Intelligent Expense Management That Saves Time and Works With Your Existing Credit Cards

In a Nutshell: There’s nothing artificial about the intelligence of automation. That makes intelligent expense management from Fyle a leading solution for small and midmarket businesses looking to save time on routine tasks. Fyle automates expense reporting, card reconciliation, and employee reimbursement while syncing to your preferred accounting platform. It links directly to all Visa, Mastercard, and American Express credit cards to allow businesses to access existing rewards and perks instead of being forced to adopt a new card. Fyle has seen 150% year-over-year growth since 2021.

Small and midmarket business owners and managers know the advantages of allowing  employees to spend on the company’s behalf.

Especially while on the road or when acquiring necessary products and services, employees making decisions on the spot can increase a company’s efficiency and responsiveness. That means better use of resources, improved accountability, and ultimately greater effectiveness.

But it only works when it’s well managed. No one goes into business to hound employees for receipts they may or may not have saved. Smart business owners and managers consider expense management a cost they should keep as low as possible.

We agree with anyone who argues it’s best to get a machine to do it. But there’s an issue: Traditional expense management platforms — first- and second-generation desktop and mobile solutions — view expense reporting as a workflow problem.

They may process the numbers quicker than pencil and paper, but they still demand human intervention to perform many management functions.

Meanwhile, U.S. small and midmarket businesses emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 with work-from-home challenges and a greater need than ever for efficient expense management. That’s when Fyle emerged as the ideal expense management solution for remote teams. By seamlessly integrating into their existing workflows — text, email, and beyond — Fyle addressed the unique challenges of managing expenses in a dispersed workforce.

Workers communicate with Fyle mainly through text messages. At the point of purchase, Fyle prompts employees to text photos of the receipts so they can be reconciled with the right transaction automatically. It understands context, directs employees to add necessary details, and handles the coding automatically.

Reimbursement is also automatic. Fyle integrates with popular accounting and enterprise management platforms like QuickBooks, Sage, Xero, and NetSuite, working with existing cards instead of asking companies to abandon programs that may have desirable rewards and perks.

That makes Fyle arguably the most streamlined expense management solution on the market today. Co-Founder and CEO Yashwanth Madhusudan told us Fyle has established a new standard to meet modern customer expectations.

“You keep your bank’s card program but receive an experience a modern fintech would offer,” Madhusudan said. “Rather than waiting for monthly expense reports, you now have access to a steady stream of spending data you can reconcile instantly.”

For all their advances, previous expense management solutions asked the humans in the system to perform essential actions. They couldn’t provide the real-time visibility modern owners and managers ask for.

“Many managers who give credit cards to their employees have no clue where and how those employees are spending,” Madhusudan said. “Forever chasing them down for receipts is not a good use of their time.”

It’s a lot of work. Companies with multiple card programs must download numerous bank statements. Once they get all the data on a single spreadsheet, they then spend hours coding it according to their accounting software’s chart of accounts.

That makes Fyle a great fit in verticals like construction and real estate, where accounting involves detailed job, cost, and project coding.

“The umbrella term for what we do is expense management, but our customers tend to think of it as tons of transactions to reconcile, receipts to collect and match, and spreadsheet rows to push into accounting software,” Madhusudan said.

We’re impressed by Fyle’s versatility. Many customers use credit cards as a funding source instead of a spend-management tool. If not every month, they want the freedom to revolve credit multiple times annually.

Users understand cardholder spending without relying on the issuing bank. When an employee makes a purchase, owners and managers instantly see it on their user dashboard.

Fyle immediately asks the employee for a photo of the receipt. It auto-codes the purchase based on card-network data and information it extracts from the transaction. From there, accountants review and sync it.

“What used to take days and days of follow-up and time on Excel sheets today happens instantly because we are using real-time APIs from the card networks,” Madhusudan said. “We’ve automated one of the oldest and most frustrating bottlenecks businesses face.”

Madhusudan said Fyle customers love the experience because they don’t have to learn new software.

“We’ve had customers tell us they’ve given their phones and a stack of receipts to their children to process,” he said.

The ability to work with all Visa, Mastercard, and Amex issuers distinguishes Fyle from its competition.

“Customers tell us that the world doesn’t need yet another credit card,” Madhusudan said. “They want their expense management problem to go away and feel they shouldn’t have to change their card to solve it.”

Madhusudan said it’s a surprisingly common problem, especially in the $850 billion-plus small-business credit card market. That makes Fyle a preferred choice among nonprofits, technology firms, and legal services providers in addition to construction and real estate companies.

Small businesses tend to value the benefits they obtain from their credit card rewards programs, and most companies have multiple card programs.

Combining precise control over transaction data with an elite software experience allows well-managed firms of all sizes in all verticals to understand more of what makes them tick.

Analytics allows users to configure budgets and track spending. Budgeting tools enable teams to generate rich insights into company behavior. Fyle’s research indicates companies will shift their card program in return for real-time data visibility and a superior user experience.

That’s why thousands of U.S. small and midmarket businesses have signed on with Fyle. They expect software to step in and handle routine operations so they no longer have to spend hours weekly in front of a spreadsheet.

“We’re reminding employees via text message to send in their receipts,” Madhusudan said. “All they have to do is reply.”

Madhusudan said accounting firms include Fyle as part of their tech stack for implementation with all their clients. By incorporating Fyle, those firms are moving from bookkeeping into technology advisory services, using Fyle as a differentiator.

We think that’s a dramatic indication of Fyle’s impact as a third-generation expense management solution focused on automation.

“It’s all about adding value to our partners, who, in turn, add value to their clients,” Madhusudan said.

It’s a natural fit because time is money, and everyone wants to save both. With Fyle on the trail of every receipt, employees save time and trouble managing paper and fiddling with budgeting tools.

Accountants, managers, and owners may see Fyle as a set-it-and-forget information processor, almost automatically inputting raw data that converts into actionable insights.

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Madhusudan said dispensing with the mundane but necessary task of chasing down all those receipts can save companies hours monthly. Abandoning all that spreadsheet work is another significant time saver.

As customers diversify and card programs grow more complex, the administrative burden of dealing with them also grows. Smart entrepreneurs, whether they’re at the startup stage or the enterprise level, know that this isn’t the best use of their time.

In its place is liberation. Employees wait for the system to prompt them rather than remember to make time for it. The system generates expense reports rather than accepts them.

Managers and owners reap the benefits of a low-overhead solution that allows them to understand the impact of their spending on operations and prospects. With real-time visibility comes more confident decision-making.

“There’s not a single company on earth that measures how quickly employees turn in expense reports and how quickly accountants process them,” Madhusudan said. “Our vision is to provide the best expense management software you can get for small business and midmarket companies that use bank-driven credit cards.”