In today’s economy, every penny counts. Keeping track of every penny, however, is easier said than done. With costs scattered across teams, tools and locations, many businesses find themselves in the dark when it comes to how much money is actually being spent – and that’s where spend analytics comes in.
Spend analytics brings order to the chaos, turning raw transaction data into actionable insights that drive better decisions, tighter budgets and smarter growth.
Whether you're a CFO looking for strategic oversight or a budget holder trying to avoid waste, spend analytics gives you the visibility you need to take action with confidence.
In this article, we’ll cover what spend analytics is, why it matters and how your business can get started with spend analytics.
Key takeaways:
- Spend analytics turns disconnected data into actionable insights, helping you track, control and optimise business spend across the board.
- Visibility is everything. Without a clear view of where your money’s going, it’s impossible to forecast accurately or cut waste effectively.
- Tools like Pleo make it easy to track, categorise, and review spend in real time – no spreadsheets or manual processes needed.
- Start with the basics, then scale. Focus on high-impact categories, build regular review cycles and collaborate across teams to maximise value.
What is spend analytics?
Spend analytics is all about collecting, organising and analysing a company’s spending data to uncover insights, identify inefficiencies and support better financial decisions.
Basically, spend analytics turns disconnected transactions into a clear, strategic picture of where your money is going – and why.
Spend analytics looks at business spend across all types, including:
- Vendor and supplier payments
- Employee expenses and reimbursements
- Corporate card spend
- SaaS subscriptions and IT costs
- Travel and entertainment
- Departmental and project budgets
By bringing all this data together into one central view, spend analytics helps businesses see patterns, uncover opportunities to save money, flag compliance issues and make smarter, faster decisions.
In short, it gives finance and procurement teams the visibility and control they need – not just to manage spend, but to optimise it.
Why spend analytics matters
Across tools, teams, suppliers and locations, businesses deal with thousands of transactions every month. Without spend analytics all this data sits in silos, making it almost impossible to see the bigger picture.
Spend analytics brings everything together and gives organisations the clarity they need to make confident, data-driven decisions.
Here’s why it matters:
- Visibility into company spend: Spend analytics helps you understand exactly where money is being spent, by whom, on what and why – no more guesswork, no more blind spots.
- Budgeting and forecasting: With a clear view of historical spend patterns, finance teams can create more accurate budgets and forecast future needs with confidence.
- Cost control and efficiency: Spotting duplicate purchases, redundant subscriptions or unnecessary spend helps teams eliminate waste and stretch budgets further.
- Compliance and policy enforcement: Spend analytics helps flag non-compliant transactions, rogue spend and policy breaches, enabling finance and procurement teams to stay in control.
- Better decision-making: From procurement and operations to department leads and C-suite executives, access to real-time spend data supports faster, smarter decisions.
- Reduced risk exposure: Analysing supplier dependencies, contract terms and spending behaviour can help identify risks early – from vendor concentration to missed discounts or uncontrolled growth in certain categories.
To summarise: spend analytics turns complex data into clear, actionable insights, helping businesses save money, stay agile and operate with greater confidence – good things all around.
What does spend analytics include?
Spend analytics isn’t just about collecting data: it’s about turning that data into insights. A strong spend analytics process involves multiple layers – from data collection and categorisation to trend analysis and reporting.
It typically includes:
- Data collection across all spend sources: This includes invoices, expense claims, corporate card transactions, procurement systems, SaaS billing and more. It’s about capturing a complete and accurate picture of all business spend.
- Data cleansing and standardisation: Before analysis can begin, spend data needs to be cleaned. This involves removing duplicates, standardising vendor names, correcting inconsistencies and filling in missing fields.
- Categorisations and classification: Each transaction is tagged by spend category (e.g. IT, marketing, travel), cost centre, department, project or region. This makes it easier to identify where overspending or inefficiencies are happening.
- Supplier and vendor analysis: Vendor analysis is just one part of the bigger picture, but it plays a critical role in helping you understand which suppliers you’re spending with, how much and whether you're getting the value you’re after.
- Trend analysis and benchmarking: Looking at how spend changes over time helps spot seasonal patterns, creeping costs or anomalies that need attention.
- Dashboards and reporting: Spend analytics tools – like Pleo – often include customisable dashboards and automated reporting, making it easy to visualise data, share insights with stakeholders and monitor KPIs in real time.
- Alerts and controls: Many platforms offer built-in alerts for unusual transactions, budget overruns or policy violations, helping you act fast and stay in control.
How to get started with spend analytics
You don’t need an enterprise tech stack or a data science team to start making smarter decisions about spend. With the right tools and a structured approach, you can unlock valuable insights quickly and build a strong foundation for ongoing spend optimisation.
In six steps, here’s how to get started with spend analytics:
1. Centralise your spend data
Start by pulling together all your spending data in one place – from supplier invoices and employee expenses to card transactions and subscription payments. Whether you're exporting from your accounting system or using a tool like Pleo, the goal is to create a single source of truth for company-wide spend.
2. Clean and categorise your data
Standardise vendor names, fill in missing fields and categorise spend by department, cost centre, category or region. Accurate categorisation is essential for spotting patterns and making meaningful comparisons across teams or time periods.
3. Pick a platform that fits your needs
Choose a spend management or analytics solution that matches your business size and goals. For example, if you’re looking for a fast, intuitive way to get visibility over business spend, Pleo has you covered.
With Pleo’s spend management platform and smart company cards, you can stay on top of spend in real time, automate expense categorisation and centralise everything in one easy-to-navigate dashboard.
Finance teams gain instant insight into where money is going, by team, category or individual – no more time wasted tracking expenses manually. You can also flag duplicate subscriptions, monitor budgets and export clean reports for monthly reviews or leadership updates, all without diving into spreadsheets.
4. Start with high-impact areas
Focus on categories where spend is high, visibility is low or savings are likely, such as marketing, travel, software or outsourced services. Quick wins in these areas can help demonstrate the value of spend analytics early on.
5. Build regular review cycles
Make spend reviews part of your monthly or quarterly financial processes. Use dashboards to track trends, monitor compliance and highlight anomalies. The more consistently you review, the more proactive your decision-making becomes.
6. Collaborate across teams
Finance and procurement shouldn’t be the only teams on top of spend visibility. Involve department leads and budget holders so they can understand their spend patterns – and take ownership of optimisation opportunities.
The bottom line? Start simple, build consistency and scale your approach as your business grows. The sooner you bring spend analytics into your workflow, the sooner you’ll start making faster, smarter and more cost-effective decisions.
Final thoughts
Spend analytics isn’t just about trimming budgets: it’s about building a smarter, more agile business. By putting the right tools and processes in place, you can unlock the insights behind your spending data, spot risks before they escalate and uncover opportunities that were hiding in plain sight.
Whether you’re using a tool like Pleo to gain real-time visibility or building out a broader analytics strategy, the benefits are clear: more control, less waste and better decisions – every day.
