the spending via a centralized portal. This means that it is possible to put caps on spending on an employee-to-employee basis. Another function is the ability to view what was bought as soon as the transaction takes place.

In terms of “Spend Management”, currently it is limited to expense tracking and analysis only. You can’t perform the budgeting, forecasting or management of the procurement process or suppliers. But you can integrate Pleo with other accounting software. Currently, it can be integrated with nine accounting programs- Quickbooks, Sage, Dinero, E-conomic, Xero, Fortnox etc.

Pleo offers three pricing plans: Essential, Pro, and Premium. Essential being the least costly comes with a card for each defined user and offers access to many features offered by the service. The Pro plan comes with additional functionalities of adding limits and reviews for users. With this package, you will be notified if any employee spends above the pre-defined limit. The Premium plan is a customized one suited for firms of large scale. It offers premium features such as a dedicated account manager, on-site training, custom onboarding features etc. Apart from the subscription fee, there are some other charges involved. The complete schedule of Pleo fees and charges will help you know more about the additional costs associated with using the card.

Pleo offers both app and web-based options. The app can be downloaded free of charge on iOS and Android devices. The app version is best suited for taking snapshots of receipts, assigning spending categories, and using the cards while the web version is ideal for account maintenance.

Is Pleo Safe?

For businesses, their finances are very important and as a result, security is on the top of the priority list. Pleo offers bank-level data protection; its data centre is PCI DSS Level-1 compliant as mentioned on its website. The cardholder information is protected with industry-standard encryption. The service also ensures that fraud prevention measures are in place to defend against malicious attacks.

Pros

Easy expense reporting.
Simple integration.
Companies can issue multiple cards.
Allows to set different spending limits for each card

Cons

No reimbursement management currently.
No multi-currency account.
Fee is applied on international transactions and withdrawals.
Don’t have a free version, only a trial version.
Per user pricing may add up for large-scale firms.

FAQ

How can we transfer our funds to the Pleo cards?

To use Pleo cards (plastic and virtual Mastercards), users should have funds in their Pleo wallets. To top-up wallets, click this link. Please carefully read and follow the instructions provided on how to wire money to your firm’s Pleo wallet.

In which countries Pleo is available?

Pleo- the smart payment cards for employees is currently available to firms incorporated in the UK, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden.

How will my personal data be protected?

Pleo offers bank level data protection; its data centre is PCIDSS Level-1 compliant as mentioned on its website. The cardholder information is protected with industry standard encryption. The information transmitted between Pleo’s servers and 3rd-party servers is 2048-bit encrypted, and the data related to card transactions passes through VPN- tunnels to the most and stringent of all PCI DSS levels- Level 1.

Do I still need to do my expense reports when using Pleo?

No. The app instantly notifies you when you use a Pleo card. You can quickly capture the receipt and post it to the relevant cost category without any issues. It lets you monitor the transactions in real time. Users can also set up notification alerts for specific transactions. Lastly, you can directly export the transaction data to accounting softwares compatible with Pleo.

Conclusion

Pleo works best when you need to manage and track your expenses. Its customer support works round-the-clock, and the user-friendly app makes it easier to track spending and keep accounts updated.

If you are a small or medium-sized business, Pleo would be an ideal service to track the spending of different employees. But it is not a comprehensive business account and low-cost service. There are many similar options available, and I will advise comparing their features and charges before you decide to go for Pleo.